Sorry, but you don't have a right to a society that doesn't offend you.
To be perfectly honest, I care about my own liberty more than I care about your liberty. Sorry about that but I'm selfish that way, just as you are. Can you give me a good reason why I should care about your liberty in this matter?
I'm almost tempted to say that in that case, we don't have much more to discuss. You defend what you want; I'll defend what I want.
But the reason to care about another's liberty is that it makes it easier to protect your own. You seek to limit my liberty by limiting porn, believing that increases your liberty. Someone else, however, might not want their children exposed to religion and seek to keep more extreme examples of religion. Heck, in some cases that's what's happening.
Please note that I have no problem with religious displays. I think the effort to remove the 10 Commandments from courtrooms and crosses from city seals are wrong-headed. Maybe it's that I'm hard to offend, at least visually, but creches and crosses don't bother me, even though I'm not Christian. But there are people who complain about religion on television. While that's not a serious threat right now, it may be if they get religion banned from other parts of the public square.
From a strategic standpoint, I find it easier to defend freedom as a whole. You protect my right to look at porn if you're worried about your children seeing it, you close the metaphorical curtains. By the same token, someone who might be offended by preachers being on TV and worry about their children seeing it, can take the same steps.
Or we can go down the path of anything that has the potential to offend someone has the potential to be banned....
I gotta go, too.... later.
No, but I do have a right, as a voter in a Republic, to vote to restrict those things that do offend me, just as you have the right to vote against those restrictions.
I'm almost tempted to say that in that case, we don't have much more to discuss. You defend what you want; I'll defend what I want.
That's exactly what I'm saying. That's why the Founders chose to make our government a Republic within a Federal system. And if these matters were determined locally rather than Federally for everyone, things would probably work a lot better.
But the reason to care about another's liberty is that it makes it easier to protect your own. You seek to limit my liberty by limiting porn, believing that increases your liberty. Someone else, however, might not want their children exposed to religion and seek to keep more extreme examples of religion. Heck, in some cases that's what's happening.
In other words, people are going to try to restrict my liberty whether I try to restrict their liberty or not. That's why I don't buy this whole idea that I need to tolerate someone walking around with a pornographic T-Shirt if I don't want someone else to try to ban my religious T-Shirt (or whatever). All that does is pretend that the details are irrelevant and they aren't. People passed a Constitutional Amendment banning alcohol, repealed that Amendment, etc. They didn't pass and repeal a Constitutional Amendment banning the sale of orange juice. Why? Because orange juice and alcohol are not the same thing and preserving my right to drink orange juice has nothing to do with preserving someone else's right to drink alcohol, any more than we have to preserve the right of adults to have sex with children out of fear that if we don't, they'll ban adults having sex with each other.
Please note that I have no problem with religious displays. I think the effort to remove the 10 Commandments from courtrooms and crosses from city seals are wrong-headed. Maybe it's that I'm hard to offend, at least visually, but creches and crosses don't bother me, even though I'm not Christian. But there are people who complain about religion on television. While that's not a serious threat right now, it may be if they get religion banned from other parts of the public square.
Please note that my objection to pornography is not simplistic. I'm not particular offended by basic nudity, nor do I want to ban all pornography from adults. I would, however, like to see the public space be more child friendly the way it once was. That means that I don't want to take your Playboy away but would prefer you'd read it at home and not on a subway. I'm also concerned about the more vile forms of pornography that involve the actual abuse and torture of those performing in it. Finally, I'm concerned about the effects that particularly violent and deviant pornography might have on those who consume it. We can't have a dicussion of that without talking about the details of each of those points, thus I don't have a lot of use for abstract discussions of "liberty". To me, liberty is a means to an end and even libertarians would restrict the liberty of others in the interest of property rights and safety, thus even libertarians understand that too much liberty, abused liberty, and liberty without responsibility are bad things.
From a strategic standpoint, I find it easier to defend freedom as a whole.
I think that's a strategy doomed to failure because such abstract defenses of liberty invariably defend the indefensible to just about everyone. There is a reason why the number of libertarians remains so small. Few people are willing to accept the full implications of libertarianism for a variety of reasons that probably wouldn't be fruitful to discuss here.
You protect my right to look at porn if you're worried about your children seeing it, you close the metaphorical curtains. By the same token, someone who might be offended by preachers being on TV and worry about their children seeing it, can take the same steps.
Yet the United States managed to do just fine banning pornography but not banning preachers. The reason I don't find this argument particularly persuasive is that I don't expect the preacher banners to ever get the numbers necessary to do it. If society ever shifted in that direction, I wouldn't see the problem in terms of liberty.
Or we can go down the path of anything that has the potential to offend someone has the potential to be banned....
In practice, that's the way it is. Remember, they banned alcohol by Constitutional Amendment. Then the repealed the ban. You either trust the democratic processes of our Republic or you don't. I do. The great lesson of Prohibition was that the people, after seeing it didn't work, repealed it. The system corrects itself but needs to move.