Yet is it necessary to draw so complete a separation between the two?
If a married couple were to use pornography as part of the means of stoking their sexual fires together –and many couples now do use pornography in this way—would that meet with your approval? Is there any reason why good sexuality has to be a purely hermetic thing between two people cut off from the experience and observation of its universality? Is there some virtue to two people going through life with each other being the only sexual beings they ever encounter.
Is experiencing our shared humanity not as valuable in the sexual realm as in the other realms of life?
The Spirit Behind What is Shown
If you object to pornography, is it because there is so much in the porn of our society that depicts relationships in an unhealthy way? I agree that much of today’s porn has pathological and degrading elements.
But is that any different from what we see in all our other arts: are there not many of them that, while not being explicitly sexual, show us aspects of human lives in a spirit that degrades us as an audience? (Is it not the spirit in which violence, for example, is depicted –in Hamlet, for example, or the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, as opposed to something, like Hostel or ?, which glorifies violence—that determines whether the work enhances or diminishes our humanity?)
Should it not be the spirit behind the depiction, rather than the content of what is depicted, that determined whether we should appreciate or condemn a given media expression?
The idea is valid that there should be standards by which we judge the moral quality of what our media presents us with. But the question is: what should be at the heart of those standards?
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