A major reason why pornography can’t be stopped at all by prohibition laws has been poignantly captured by this New York Times article... (all bold highlights mine)
Around the country, law enforcement officials and educators are struggling with how to confront minors who “sext,” an imprecise term that refers to sending sexual photos, videos or texts from one cellphone to another.
But adults face a hard truth. For teenagers, who have ready access to technology and are growing up in a culture that celebrates body flaunting, sexting is laughably easy, unremarkable and even compelling: the primary reason teenagers sext is to look cool and sexy to someone they find attractive.
Indeed, the photos can confer cachet.
“Having a naked picture of your significant other on your cellphone is an advertisement that you’re sexually active to a degree that gives you status,” said Rick Peters, a senior deputy prosecuting attorney for Thurston County, which includes Lacey. “It’s an electronic hickey.”
One: This is not even an issue of commerce but of voluntary exchanges by a niche community where self esteem is at stake.
Two: Some people see pornography as a way to project personal issues-here sexuality in order to command social attention! Yes I know they are minors, but this doesn’t mean they are amoral or can’t distinguish between right and wrong. For them, social acceptance serve as their highest personal priority (value preference) to fulfil.
So what is construed as generally an immoral act is seen by some as a tool to broadcast social status—whereby consensual participants see such as acts as providing social “utility”.
In short, morality is subjective.
Three: This serves as example why it is an act of futility to legislate away exchanges between willing and voluntary suppliers, and eager audiences.
Legislating away self-esteem needs won’t solve this issue.
Four: I would say that perhaps most people are NOT engaged in voluntary exchanges like non-commercial pornography, yet the political imperatives (like the undertone of the article) are directed towards using the fallacy of composition as an instrument towards exercising political censorship.
In short, deviant behaviour of some segments of the society will be used as an excuse to control the public’s flow of information. The implied message is to shoot the messenger (cellphones, web, etc…) when the problem is one of behaviour.
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