PORNOGRAPHY: A REFLECTION OF SOCIETY

---

Nothing incites heated emotions faster than the topic of pornography. Whether you find it in bookstores, magazines, cable TV programs, or on the Internet, pornography has evaded all attempts at both definition and regulation. Comedian Bill Hicks once commented, “The Supreme Court has defined pornography as anything without artistic merit that causes sexual thought. Hmm. Sounds like every commercial on television, doesn’t it?”

Some people say that pornography is free speech. Others say that pornography is evil, although what’s pornographic in one culture is just considered normal behavior in another. Janet Jackson caused an uproar when she inadvertently flashed her breast during a half-time Super Bowl presentation, yet women in many European and Latin American countries routinely walk around topless on public beaches.

Too often, government authorities have used pornography as a smokescreen to mask their true intentions, whether it’s to justify regulation of the radio and television airwaves or to shut down file sharing networks on the Internet.

As distasteful as it might appear, pornography stands at the front line in the debate over free speech and freedom of the press. To question the definition of pornography, Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, once printed photographs showing atrocities from the Vietnam War with the heading, “This is the REAL pornography.”

---