Image from WikipediaHrafnkell over at A Heathen's Day wrote about the growing tendency of legislature to play parent to the community by enacting laws about pornography (my words, not his). It's an interesting article, I recommend you go read it, and I find myself much in agreement with his conclusion that the best way to deal with things you find offensive is merely avoidance rather than write laws to regulate them. What made me stop and think, though, is a comment made to that post by Un[Censored] where she says,

Obscenity cannot be defined nor can morality. What is moral to one person is not to another.

This is true. Morality cannot and should not be legislated. What can be defined are the rules under which we all agree to live together as a society, and obviously we do need some of these. Society needs a system in place to deal with those people it cannot abide, such as murderers, rapists, child abusers, etc. but has long ago gone too far down the road into playing parent to an increasingly adult population but I'm more and more afraid it's unavoidable. Steven Pinker of the New York Times wrote,

Moral goodness is what gives each of us the sense that we are worthy human beings. We seek it in our friends and mates, nurture it in our children, advance it in our politics and justify it with our religions. ... The first hallmark of moralization is that the rules it invokes are felt to be universal. Prohibitions of rape and murder, for example, are felt not to be matters of local custom but to be universally and objectively warranted. ...The other hallmark is that people feel that those who commit immoral acts deserve to be punished. Not only is it allowable to inflict pain on a person who has broken a moral rule; it is wrong not to, to “let them get away with it."

So if a person considers pornography to be immoral, they're going to attempt to make a law regulating it, since even the most idiotic of judgmental people is going to realize they can't ban it altogether. Since this is a country often ruled by the "majority" (in quotes because sometimes that's just another word for a very vocal minority), what we need are more activists for freedom and responsibility and choice.

The problem is how to get the message out there. My daughter was allowed to look at pornography any time she chose, at any age she wished. Her first look was at about four or five years of age and she asked some questions about it, which her father and I answered frankly, if not always without embarrassment. This openness on our part contributed directly to her wish as an older teen to avoid sex until she was both ready to deal with all the implications, physical and emotional, and was protected as best she could be from the consequences of pregnancy and disease. She's now 23, holds a full time job making a decent if not stellar wage, is buying a car, in a steady relationship where she avoids both alcohol and drugs. My daughter won't make the news. And she doesn't go to Church, ever.

Those of us who espouse personal responsibility and freedom need to be more vocal because many of the traditional outlets for "getting the word out" are just not going to work for us. We're too tame, too quiet and the results of our philosophy is just not going to sell advertising space in papers, magazines or the 6 o'clock news because it just works too well.