Showing posts with label pornography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pornography. Show all posts

Friday, 11 October 2013

Christopher Hitchens on Censoring Pornography

In an essay on free speechChristopher   Hitchens called the urge to censor pornography a red-herring. He said:
"Other attempts at abridging free expression also come dressed up in superficially attractive packaging. As an example, surely we should forbid child pornography? In a sense this is a red herring: Anybody involved in any way in using children for sex is already prosecutable for a multitude of extremely grave crimes. Free expression doesn’t really come into it. The censor is more likely to prosecute a book like Nabokov’s Lolita and yet have no power to challenge porn czars. And surely the spending of money isn’t a form of free speech, as our Supreme Court has more than once held it is, most recently, as pertaining to political campaign contributions."