Like all sensible libertarian-minded people, I don’t think the government should be regulating pornography.
There are obvious exceptions for things like child porn, of course, and I’d even throw animal cruelty into the mix of things that can be banned.
But leave run-of-the-mill adult pornography alone. Yes, some people can take it too far and become obsessed. And I certainly can understand why a wife/girlfriend could see excessive fixation on porn as a deal-breaker in a relationship.
But those factors surely don’t require government involvement.
Now that I’ve burnished my libertarian bona fides, let me state that there is a giant difference between letting porn be legal, both for libertarian and constitutional reasons. and having the government subsidize it.
Yet that’s just what New York City is doing in its public libraries. Here’s an excerpt from a CBS report.
It’s the last thing you’d expect to find at New York City’s public libraries. But find it you will. Pornography. CBS 2’s Scott Rapoport has more on the A-B-Cs behind the XXX at the library. “It’s a little shocking,” one public library patron said. “Wow. I didn’t know that. I had no idea,” added another. Yep, electronic porn too graphic for CBS 2 to show on television is available on-line for adults — on publicly used computers at the city’s 200 library branches. …Richard Reyes-Gavilan of the Brooklyn Public Library said that’s the policy — that even pornography is protected by the first amendment and recognized as free speech.
The comment by Mr Reyes-Gavilan is a perfect example of the statist mindset. If they don’t like something, they want to ban it or heavily tax it. If they do like something, they want it to be subsidized.
Why is it so difficult for some people to accept a world where people can make their own decisions with their own money, so long as their not infringing on the life, liberty, and property of others?
