Opinion

MARAR: Everyone, Especially Conservatives, Should Oppose Federal Busybodies Trying To Regulate Porn

Satya Marar Contributor
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Editor’s note: We endeavor to bring you the top voices on current events representing a range of perspectives. Below is a column arguing that the regulation of porn is an attack on the First Amendment and a gateway to tyranny. You can find a counterpoint here, where human trafficking activist Jaco Booyens argues that the federal government should regulate the porn industry.

The founding fathers, themselves no strangers to vice, understood that rulers entrusted with too much power to police things simply because some in society disapprove of them is a vehicle for tyranny. It’s a principle underpinned by the Bill of Rights and First Amendment. It’s unfortunate then that centuries later, busybody bureaucrats and piddling prudes are still trying to violate the sanctity of our homes by policing what individual Americans can or can’t enjoy.

Adults free to engage in consensual acts should be free to document and share them with anyone interested. This willing participation should define what constitutes ‘illegal pornography,’ not the feelings of puritanical legislators whose opinions about what others enjoy are as relevant to their freedom of personal choice as my thoughts on the philistines who pair corporate wear with sneakers.

But you don’t have to be a libertine, or even a libertarian, to see why further federal regulation of porn is a bad idea. Besides violating the spirit of the First Amendment, it would also infantilize us and delegate the family responsibility of keeping tabs on our kids to the state. It could also drive viewers and participants underground or onto the dark web, where more extreme, degrading and illegal material is prevalent and harder to investigate—thereby broadening the market for the very same exploitation and trafficking anti-porn crusaders claim to abhor.

As the push for federal regulation of porn arises again, it’s important to dispel some myths.

There’s no evidence that pornography makes men more violent or likely to rape. Rates of violent crimes, rapes and even teen pregnancies in the United States have declined alongside increased porn consumption. And rapists consume less porn on average than everyone else.

Despite the moral panic about pornography’s effects on minors, today’s teens are waiting longer to lose their virginity and are more likely to use contraception when they have sex. In fact, sexually repressive environments, or ones of shame, have a greater correlation to anti-social sexual attitudes in adulthood than porn use.

And while there are some compulsive porn viewers, as there are alcoholics or gamblers, they represent a small minority of 6 to 8 percent and existing research suggests that this phenomenon has less to do with porn and more to do with underlying issues like a lack of self-regulation and other destructive and atypical cognitive troubles.

Research has also debunked the myth that porn causes sexual dysfunction.

While none of this makes porn praiseworthy or completely benign, it also doesn’t justify more federal regulation.

Courts have long held that while pornography is constitutionally-protected speech, obscenity isn’t. The distinction is whether contemporary community standards deem something obscene and whether the work has “no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

Federal porn regulation would impose a single nationwide standard —even though different states have radically different community standards. Those who want to federally regulate pornography should note there are prominent academicsscientists and public figures who openly assert that exposing children to religious teaching harms them and/or is child abuse. People with strong religious beliefs should recognize how important freedom is and should hesitate before setting up any legal or bureaucratic machinery that polices content based on “contemporary community standards” especially when so many communities are rapidly changing amidst declining religiosity.

Porn use is hyper-prevalent today. A 2018 survey of over a thousand people found that 98 percent of men and nearly 3 out of 4 women had watched porn in the previous six months. For us to believe that porn must be harshly regulated because it is harmful or somehow turns users into deviants, we also have to believe that 98 percent of men and 75 percent of women — meaning nearly all of us, and most of the people we encounter (and shake hands with) in our daily lives — are deviants whose pornography watching should be regulated.

Previous prohibitions on alcohol, and the ongoing failed war on drugs, like marijuana, have fueled black markets that can empower bad actors and lead to other crimes. Even feminist-driven attempts to ban sex work like the celebrated “Nordic model” of criminalizing solicitation while providing targeted social services to transition sex workers out, has left migrant women vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking. There’s no reason to think further federal porn regulation won’t have spill-over negative effects too.

Child pornography and porn featuring non-consensual acts are already illegal — as they should be. The responsibility for controlling porn use, like any other vice, falls upon individuals who won’t develop any resilience or self-discipline if they expect politicians and regulators in Washington to babysit them.

As for kids, the responsibility falls upon parents who have access to a range of technology monitoring and censorship tools, and the power to deny them smartphones that they don’t need.

Family and personal responsibility can’t simply be delegated to federal bureaucrats, politicians or regulators who’ll undoubtedly cause far more problems related to pornography than they’d solve by regulating it.

Satya Marar is a Policy Analyst with Reason Foundation.