What they like is pornography, what we like is erotica.

When I was a young lawyer, I worked hand in hand with the American Civil Liberties Union in defending the free-speech rights of Penthouse magazine and other media that specialized in what the government called “pornography” or “obscenity,” and what its consumers regarded as erotica (hence the expression, “What they like is pornography, what we like is erotica”). In those days, real civil libertarians saw the government’s effort to ban such material as full-frontal censorship in clear violation of the First Amendment. That was before radical feminists demanded that the A.C.L.U. stop defending sexist material and start defending the rights of women not to be offended, abused, and even raped.

Despite the lack... Read More