
The specter of pornography is once again haunting the minds of certain American conservatives. "Let's ban porn," Ross Douthat of The New York Times declared last year. Porn is "just a product," he wrote, "something made and distributed and sold, and therefore subject to regulation and restriction if we so desire." In The Daily Caller Zak Slayback recently doubled down on Douthat. "Unlike a Scorsese film or a newspaper, both of which are consumed for artistic enjoyment," he wrote, "pornography is consumed with one outside end in mind: orgasm and masturbation. Its primary purpose is not entertainment (in any colloquial sense of the word) or enlightenment. In that sense, pornography is just a tool, like any other product, and can be regulated like any other product." Slayback added: "Don't let the pornography lobby and libertarians frame this as a free speech issue. It's isn't."