Back in the closet

The main point of this essay is that even though free speech protects a lot of things it doesn’t protect every kind of “free” speech because there are boundaries when one is forced to look instead of given the choice to look or not. The author’s purpose in writing it is to show that she is in agreement with most of the foundational aspects of the American Constitution but that she, in a very patriotic way or even a humanist way does not believe that pornography should be protected by free speech.

Her attitude is challenging to precisely pin down because she seems so loyal to what the supreme court ultimately decides. While it’s reasonable to believe that she favors making the distinction that pornography should not be protected because it expounds on a hatred of women and is too prevalent to be simply ignored, she leaves it to the courts to decide in the end. So we can say that she has the status of an invested concern that aims towards a neutral attempt that allows for the judicial process to do its work.

Some of her most provocative and supporting details are when she clearly outlines a difference in what was being protected by the free speech amendment. It shifts from the political to the violent, from political statements to personal biases and intense hatreds. While political statements can be very biased and members may share intense hatreds this often is not as explicit and in your face as pornography.

A major component of pornography’s offensiveness lies in the growth of technology and how easy it is for people to make, distribute, and popularize things called pornography that used to be mostly hidden and not really talked about openly or as offensively. In our contemporary society there is so much pornography that one becomes numb to it and in a strange way there seems to be less of it. There are more outright protections against pornography and more public outrage against in your face pornography like Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction incident.

This shows that pornography has become more of a private issue with the measure being less what the courts say and more what the audience of a particular media thinks and makes known. I think this is a definitive step and one can wonder how much court rulings played into how we live in a world full of pornography today but manage to ignore or are simply not confronted by most of what does exist.