Pornography Is Protected by the First Amendment

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...