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From: jeffw@tekecs.UUCP (Jeff Winslow)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Anti-Porn Ordinance
Message-ID: <5023@tekecs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 19-Jan-85 17:36:03 EST
Article-I.D.: tekecs.5023
Posted: Sat Jan 19 17:36:03 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 23-Jan-85 06:46:26 EST
References: <600@pyuxc.UUCP> <1280@hou4b.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 22

> Even genuinely artistic, mild erotica can mess up someone who's not quite
> secure on a given day. 

Beethoven's 5th Symphony can mess up someone who's not quite secure on a given
day. So do you want to ban that, too?

The question is not "where's the harm" but "where's the harm that is greater
than the harm of every other thing we allow that can screw someone up?"
I am quite certain that alcohol, for example, has far more pervasive and
deleterious effects (because they are so widespread) than the seamy side of
the porn industry which you described (which, by the way, is opposed by
existing laws concerning slavery and drug abuse, and would probably not be
any more effectively curtailed by anti-pornography laws), but do you or I
recommend the banning of the consumption of alcohol? It was tried, once,
and we all know the result.

As a sidelight I should point out that my conviction in this regard is of no
more general importance or (especially) precision than Paul Dubuc's convictions
regarding pornography, which make me want an expression superlative to
"jaundiced eye".

					Jeff Winslow