ABSTRACT
Pornography seems to be the presentation through words or the visual arts of the unchaste; the dictionary definitions convey at least the hint that such presentation is pornographic because it may corrupt, incite to unchastity. The human body and human sexual activity were described as ‘beautiful and good’ in the Christian tradition. If pornography may corrupt, then clearly it matters, and it does seem that it is precisely the tendency to corrupt that constitutes pornography in the common estimation. Men are conscious of their lack of full control over their feelings and passions, of their liability to be led into actions they believe to be wrong, even by the exhibition of things good in themselves. Pornography matters to the State and other public authorities who have the duty of protecting the citizen from what he finds offensive—abstracting altogether from the question of whether what he finds offensive is morally wrong or not.
