UVSC Club Rightly Rallies Against Porn

The Davy Crockett Society, a conservative student club on the Utah Valley State College campus, recently held a rally and petition drive on campus to generate support for a new initiative designed to give families an alternative method of access to the internet that would be free of pornography. The initiative, called Community Port 80 (CP80), is being sponsored by Rep. Brad Daw (R-South Orem).

The rally was able to collect six pages of signatures from students, including at least one student who claims to “love porn.” Despite the seemingly widespread support, there are some who believe that legislation designed to limit pornography is a bad idea. Calvin Harper, a UVSC professor and Faculty adviser for the Davy Crockett Society, asks “Who determines what pornography is? And, What happens when they determine that [Religion] should be segregated as well?”

Harper continues,

I despise pornography for all that it does–the destruction of lives, families, abuse of children and degradation of women. It is a most pernicious evil that we must fight against.

I do not permit it in my home or life, yet I am still uncomfortable with this proposed legislation. I wonder if the sponsors have thought through the potential ramifications? My sense is that they have not.

I have a couple of responses to Dr. Harper’s objections.

First, our system of government is founded in part on the principle of “consent of the governed.” As we can see from the reports, legislation like this has widespread support among most people, and even support from some who don’t think pornography is bad. These last folks are ok with legislation like this because they would not be restricted from their viewing habits; they would simply have to specifically ask for the feed from their ISP. In the past, this may have been an obstacle because viewing porn was still considered something to be done anonymously. Obviously that argument is rapidly failing as pornography becomes more socially acceptable.

There are a lot more people, however, who do not want porn streaming into their homes uninvited. They feel that, if they are in the majority, their rights should hold greater weight with our legislators. And they are right. The purpose of government is to ensure the rights of citizens, balancing the needs of liberty and security. Let’s use a hypothetical example where the use of a certain corrosive substance is in question. A majority of people do not want to be exposed to it, while a minority actually want to consume it. The majority are required to undertake exhaustive measures to ensure that they and their families are not exposed to the corrosive substance. The minority, on the other hand, must do little or nothing to consume the substance. How does that maximize the liberty of the majority? Does that not actually violate their rights instead?

When the debate over fluoridation of the drinking water in Salt Lake County was in progress, I made an argument in a letter to the editor of the Deseret News responding to an argument which said that those opposed to fluoridation should simply go buy bottled water. I said that force-medicating any community was wrong, and that if even one person opposed fluoridation of the culinary water supply, it was immoral to force it on them; they might not be able to afford bottled water.

This situation is very similar. The majority of the people do not want porn on their computers. Justice says that forcing them to be exposed to another’s pornographic freedom of expression is tyrannical.

It also appears that Dr. Harper has made a logical error. He expresses concern that if porn is segregated, Religion may follow at some point. But it does not follow that Religion would be segregated just because pornography is, especially because of the principle of consent. The same majority of people who would like to see obscene material relegated to the back rooms of the Internet are the same people who would vehemently oppose doing the same to Religion. There has already been a huge outcry from religious people that has stopped many attempts to remove Religion from public view.

There is also the issue of self-government which must be addressed. This country was founded on principles of self-government, but the Founders knew that it was an experiment to see if the people could retain such a system of government. In another post I explained Ben Franklin’s response to the woman at the door of the Convention Hall, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

Self-government is the ideal. When self-government is strong, State power is weak because there is no need for external control. But what happens when self-government fails? The check that self-government imposes against expanded State power is weakened, creating a power vacuum which is then filled by the State resulting in an expansion of State powers.

Because the purpose of government is protect the rights, liberties and security of the citizens, if the people will not legislate the course of their own lives from within, the legislature must do so from without. This can be expressed as two types of laws: Punitive and Preventive.

Punitive laws are designed to punish the few exceptions in a free society that will not govern themselves. By their misbehavior, they demonstrate that they must instead be governed and thus fall within the purview of the law. These laws are designed to protect society from these few individuals who become laws to themselves and dangerous to others. Laws which punish murder and theft are examples of Punitive law.

Preventive laws are also intended to govern behavior, but on a much larger scale. Preventive laws are designed to preserve the social order by preventing behaviors deemed dangerous by the State and common to a large percentage of the population. Some have described these laws as saving people from themselves. While there is some truth to this, the real effect is that society as a whole is kept intact. Smoking regulations and seat belt laws are examples of Preventive law.

Objectors might say that there is no real difference between Punitive and Preventive laws. The punishment associated with Punitive laws has a preventive effect, and therefore no distinction should be made. I would respond by saying that Punitive laws are not primarily designed to modify behavior, though they may have that effect. They exist as a result of the requirement of the Rule of Law which demands that the power of government be exercised in a manner that allows the people to predict how the government will respond to any given situation.

In contrast, Preventive laws are often arbitrary, based upon capricious or whimsical notions, and are often unreliable proxies by which to predict how the government will react to a certain set of events. The primary difference between the two is the existence of a widespread component of self-government.

Laws which control access to pornography by the minority that seeks it out fall under the category of Punitive law, though there may appear to be no serious punishment for viewing porn. The punishment is actually the difficulty experienced in obtaining access to the porn feed, and (for some) the shame of exposure to others of the viewer’s habits. The Liberty of the majority who do not view porn is, however, enhanced because they need not take excessive measures to prevent exposure to pornography’s destructive influence.

To read more on this story, read the Daily Herald’s article here.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 11:33 pm and is filed under Law, Pornography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.