Yes, admittedly, it is a indifferent consumer-driven market economy which largely ignores the many health and safety hazards in certain industries. It is a very high price we pay as a society that demands more goods and services for the valuation of our labor and leisure.

The consumer of pornography is the very same consumer of goods and services in other sectors of our economy. The porn industry is not unlike other industries in our market economy. We consumers exert demand pressure on those industries to produce goods and services. In that respect, the consumer demands pornography that does just about everything we expect it to do. When it comes to the health and safety of porn actors, we consumers seem to feign amnesia when it comes to the inherent dangers and hazards of producing the pornography we demand. Not only do we ignore those dangers and hazards in our own private lives, we also don't want to be reminded of them in the pornography we purchase for our own enjoyment and pleasure.

Our society is not sold on the very idea of safe sex and I don't think we ever will. The dangers and hazards of unsafe sex are abundantly clear. The question for each of us is not that we are unaware of the consequences of having unsafe sex. Rather, I would strongly suggest, the question is whether each of us has made the judgment of what is an acceptable risk in having unprotected/unsafe sex. For many people, the making of that judgment is a deeply personal one and no government can make that judgment for us. Our insistence that the State (government) not interfere with our private lives goes to the heart of the public debate.

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Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. And, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

-- Abraham Lincoln

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