The founding generation had ZERO understanding, intention or belief that the first amendment was meant to allow the creation or dissemination of explicit pornography. It was illegal (and constitutionally so) during the founders’ era and it is entirely constitutional for it to be illegal now. Any argument to the contrary is intellectually dishonest nonsense.
Yes. That.
Your argument follows the same logic as the anti-gun folks make when trying to ban “assault weapons.”
These high power military weapons were not around when the founding fathers wrote the Constitution and were never intended to be in the hands of normal people. The founding fathers had ZERO understanding of assault weapons... bla bla bla.
What constitutes “pornography” is a highly culturally relative idea, not unlike what an “assault weapon” is to some folks, and these ideas change over time (a lot).
They were making naked statues and paintings when the founding fathers were around. Was that pornography? Are you telling me there weren't people offended even back then by some of that?
This quickly degenerates into where “someone feels” they know what is right and wrong an think they have a right to impose their morality onto others.
No, that's not what the Constitution is about. In fact, the US Constitution is about free speech and the right to expression, the antithesis of what you're trying to argue.
This isn't anything new. It's the same story over and over, every decade, nothing new: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0T8uRXYEwA
In the 1990s: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/2-live-crew-obscenity-trial-213607638.html) It's an ongoing story that was around in the 90s, 80s, 70s, 1880s, 1780s... no kidding. Back then, Gore and his wife chimed in on this too, of course (these are easy ways to score some political capital with some): https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/tipper-gore-fought-against-80s-rock-music-parental-advisory
Your rights end where you begin to infringe on someone else’s rights (The Wendell Holmes argument): https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/15/liberty-fist-nose/
If a parent allows a kid physical access to a computer, the kid isn't taught to stay away from those sites, the laptop has no password protection, no firewalls to block such sites are in place, that's on the parent, not some porn site.
It was scandalous, even immoral, to show your ankles as a woman in Victorian times 1837 -1901.
The very definition of “pornography” and so called “decency” changes a lot over time.
The idea that any of this is new, is simply put, made up: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_erotic_depictions
The struggle between decency (whatever that is for the day) and those breaking the social norms has always been the case, even in other places.
The Vatican Sistine chapel is full of naked people, and that was fine at that time although there too you had conflict between different ideas of what’s considered decent: https://www.througheternity.com/en/blog/art/nudity-and-controversy-in-the-sistine-chapel.html
For the Greeks making naked pictures and sculptures was fine, you just had to give them a small penis, since a big penis would be vulgar: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-ancient-greek-sculptures-small-penises
But then the Romans thought the penis was a symbol of power and good luck, and the bigger the better. They had frescas, statues, walkway pavers, even doorway entries were adorned with giant penis in places like Pompei.
None of this is new.
But, don’t be part of the problem.
—For liberals, it’s ok to crap all over the US Constitution when it comes to environmentalism and social justice.
—For many self professed conservatives, it’s ok to crap all over the US Constitution when it comes to national defense, their idea of morality and public safety.
Both want to throw the US Constitution out of the window, they just have different values/priorities. The “conservative” wants to ban an image of a nipple to protect a kid, and the liberal wants to ban your guns to protect a kid. Both are full of $hit.