Burkas for everyone!
Posted on 12/10/2002 11:12:51 AM PST by HumanaeVitae
Sorry for the vanity here folks, but I promise this should be worthwhile.
I read through both of the "Shane's World" threads about the young perverts coming to college campuses to film sex acts etc...O'Reilly has been all over the story.
One of the young lechers who works for the porn company note that "there was a market for college pornography". True, I'm sure.
Fact is, there's a huge market for pornography, in the billions. Although libertarians on FR have no problem with a robust U.S. pornography industry, social conservatives and Christians (like myself) have a huge problem with porn. For instance, porn:
(1) Degrades women; (2) Appeals to the lowest instincts that men have; (3) Is a contributing factor to many (if not most) rapes and other sex crimes; (4) At its worst exploits children; (5) Makes this country look like a bunch of immoral perverts and lowers the impression of the U.S. around the world.
I firmly believe that many Muslims want the freedom and prosperity that capitalism provides, but they don't want their culture deluged with immoral garbage. I'm no fan of Islam, but on this issue they have a point.
The problem, of course, is that pornography exists in a constitutional "gray area". There are federal obscenity laws on the books, but they are scarcely enforced. Society at large knows that pornography isn't a good thing, yet it's seemingly everwhere. It theoretically could be banned, but as Ann Coulter has noted, that would bring an immediate challenge from the entire Harvard University Law School faculty. And their challenge would be something along the lines of the right to "free expression" etc.
So, thinking about the quote that "college pornography has a large market", I began to think: well, what if there wasn't a market? Wishful thinking of course; people still seem to want porno.
But what if you couldn't make any money on it?
Banning pornography, especially internet pornography, would be constitutionally possible (especially if more Scalia-type SCOTUS justices are confirmed), but it would be almost impossible to enforce a ban. So I suggest the following:
Make it illegal not to make pornography, but to sell it.
Make it illegal for credit card companies to process charges from internet porno sites. How do you know which sites are doing pornograpy? Easy. They're the ones making all the money. Let consumers know that if they want porno, it's free; and if someone tries to charge them for it, then make it easy to "charge back" on their credit cards.
So, no violation of free expression, no prying into peoples homes to see what they're reading. Look at all the porno you want. Just don't try to sell it. And all the lawyers for the pornographers can't scream "censorship" or "artistic expression". Nothing is being censored.
Do that, and I give it a year before all the major and most of the minor porno shops are starved out of business.
Show me where it says in the Constitution that the government is allowed to do this. You would even have a difficult time showing states have a right to regulate porn, especially Internet porn.
What's worse: Smut, or out-of-control government?
And I believe Internet commerce crosses state lines...
Burkas for everyone!
Actually, I believe that loss of social virtue leads to out of control government. Look at Europe.
Actually, there is a stronger link between guns and gun crime.
Actually, there is a stronger link between being male and being a murderer.
I also think that some of things you said about it are fantasy. Having said that, please do not construe anything I have said to be a defense of so-called pornography.
So you want freedom, without all that annoying liberty. Pointing to the repressiveness of Islam is hardly a good selling point for your position.
The best method you have to fight pornography ... is to use your First Amendment rights to encourage others not to buy it or use it, instead of trying to curtail the First Amendment to achieve your goals.
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