Self Expression

AN ARGUMENT FOR PORNOGRAPHY

P1. Pornography is a form of self-expression 

P2. Self-expression is a human right 

C. Therefore pornography is a human right

CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARY

Pornography and Free Speech: Drawing a Line in the Sand by Adam Carrington | Hillsdale College

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions with- out interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

https://www.un.org/en/udhrbook/pdf/udhr_booklet_en_web.pdf

The argument also can appeal to the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

However the right to free speech or self-expression is not an unqualified right and must be balanced with competing rights such as woman’s freedom of speech. In a thorough analysis of self-expression and pornography, Scott Yenor states:

Self-expression is not a neutral value that allows all sorts of lives to be lived; it is itself a moral framework that makes some thoughts more thinkable and some actions more doable while discounting alternative ways of life. When civil government leaves people free to choose to view pornography, it signals either that obscenity is not a concern to the political community and hence not a threat to the long-term health of citizens or that it favors the view that individual choices to consume pornography are to be elevated over the common good of supporting self-control at the root of marriage. Either way, laws and the withdrawal of laws reverberate throughout the culture.

https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/postmortem-the-sexual-revolution-what-deregulation-pornography-has

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