wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly) (09/24/85)
In article <1151@ames.UUCP> barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) writes: >Proscription of things not known to be harmful is an intolerant act. > ... There is no more >evidence of porn causing attacks on women or children than there is of >homosexuality being harmful to society. If it's not the evidence that has >convinced the anti-porn lobbies of the evil of porn, we have every right to >suspect some hidden agenda. Two reasons why I am against ALL censorship: 1. In the 1950s, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita was not allowed into the U.S.A. for some time because it was considered "pornographic." Many people believe today that Lolita is one of the masterpieces of post-WW2 literature (myself included). James Joyce's Ulysses, also an influential and many say important piece of art, was similarly banned (there was a famous court trial over Ulysses, as I recall). 2. I grew up in the Corn Belt, and our next-door neighbor was a farm woman from Minnesota. One day she called my mother and complained that the local high school had her son reading pornography. My mother asked her what she meant, and the neighbor said he had been assigned a book to read that dealt with extramarital sex and illegitimacy as its major themes. She wanted my mother to join her in a 'crusade' to rid the high school of such filth and thereby preserve the minds of our youth. The book was, of course, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Who is to say what is pornography and what is not? Like it or not, we live in a pluralistic society. I will NOT tolerate anyone: fundamentalist Christian, black activist, feminist, Republican, Democrat, telling me what I can or cannot read. First, the obvious targets go: hard porn that most would agree has no redeeming social value. Then, someone will claim that books like Ulysses and Lolita are pornography, since "filth" like this obviously can't be art. Unless you live under a rock you surely realize that there's a hell of a lot of people out there who won't want to stop once the adult book stores are closed down. I find the agenda of radical feminists like Dworkin as threatening to my freedom as the agenda of certain radical fundamentalists of the right. Stay OUT of my bedroom and keep your hands OFF my bookshelf! -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly