According to some members of the UK Parliament, looking at a small
image in a place where others could possibly look at it over your
shoulder is legally considered a "public display", equivalent to
projecting it on a wall in the street.
Prohibiting thing A, and stretching the terminology to include thing B
as well, is morally dishonest. When people who look over your
shoulder, or out of the corner of the eye, to see something small that
you hold in front of you, you are not "displaying" it. Rather, they
are prying.
I am not saying that prying is a great wrong -- only that when you
pry, you take on the responsibility for seeing whatever you saw, so
you cannot blame that on the person whose affairs you pried into.
Some sexual material (i.e., porn) embodies misogyny or treats women as
objects. I have a low opinion of that. But the moral dishonesty I am
criticizing would apply to all porn, regardless of the attitudes any
given porn work presents.
I have no sympathy for Parish, the Tory MP who might be prosecuted.
He is a Tory! As a member of Parliament in the governing party, he
shares responsibility for all government policies, and so many of them
are cruel.
The Tories have done truly horrible things in recent years -- starving
the poor, freezing the poor,
undermining the National Health Service,
deporting people because their parents didn't get certain documents 50
years ago, making the
disabled prove their disability to someone
unqualified while disregarding doctors' reports, imposing harsh
punishments on protesters trying to save the ecosphere, encouraging
fossil fuels over renewable energy,
and more.
These wrongs have
harmed millions of Britons already and could easily harm tens of
millions of them in the future. These are the substantial reasons to
condemn Parish. I have listed only the few I could immediately
remember; there are many more.
Thus, Parish's resignation, in and of itself, is a good thing. But
achieving something politically beneficial through unjust means can do
more harm than good, through collateral damage to everyone. This
moral dishonesty, if it prevails, will not be limited to Tories. So
their guilt for unrelated wrongs, even enormous wrongs, cannot excuse
it.