Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!timbuk!cs.umn.edu!uc!noc.MR.NET!msi.umn.edu!umeecs!umich!yale!think.com!samsung!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aero!dgp.toronto.edu From: flaps@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Pornography (was: A Moral Question) Message-ID: <90Oct23.224605edt.1165@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> Date: 24 Oct 90 02:45:34 GMT References: <16098@s.ms.uky.edu> <89327@aerospace.AERO.ORG> Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Lines: 18 Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Status: R In article <89327@aerospace.AERO.ORG>, gcf%mydog@hombre.masa.com (Gordon Fitch) didn't actually write, but might as well have written (or so some such as myself might claim): It's not clear what is meant by "the fight against murder". Some of the fight against murder, as the quoted poster later notes, is manifestly carried out as part of a program to subject the society in general to the beliefs of a particular religious group. This is not equality. So we need to know whether the writer believes in the suppression of murder by force, or only public criticism of it, and if the former, who will determine what is to be called "murder". The church groups are clear on this: they themselves will determine what murder is, and will use state or private violence to suppress it. [Do the anti-pornography activists think that pornography is that clearcut an evil? Can they imagine cultural contexts in which that wouldn't be true? Does pornography have as direct an effect on its victims as murder? - MHN]