R: Censor Obscenity

There are some things that no person, willingly or otherwise, should ever see. Or are there? Whether it be images, text, or ideas, we as a culture have perennially struggled to draw lines between that which should be freely available, and that which should be, to varying degrees, restricted from public consumption. Most would agree that children ought to be protected from “mature content” but this begs the question, are there things that are simply too toxic for our culture to tolerate? Most countries have chosen to draw this line somewhere. Many prohibit the consumption of videos depicting acts of violence, speech that threatens or incites violence, and other grossly aberrant materials, but do they go far enough? With the advent of the internet, lewd scenes in moves, vile comments on social media, and dangerous conspiracy theories have not only been increasingly normalized, but are practically unavoidable among both youth and adults. None of this is to mention the explosion of pornography hidden behind weak age gates. Is it not our obligation to protect people from obscenity they do not wish to see? Or perhaps even our responsibility to broadly prohibit the consumption of these materials?

For those members of the body whose instinctive answer is “yes,” we must ask, where should, or indeed must, the line be drawn? And more importantly, by whom? In the past, we have seen extreme examples of racism and bigotry being furthered under the guise of censoring obscenity. The Hays Code instituted from 1934 to 1968 explicitly forbade depictions of interracial relations. If the government is to draw the lines of censorship, need we be afraid that this power could again be weaponized? On college campuses around the country, this debate is already raging. Some have even said that anything could conceivably be classified as obscenity and banned. Is what many in the body would consider common sense censorship unleashing an uncontainable force? Is this all evidence that among fallen men, perhaps we are forced to rely upon individual prudential judgment? I invite all to embrace some or all of these questions both in the ideal and pragmatically. As always, I am looking forward to hearing everybody’s speeches on the topic. 

Please join us for R: Censor Obscenity this Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021. Zoom Link: https://yale.zoom.us/j/96163680509