Natural Law and Sexting response

This is in response to a post from a few weeks back about sexting...

In the Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant provides a 'test' that could be applied in this instance. Now it might be a stretch, but he had a test for maxims (ie rules to live by) and uses the example of lying. Say i have a maxim "it is okay to lie" and i want to determine whether it is moral or not. By imagining it to be true for everyone we see that it does not work as if everyone lied then it would undermine and hurt the common good. Similarly, if we were to say that it is all right for 'sexting' i think it would be quite obvious from Kant's angle that it is wrong to text. For example, if it was alright for everyone to 'sext' then it would be as acceptable for pictures of young children to be sexted as it would be for adults to sext as well.

It might be a bit extreme on my part to compare consensual sexting between teenagers to the sexting of child pornography, but I think it is applicable. On the most basic level, sexting is sending pictures of someone naked to another person via cell phone. So if it is wrong for an adult to sext child pornography, then it would be wrong for a teenager to do the same.

Sexting could also violate Kant’s belief that people are only to be treated as ends, never as a means to an end. By sending or receiving a naked picture, an individual is turning the subject of the photo into an object that is used for their own satisfactions (ie a means to satisfaction).