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May the Best Idea Win: What Values Do We Want to Protect?
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10862 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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7 / 1986 |
1,894 Words |
| Author
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Jane M. Whicher
Jane M. Whicher is staff counsel for the American Civil
Liberties Union in Illinois, specializing in the areas of the
First Amendment, privacy, speech, and religion. |
Controversy is raging over whether the unrestricted access to sexually explicit materials is destructive to society. However, this issue tends to sidestep a more fundamental question: What are the values we want to protect?
Perhaps the most fundamental and prized feature of American society is our pluralistic nature. We take pride in our diversity - in our staunch refusal to all believe, think, and look alike. To safeguard this pluralism, the ability to freely and openly discuss and express ideas is essential, no matter whether a communication may be offensive to some or to many. We value ideas; we value the fact of communication. Thus, preservation of the free flow and accessibility of ideas is critical.
This is the basis for the First Amendment: By aggressively protecting the right to communicate even the most offensive of ideas, we protect the right to communicate all ideas.
Of course, participating in the public debate encompasses the right to dissuade. The free flow of ideas mean that the "best" ideas - the "truth" - will have the greatest opportunity to prevail.
Those who believe that pornography or the portrayal of graphic sexual images is inadvisable or harmful have the right to advocate that. If they prevail in the public debate, of course, pornography will disappear of its own accord.
The problem in the pornography debate is that people who oppose it don't appear to be satisfied with the fact that they have not won the public debate. Now there is a renewed push to remove the debate from the public arena and remove pornography from the public's view - and from private viewing as well. Anti-pornography forces are calling for censorship.
Censorship, simply put, is what happens when you lose the public debate and get the government to accomplish your goal for you.
Results Predictable
Alarmingly, the most recent and most visible effort toward censorship emanates from a federal body: Attorney General Edwin Meese's Commission on Pornography. The commission has already issued a preliminary report from which one can fairly well predict the commission's final position on pornography and
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