Conservative Think Tank: We Should Ban Pornography

We’re not going to take sides on is-it-evil-or-not pornography debate. To each his (or her) own, we tend to think.

Does that make us libertarian? Not hardly, we thought, until we noticed that the a right-wing think tank is gearing up to push for an all-out ban on pornography, full stop:

“Internet pornography is a ‘monstrous injustice,’ and the time for its abolition has come,” writes Morgan Bennett, a law student at Pepperdine University and legal clerk former intern for the Heritage Foundation.

She argues that First Amendment protections should not apply to sexually explicit material because it can be considered obscene and because the Constitution’s framers “lauded virtue” and would have considered pornography harmful to society.

But wait: is this really coming from the oh-so-venerable Heritage Foundation? Well, yes no, as it turns out (see below).

It was published by Public Discourse, the rag of the Witherspoon Institute. Who are they, you ask?

Here’s who they are:

The Witherspoon Institute is funded by conservative foundations such as the Bradley Foundation, John Templeton Foundation and the Lee and Ramona Bass Foundation.

The think tank was the source of the widely debunked conservative study that claimed children with same-sex parents had higher risk of drug use, depression and suicide.

Sigh. Get it straight, righties: do you support the First Amendment, or do you not?

Heritage Foundation responds:

For the record, the Heritage Foundation has no legal clerks, and Ms. Bennett is not an employee of The Heritage Foundation. She interned here for two months this summer.

In fact, her paper is not a Heritage paper, nor does her paper reflect the views of Heritage.

rhb