I’m usually pretty decisive when it comes to deciding how I view issues as they come down the pike, but this one has me just a bit flabbergasted.

Now, I’m not at all a fan of pornography, this for three reasons:

1. I don’t own a pornograph, and

2. I can conceive no thrill whatsoever in watching other people “making whoopee”.

3. I consider sex to be a very personal, private activity to be shared only by those involved.

There’s something cheapening in the very concept, in fact, and when I read of porn “actors”, for some reason the likes of Richard Burton, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, James Stewart, Katherine Hepburn, John Wayne, William Holden, Peter Lorrie and even Raquel Welch and Brigit Bardeaux fail, no matter what, to come to mind.

However, there does seem to be a major market for the stuff, this judging from the myriad sex shops and Internet porn sites, the porn video spam and so forth.

We are a market based republic, and there would not exist this veritable cornucopia of erotic spam unless there was a profitably voluminous response to it.

In other words, the porn industry has achieved its own commercial legitimacy by virtue of its constituency.

I pretty much spit on the legal acceptance that pornography is a protectorate of the 1st Amendment – how does freedom of speech apply to sex flicks? Answer: It doesn’t, but our legal system has become so distorted that our esteemed justices are apt to interpret anything as Constitutional these days.

Sexual relations with camels? Sure, why not? 20 inch dildos? Constitutionally guaranteed. Nipple clamps? An absolute must! Sodomy? An absolute right under the First Amendment, “Cut and Print!”

Here is where my own confusion enters the picture.

We are a free country of Judeo-Christian origins, and we are, to all intents and purposes, a democracy. Those among us who are conservatives believe in limited government and basically, from that perspective, being left alone.

We hate being dictated to by liberals who smother us in political correctness, taxation without representation, multiculturalism (try running a business in which you require all your employees to speak English and see how fast the ACLU rams itself down your throat), G-dlessness in our schools, oppressive gun control measures and other venues that contradict the Constitution, yet we sometimes forget justice and dictate to them as well.

If millions of people want to be able to watch porn at the hotels they stay in, why should we obstruct that particular segment of the marketplace, immoral as it may be, and deny them their perversions? After all, at the end of things, they’ll have to explain their proclivities to a being whose office is several floors above those of us who pass judgment here and now, the CEO of the universe. If He decides that they’ve sinned, He’ll deal with them.

My own take is that any porn available should be restricted to rooms that are occupied only by adults, no rooms booked that in any way include minors, but we should not restrict, by lawsuit or law, these hotels from catering to the demands of their regular guests.

If they want to watch a bunch of sweaty people flopping and squirming on a bed, let them.

My point being, we really can’t force our concept of morality on other people. It’s up to them to make their own decisions, and it’s up to G-d to judge them when they kick the bucket.