Can a rational attitude toward PORN prevail?

"The Temptation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve" (detail)
 by Michelangelo

Art demands almost complete freedom of expression. REAL art is downright radical and challenges the suffocating restrictions of the social order. A poem like Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" was far more revolutionary than it was "pornographic." Many books once banned as pornographic were finally appreciated as great art.

Most of the pure trash pornography that comes to you on the internet– even if you do not go willingly and lustfully to it, can never be mistaken for ART– some meaningful interpretation of LIFE. It is too obviously based on lizard minded exploitation, not real hot-blooded passion. It is all too obvious that the sex stars have no real sexual chemistry between them. And you do not have to be a porn addict to conclude that they all look alike after a while. Exhibitionist lust culminates in body language of bored emptiness.

Still many normal decent people are occasionally helpfully stimulated by cheap and artless porn. So only reactionary types will want to outlaw it. But an excess of it can only stupefy the intellect and benumb the heart.

I was amazed how much X-rated junk turned up in my E-mail SPAM. I can't recall any explorations which invited this AVALANCHE of sexual invitations : MARRIED BUT LONELY.... CHECK OUT THESE SEXY MARRIED WOMEN. . .VYDEX FREE TRIAL. . . DRIVE YOUR PARTNER CRAZY IN BED TONIGHT. . .

But could this possibly be naughty viewing: VIEW PHOTOS OF CHRISTIAN SINGLES IN YOUR AREA?

Well monogamy is thriving just as much as pornography: I can MEET THOUSANDS OF RUSSIAN WOMEN. Just get in touch with the RUSSIAN BRIDE TEAM.

Inspired not by my good-Catholic conscience (parallel to my good-communist conscience) I DELETED all these voluptuous temptations. Sent them to TRASH. Then deleted the TRASH. Only a J. Edgar Hoover can now know the true rot in my soul.

But it was old Lucretius in his classic poem on materialist philosophy who ridiculed human sexual needs as a useless passion.

But an old newspaper columnist, a liberal Jew, had this wisdom to pass on about sexual excitement: "It is the opposite of death!"

On that bit of human wisdom I end today's blog.