Morality and Porn

Of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior. Expressing or teaching a conception of right behavior. Conforming to a standard of right behavior. Sanctioned by or operative on one's conscience or ethical judgment. Capable of right and wrong action.

Example: Adult webmaster A condemns adult webmaster B for B’s use of extreme content. B condemns A for unscrupulous business practices. Webmaster C reminds them both that they deal in porn which general society condemns as immoral. Both webmasters A and B condemn webmaster C because C promotes gambling.

Is the adult webmaster who takes a moral stance a hypocrite? Monotheists, militant feminists and the US Attorney General all consider porn to be a sociological scourge. Does this mean our opinions of right and wrong have no validity? Are we all just deluding ourselves? Should we just give up any ideas of righteousness and plan on spending eternity in the hellfire of damnation?

I remember a comment this ethics professor made to me about poverty level taxpayers. I had told him I was happy because I had just cashed my tax return check. He raised his eyebrows, sniffed and told me "You get everything back at the end of the year. You don’t really pay taxes."

I thought about that for a long time. He was right. If the annual income of a working American is within the poverty level, they are entitled to a refund of all income taxes paid out during the coarse of that year. That’s kind of a sweet deal. Except this nagging fact kept bugging me:

Feh. I’m not against taxes. Hell, I’m a Democrat. We’re supposed to love government bloat. I’m not under the poverty level anymore. I’m a contract laborer now and I’m the one who has to pay my employment taxes. Nevertheless, I believe in the necessity of taxation. The roads must be paved. While I believe in the basic goodness of humanity, I’m not blind to its inherent greed and tendency towards sloth. Modern humans need government and taxes to keep things going and keep us honest.

Then again, if I were less literate or unaware about poverty levels and tax returns I might never have filled out the forms. The government would have kept all my money without saying a word. That sounds kind of like the concept of rebills. But that’s all okay because it’s legal right? AOL automatically rebills on those free-trials. Legal. The IRS automatically rebills the taxpayer. Legal.

So, if something is legal then it’s morally sound right? So far, the Supreme Court has yet to outright rule that porn is illegal. They dance around with concepts of obscenity and community standards but porn -in essence- is not illegal. Just the same there are plenty of moralists who perceive porn as evil. Are they wrong? What about extreme porn like rape-fantasy? The models willingly participate so nobody is hurt correct? Does it matter if such imagery fuels the fire of a possible rapist? Are we to blame if he acts on his fantasies? So far, there’s no concrete proof that porn causes violence against women. Is the extreme porn producer any guiltier than AC/DC for releasing a song like "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"? What about me? I don’t create porn. I write about the Internet porn industry. But an adult content provider pays my salary. Am I less wrong than my peers are or am I equally accountable?

Next time I run into that ethics professor, I’m gonna tell him about my tax/rebill theory. I’ll also ask him about his obvious prejudice against the poor. If I get enough drinks in me, I might even ask him for his opinion of porn. If he gives me too much flack, I’ll remind the married professor about his affair with one of his graduate students.

Morals. Pshaw! One person’s moral is another one’s sin.