The War on Porn

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Oh, for crying out loud... Why do people always start crusades at the weirdest possible targets? Yes, porn is hardly moral, but compared to a war on corruption, organized crime or merely drugs it is like having a pillow-fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend compared to beating them unconscious. Why not persecute mercenaries, since killing people for money is inherently worse than having sex for money - I hope no one will argue that. Compared to all that goes on today in society, I think porn is the last thing we should worry about. Frankly, I think the "moralists" who propose such measures to appeal to their audience/electorate/whatever complete hypoctites. This isn't a religious topic, but I think we could argue that Christianity itself is more lenient on lust than on avarice - but of course I don't expect a war on greed coming anytime soon. Do you?

 

Yes, it is sex; they just wouldn't be doing it.

Actually, that's not a bad idea if they really want to take the fight into the porn-makers' turf. Still, it would take an officer with very low morals to subject herself to something like that, so I doubt it'd be feasible.

Same here, but that just means we don't have what it takes to sacrifice our dignity for the greater good. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Police work is a dirty job. So don't talk down about them just because you can't cut it.

 

Ban porn? Which heathen spouted that blasphemy!?!

 

Don't make self-sacrificing heroes of people who are ready to sacrifice morals for gain, whether of their own or their society's.

What if they found such an officer? Do you want people like that to parade around in shining uniforms, collect medals and be presented as heroes of the community yadda yadda?

Check out my thread about the conduct of cops during sex-related investigations. There are accounts of policemen allowing a degree of sexual contact, including touching women's pubic areas or receiving oral services.

Someone who claims to be going to detonate a bomb in a crowded area is hardly innocent. That kind of necessity is self-defence on the part of the society, whereas having oral sex to put a prostitute in jail is a totally different matter.

 

You're tweaking the mentioned situations a bit to fit your own arguments here, so you probably don't mind if I do the same:

I believe there is a bit bigger picture involved than *a* prostitute - pimps, prostitution rings, organized crime. And did you happen to read about the police force of London shooting dead a man who panicked and fled - who only was a suspect because of his skin tone and turned out not to be carrying any kind of explosives at all?

Isn't that "gain" a greater good? I'd be qurious to hear your answer to the ages-old question "Would you kill the young Hitler if you got the chance?"

Putting a bit coldly, the greater good is plain mathematics. Saving x number of people at the cost of y. If a prostitution ring (or a group making child pornography or such, just to get a *little* bit back on topic here) gets busted with a couple of cops voluntarily going the extra mile and doing distasteful things, I accept that.

 

That was extreme. He wasn't threatening or claiming anything. IIRC he was shot when already incapacitated, BTW.

The answer is no.

That kind of good is called convenience.

 

I think the point they make is that to bust an illegal porn ring (child porn, snuff films, rape porn) someone has to be exposed to that ****. I can tolerate the legitimate porn industry (even though I don't support them), but the illegal stuff needs to get shut down and punished hard.

 

That is exactly my opinion too. If it's illegal, shut it down. Otherwise, it's protected under the constitution.

However, if the website is located outsite of America, you can't do ****. Sorry, but even if it's right to shut it down, you can't, unless it is in your juridiction.

 

Fair enough. Sometimes your arguments make it seem like taking lives is more acceptable than questionable sex-oriented things, but apparently you don't think that way. Maybe I read too much into it.

Now that. I can't believe you said that. Is a shining moral example, a spotless shield more important than busting criminals, perhaps the type Gnarfflinger mentions above, and saving a lot of people in the process? Is it "convenient" to save lives?

I agree that the stuff mentioned in the thread about the conduct of cops during sex-related investigations was somewhat crossing the line, doing things that weren't *necessary* to do. But in the above examples the people who you say are "sacrificing morals" are doing it so that other people wouldn't have to. So that countless other people wouldn't get forced into doing that kind of thing. Who says they enjoy it?

When it obviously isn't currently possible that *no one* would do or be forced to do that sort of stuff; isn't one person doing it better than a hundred people doing it?

 

I agree with Gnarff!!!

Basically, as long as the site/maganize/book/broadcast/etc. has at least some value outside of its porn content, it is protected under freedom of speech. That's why publications such as Playboy and Penthouse have actual genuine articles in the magazine as well, so that they can say that there magazine has "literary value" and isn't just porn.

There have been many Supreme Court cases concerning freedom of speech as it relates to porn, and basically, so long as your product has something in the way of a redeeming quality about it, it's protected. It probably goes without saying, but sites that have rape porn, child porn, etc., have no redeeming qualities.

 

Ara, the supreme court has determined, and repeatedly upheld, that 'speach' must meet certain criteria to be called 'protected speach'. For example, someone yelling "Fire!" in a crouded theater is not protected by the constitution. I don't remember what all the criteria are, but they're fairly basic stuff. You can probably find it with google.

 

Oh, for crying out loud...Anything even closely resembling port was outlawed in Victorian society, I'm not sure that made it all that better. I'll claim it again - compared to all that is wrong in society, porn is so far from the top on my list it's not even funny.
War on porn... yeah, right.

 

Which is worth noting, in the Victorian period, it was nohing out of the ordinary for a mother to breast-feed in public and, for all I know, people still swam in rivers or lakes in mixed company before swimsuits were invented, especially in rural areas. It's just they didn't have the overwhelming omnipresent omniprevalent fixation on sex that our culture has now.

 

NOG: That would be the Miller test; the criteria that has to be met for something to be deemed obscene is the following:

* Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
* Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
* Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

All three of the conditions must be met for something to be obscene.

Pertaining to the site that the original article talks about, I would say that there is a good chance that the conditions were not met by the stories in question.

 

Eh, you can have a piece of porn that's excellent literature. I can't imagine anything hardcore having artistic value... well, depends what you understand by hardcore, but still; and I understand the concern. Scientific, I understand. Medical manuals and all. But political? Since when can a graphic description or depiction of sexual conduct have political value?

 

Well... for example, there are some people who consider Marquis DeSade's writings - as sexually graphic as they are and quite out of the norm - as political or sociological rahter as something written for the sake of eroticism.

 

Ara, I'm thinking about the test you put forth.

First, Child pornography or graphic descriptions of rape would likely offend Society.

Second, It is patently offensive.

Third, I fail to see any literary, artistic, political or scientific value in such crap.

 

@Gnarff; the original article owhere claims that there are any rape stories on the page - itt only mentions stories alledgedly containing bondage and/or sdomasochism, which is an entirely diffrent ballpark (ansdd perfectly outside this conversation).

As for child pornography.... I doubt that a site would have hgad any actual child pornography up; most likely, there is something akin to Nabokov's Lolita that has had people raising theeir shackles.

 

The best way for society to not be offended is to *not look at porn*. Those 'terrible deviants' who enjoy it should be able to - because it doesn't affect anyone but them. You aren't infringing on anyone else's rights by looking at porn.

Actual photographs of children are infringing on the right of the child - but that site didn't have any pictures. It was erotic stories - why is this not fine?

Why does it matter whether there's any 'value' by your standards of value? People who read it find value in it - they get off - your standards of value are not universal.

 

Ara: If the site was shut down, I would guess that the depiction presented was much more graphic and detailed than anything that would be accepted as literature...