Prohibiting Pornography -- A Moral Imperative

Morality in Media ^ | 1984 | Paul J. McGeady

[longshadow]

I see the "Festival of Obsessive-Compulsive Authoritarianism" has started up again....

Why, the very fabric of the republic might be ripped asunder if somebody were to look at naughty pictures. Oh, the horror, the horror.......

< / lunatic busy-body mode>

[narses]

Ping for the Catholic view.

[Tailgunner Joe]

I never did like slippery slope analogies.

How about how banning porn will lead to outlawing the Bible as hate crime?

Either something is right or something is wrong. That said, obscenity is "freedom of speech", but not on public property.

Obscenity is wrong and the courts have ruled that it is no more "free speech" than yelling fire in a crowded theater.

[ThinkDifferent]

They think that believing in right and wrong is the characteristic of fascist zealots like President Bush.

Not at all. For example: I believe it is wrong to monitor the private sexual activities of consenting adults and throw them in prison if you don't like what they're doing.

[Junior]

...why should I or anyone care about what's good for society?

Because you wouldn't survive without society. Atheists practice what is known as enlightened self-interest, which means they work for the good of society, not because some big guy in the sky is forcing them to, but because they know that without society, they'd be up an unsanitary tributary without a means of propulsion.

It strikes me as odd that there are so many people who would do evil if God wasn't keeping them on the straight and narrow. Those folks give me the willies. Give me someone who does good out of his own self-interest any day of the week -- I can trust that kind of honesty.

[radicalamericannationalist]

The folks who think that this Republic was founded to be a libertinian paradise amaze me. Do they really think that Washington recruited soldiers with promises "Buggery, pornography and prostitution?"

[Tailgunner Joe]

"No government ... should be forced to choose between repressing all material, including that within the realm of decency, and allowing unrestrained license to publish any material, no matter how vile. There must be a rule of reason in this as in other areas of law, and we have attempted ... to provide such a rule." - Chief Justice Earl Warren, 1964 Jacobellis v. Ohio

[Tailgunner Joe]

No Taxation Without Fornication!

[Levy78]

"You can do this all on your own without any help from me."

Not when you advocate putting your god into institutions my tax dollars pay for... Why is this so hard for people to get? I could care less who you praise, etc.. whatever works for YOU is great... however, why must I be subjected to your religious beliefs in public facilities? I will fight tooth and nail to keep religion out of the public forum, while you only advocate the benign and generally harmless Christian faith, next week... who knows what variety of religion we may be subjected to. Following me...?

[Levy78]

What in the world do you think have lured soldiers into the army for centuries? The army is a place where a young man chases women, drinks too much.... as well as defends his country. It's been that way for a long time.

[Tailgunner Joe]

The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected vagueness challenges to the obscenity definition. For example, in its 1957 decision Roth v. United States, the Court said that the Constitution "does not require impossible standards; all that is required is that the language [of the law] conveys sufficiently definite warning as to the proscribed conduct ... [W]e hold that these [obscenity] statutes ... do not ... fail to give men ... adequate notice of what is prohibited."

[radicalamericannationalist]

But those are not the values that soldiers fight to build a nation on. And the military remains one of the few institutions in our society that maintains criminal penalties for adultery.

[mvpel]

Do you deliberately, or inadvertently, conflate the terms "child pornography" and "pornography?" You do realize there's a difference, don't you?

[mvpel]

How about how banning porn will lead to outlawing the Bible as hate crime?

Didn't you hear? They've already done that in Canada.

REGINA, February 10, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a ruling given virtually no media coverage, the Court of Queen's Bench in Saskatchewan, ruled that a man who placed references to Bible verses on homosexuality into a newspaper ad was guilty of inciting hatred.

[radicalamericannationalist]

If you fight tooth and nail to keep religion out of the public forum, how do you square the fact that the Congress that drafted and passed the First Amendment also created the office of the Congressional chaplain and reauthorized the Northwest Ordinance that specifically called for federal funding of religious schools in the territories governed by the national government?

[radicalamericannationalist]

You are conflating a hate crimes bill with pornography. Or does the Canadian hate crimes bill also serve to regulate pornography?

[Tailgunner Joe]

Canada isn't a free country like the US. They don't have the first amendment.

I'd also point out that it was the agenda of sexual deviants and not conservatives that brought this about. You can still get all the gay porn you want in Canada.

[Tailgunner Joe]

I'd further point out that we already have hate crime laws in the US, as well as CFR laws that restrict political speech. Still no crackdown on porn though.

It's almost as if the people who want to restrict our free speech and right to worship in public are the very same ones flooding our society with degenerate pollution.