Morality and Erotica

“If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.
Thurgood Marshall”

We have always been in a debate on what is seen as moral and what is not.  Lately Girl Scouts has been in the limelight as not being a moral institution although they were founded as a Christian organization. The Girl Scout promise includes and I quote “On my honor, I will try to serve God and my Country…”

If they can target girl scouts than you know having daggers thrown at certain genres of erotica is inevitable.

I have been reading articles lately about censoring certain types of erotica on websites or other places where erotic authors are selling or posting their books.  Apparently books that contain pedophilia, bestiality, incest or rape are banned or authors are asked to remove those types of materials for sell.

I in particular will not read a book that contains pedophilia, incest or bestiality.  That is just not something that I am into. I do take moral issue with those things when they are practiced in everyday life.  However, I feel that the 1^st amendment gives those people that write them the right to produce those types of material. 

I feel that if you do not want to read them or purchase them please do not. That is also your right.

But if we continue to censor things that certain people feel are immoral or not right where will it end?

If we use the argument that rape, pedophilia, incest and bestiality is illegal…well murder is illegal yet murder mysteries are extremely popular and not banned.

It becomes a slippery slope. Will they then begin to ban books that contain any form of sex? Will they try to ban books that contain homosexuality?

Are they afraid that these books will promote these types of behaviors? Then what about the millions of books that write about murders and suicide? Do they increase the murder rate?

You will not find those types of material on my Kindle or on my personal book shelf, but it is not my job to tell people what they can buy and what they can read. 

I do not believe that books promote human behavior. I believe that Human behavior influences what is found in books. 

The authors that write those books do have an audience and as long as they have an audience they will continue to write those books.

On the flip side, it is America and people who are strongly against these types of books also have the right to speak out against them.  They are exercising their 1^st amendment right to speak out against them. But do we have the right to come into someone’s home and tell them they cannot read this type of book or watch this type of movie.

We must remember when we push our morality and invade people’s privacy we are not progressing as humans we are moving backwards. When we begin to take away the rights of the people of this country we are only hindering ourselves as a nation.