"If porn's affects were strictly affecting just the viewer, perhaps you would be right. But porn also affects those who participate in it including under-age children. Plus porn seems to induce a few more unstable individules onto more vile and even murderous activities (a la Ted Bundy).!"
On your first point you are making an illogical argument: it is already illegal to use children in pornography. Banning pornography will not make that more illegal than it already is as child pornography is not legal anywhere in the USA.
Your second argument is also without merit. If everything must be banned because a "few more unstable individules" may be unduly influenced than I do trust you support banning television, radio, newspapers, and Free Republic because any law that gets past a First Amendment protection will open the door to other forms of speech being limited by the same artifice.
Bear in mind here I do NOT support pornography. But I would rather be able to argue against it than to have my right to free speech somehow limited by the same legal argument that would successfully breach the 1st Amendment to ban pornography. It CAN happen.
Come on its a view point discussion...not an arguement on scientific logic. Children are involved in the porn industry....legal or not. It does induce unstable individuals to commit the vile acts depicted. It does degrade humans to a status even lower than animals!
The 1st amendment issues are thorny to be sure but men are most free when their consciences are free! And that is the question that faces us as a nation. Is it better to limit freedom in light of what is actually Morally right? And who decides what is morally right?
Slavery was such an issue...even acknowledged in the constitution in terms of voting representation....and we all know how that issue was decided!
Does free speach at any price actually denote freedom? Or, as Washington stated, do "Morality and religion" form the "twin pillars" upon which our all our freedoms rest?
What did "free speech" mean in terms of how our founders meant it? Did it mean freedom to make porn magazines with the first amendment stripped of any moral restraints as our courts are ruling now?
Argue those points "logically" with me now!