(ed - you really sank this low so quickly...)
The lovely and talented Garance Franke Ruta published an op ed in WSJ a few weeks ago arguing, in light of sleazy dirtbag Joe Francis going to jail, that the age of consent to appear in porn (for just women, men too? I dunno) should be raised from 18 to 21. GFR, after getting savaged by nearly every liberal blogger with a Y chromosome, has since returned to her crusade to deny the masses their unhindered access to barely legal porn. At campus progress, she fleshes out (ed - harhar...not) her case for protecting legal adults from the evils of soft core porn. She starts by bizarrely accusing her liberal critics, including current and former colleagues of, writing "responses [that] were disturbingly marked by a far greater concern for access to pornographic depictions of teenagers than for the exploitation of young women." She cites Yglesias' cheeky post entitled "I Want My Barely Legal Porn!" as evidence he doesn't care about government coercion or infantilization, instead of just wanting to ogle 19 year olds in his basement. She even uses one blogger's admission that, shockingly, 18-19 year old women can be really attractive as prima facie evidence that he opposes her idea for merely lecherous reasons.
In her crusade to deny us all movies of drunk 18 year olds stripping, she further accuses her own colleague Ezra Klein of being politically motivated in his opposition to raising the age of consent.
Nor did they look at the major Democratic donors who have helped Francis expand his reach and normalize his approach of creating “gratuitous nudity, end to end,”
Because we all know Ezra and Matt (ed - the famous one) are solely driven by their desire to kiss up to "major Demcratic donors" in their mission to exploit women. Nevermind that Ezra had posted 9 months before this blogospheric kerfuffle had a post entitled simply "Joe Francis is Scum" - man, Ezra's really in a "rush to defend raunch culture." Garance goes on to cite legal cases where Francis seemingly exploited young women, and was being sued for amounts of up to 2.1 million dollars and had several indictments coming down the pipe - ie the system was working without Garance's age increase.
There are other legal remedies that will crack down on Francis' exploitation without prohibiting sober ADULTS, men and women, from pursuing a career of their choosing without the state enforcing GFR's moralized disgust that not all women can be Harvard educated liberal journalists (ed – you really don’t want to be a liberal blogger do you). One could for example, require that before publishing pornographic material, that the producers get two releases, one at the time of filming and one, say, two weeks later so as not to have the only consent be given while intoxicated. Or you could just enforce laws on the book about drunken consent, or even amend them to make consent for pornography given while intoxicated not legally binding. The point is, you don't have to limit women's choices and infantilize adults who are entrusted with being able to sign binding contracts, join the military and being able to make medical decisions for themselves.
To flex my libertarian muscles for a second, opposing proposals like this one is about drawing a line in the sand about how active the government should be in how people chose to live their lives act or employ themselves. Julian Sanchez's comparison to the some pro-lifers bizarre assertion that denying reproductive autonomy is "empowering" hits the mark here, notwithstanding that Garance isn't opposed to women, in general, having a free range of non erotic opportunities. Us liberals need to remember that the real reason (we should) support government intervention in the economy and other forms of liberty curtailing coercion is to allow for more freedom and to positively enhance people's ability to fulfill their ends in society. This is why we're OK with coercion to redistribute income, have social security, enforce a minimum wage and the whole gamut of liberal intervention in the economy. Now surely, our conception of "freedom" and "rights" are different from libertarians, but we should still be able to recognize and criticize illegitimate government coercion when it inhibits people's victimless free action in society. That's exactly what raising the age of consent from 18 to 21 to be in pornographic films, the government limiting people's choices and freedom to participate in society and fulfill their personal ends...basically, treating adults like children.
Full Disclosure: Ever since seeing her on bloggingheads tv, I’ve had a huge crush on Garance, she would have to devote the rest of her journalistic career to hyping an invasion of
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