Misty Media Sex Blog

October 5th 2005, 14:42 Jeff Sela

Q. Boyer has a nice piece on YNOT.com about why banning pornography is a bad idea.

It always comes down to whether governments have the right to decide what's ‘decent’ for people to do in the privacy of their own homes. Sure, the conservatives are always trying to show that pornography is harmful to society in some way, but the evidence doesn't support that. They simply disapprove of sex strongly enough that they want to deny other people the right to enjoy it on their own terms.

I think this bit sums up the situation quite nicely:

As very effectively pointed out by my colleague Connor Young during a panel discussion concerning obscenity at the Florida Internext in August, we already have laws that regulate sexual behavior, identifying criminal sexual conduct and the penalties thereof. As such, is there really a need for separate laws that criminalize the filming, distribution, selling and viewing of consensual sex acts being performed by adults of their own volition, and being consumed by adults that specifically wish to view such acts?

I join Connor's argument that there is no such need, and that the enactment, enforcement, and adjudication of such laws is a colossal waste of time and energy on the part of governments and various other organizations bent on protecting us from ourselves, and attempting to foist their own standards of social propriety upon those of us who may not subscribe to their definition of “decent”.