Whilst not desiring to be contrarian and argumentative, I feel however it is important to reply to Steve Oh's points ( Right to criminalise porn and piracy).

What is at stake today in contemporary Malaysia is the threat to our civil liberty posed by the authorities' enforcement of private and sexual morality by criminal laws ( Extra police power to raid homes unjustified , Frightening moral clampdown by authorities , If only life was that simple ...) .

Of course I believe in the necessity for morality. There must be a bedrock of core moral values bonding a community or a society, without which they cannot live together harmoniously.

Yet in spite of this, and especially in a multi-cultural and multi-religious society like ours, there are bound to exist differences of opinions on what is right and wrong, which is healthy because we can discourse and practise tolerance, if not understand these differences.

This aside, the purposes of criminal law and morality, although overlapping in some areas, should not be confused to mean the same thing. That which is criminal is in most cases immoral, but that which is immoral is not necessarily illegal or criminal.

Morality, which is an aspiration, seeks the maximisation of human conduct. Its instrument lies in teaching, training and exhortation by parents, schoolteachers, and political or religious leaders. Criminal law is different because it deals with the minimum expected of human conduct for others to live around, which instrument for enforcement is punishment by jail or fine under criminal law.

Both systems of morality and criminal law complement each other by separate functions - in address of the high end or low end of human conduct respectively - and the fabric of society cannot take the strain if the deadweight of what is right or wrong and good or bad is carried by morality alone or, for that matter, criminal law alone without the necessary division of purposes between them as outlined.

For a criminal offence, I draw the benchmark at "harm" to others because harm can be empirically established and agreed to by most reasonable people whatever their moral or religious belief.

Sex with a child or underage persons is punishable as crime because it harms the young person who knows not what he/she does. Their acts cannot be voluntary because being underage they cannot give real consent.

Enforcing criminal laws against software pirates, vendors and distributors is unobjectionable because they infringe the rights of - and financially harm - authors and owners who develop and protect at great expense their intellectual property.

I also accept the enforcement of laws against manufacturing, vending and distribution of pornography because a plausible argument may be made out that they should not be sold to children - or even some adults - unable to handle it. At the very least, it is offensive to, and inflicts emotional distress on, persons of high moral probity or religious sense like the letter writer Steve to see pornography being publicly vended and sold.

There are of course other reasons, such as it implicates the sexual exploitation of actors and actresses, and is distasteful to the moral sensitivities of many.

To curb by criminal punishment the 'supply side' of pornography upon these justifications is not the same thing as extending the criminal punishment to the 'demand side of pornography' based on basic instinct in the privacy of home subject to no 'harm' being inflicted to others - unless one can empirically prove that pornography directly causes many to become serial rapists, paedophiles and maniacs.

It may well be true, as Steve says, that pornography may or may not breed an "unhealthy craven addiction" and it is a reflection of poor moral taste to enjoy it. Then again it is a matter of opinion - and taste. Some may think that the sexual titillation from the fantasy of watching pornography is a better substitute than acting out the basic instinct in reality with its attendant consequences.

It may be laudable for moral evangelists to save souls by admonishing against pornography and sin. Failing this, it does not mean that the wretched soul should be punished with the full weight of criminal law.

Everyone has a right to choose to be a moral epitome or a moral degenerate in order to be adjudged in the afterlife his appropriate place in heaven or hell without the intervention of earthly laws to distort his freedom of choice.

The danger in criminalising sexual immorality (without harm to others) is that more often than not, morality or immorality is a subjective and relative notion to which different people have different opinions depending on culture, education, religion and upbringing. Once the empirical benchmark of 'harm' is taken away, one runs into philosophical problems as to what is immoral.

For example, whilst most including Steve will agree that pornography is sinful or immoral, there are some in the parks of Ipoh who think that holding hands or shoulder or waist of one's beloved in public is immoral and hence like pornography should be prosecuted. Where does one draw the line then, and without the empirical benchmark of harm, how is Steve to prove and support my contention that there is something wrong instead with the enforcers and prosecutors?

Citing ex-president Bill Clinton's sexual improprieties as an example is inappropriate and irrelevant to Steve's rebuttal of my 'harm' criteria for criminal punishment. Nobody cares that he commits adultery anywhere else in private and though his adultery is viewed by some as immoral matrimonial sin and betrayal, adultery however is not a crime.

Clinton's "crime" here is that he had his sexual romp in the White House, which is not just a house for staying, but the office of the President of United States which he desecrated by his indiscretions about which he also lied and engaged in double talk to Congress under oath.

In summation, I would concede that possession of pornography is punishable only because our laws provide that it is. And laws should be observed or else why have them? If we don't agree with them, we should try to change them by debate but until that change has been effected, we have to follow them.

Having said this, I however don't agree that possession and viewing of pornography ought,

no matter how distasteful or immoral to many, to be proscribed as a criminal offence because it does not satisfy the criterion of 'harm to others'.

To take away this criterion and replace it with moral judgment is to obfuscate the distinct purposes, which morality and law seek separately to achieve. It will moreover open the floodgates for overzealous moral guardians to dictate their private morality upon all of us under the threat of criminal prosecution as happened recently in Ipoh to the college student and others.

The enforcement of private and sexual morality is justified only if we accept a theocratic state, which rejects moral subjectivism or relativism in favour of moral objectivism based on divine propositions and laws as revealed by high priests and religious scholars.

At least for the time being in Malaysia, we still give lip service to the ideal of the sovereignty of a secular Federal Constitution and laws made by elected representatives in Parliament guided by debates and empirical evidence for or against policies.

If we should, at any time forward, repudiate the principle of separation of state from religion, morals from criminal conduct, and discard our constitution and secular laws altogether in favour of the religious laws based on sovereignty of God rather than the people through elected representatives as that in ancient Christian states or even as recent as of the Taliban's administration, I would agree in entirety with Steve that we should equate sin with crime, and hence pornography in the privacy of home without harm to others should also be criminally prosecuted.

So too, by the way, should the immorality and sins of adultery and extra-marital sex, whether or not it implicates beheading as punishment.