NOTE: I’ve held onto this post and resisted publishing it. My home state of Wisconsin is voting soon, and I didn’t want to give any extra negative attention to Rick Santorum. BUT, I’ve decided that keeping posts private for the sole purpose of helping a candidate is something that would compromise my personal integrity. While this post may hurt Santorum, in the end, he hurt himself. Keep in mind, that while I’m ranting about Rick, I’m still voting for him on April 3rd, and I urge everyone else to do the same. 

I’ve been very open about this – I’m voting for Rick Santorum in the Wisconsin primary, and if he’s the nominee I’ll gladly vote for him against Barry Obama. I like where he stands on a lot of issues. He’s a strong supporter of Israel, he’s proposed a great tax plan to bring back manufacturing jobs to America, and he’s a hero among the Pro-Life crowd. All that being said, there are still a few things that make me shake my head about him. The most recent – “ban porn”.

So much for free markets, ey? Rick’s plan to crack down of “hardcore” pornography isn’t real far fetched. He’s a family-man. He’s a practicing Catholic, and is big on family values. I can understand Rick not liking porn and the porn industry. He has strong values, and I can see why he’s against porn. He’s also brought up the fact that porn can cause problems in relationships, and can negatively affect the brain. While I’m not sure these are really “facts”, I’ll give Rick and his researchers the benefit of the doubt.

All that being said – okay. Porn is bad. BUT… that’s his opinion. There are a lot of things that are “bad”. That doesn’t mean we ban them. Cigarettes are bad. They cause so many deaths that we can measure the deaths by the minute. Why aren’t we banning cigarettes? Come on, Rick. This isn’t a path you want to go down. Are you in favor of the free market, or not?

As I discussed HERE, banning a product, whether its drugs or porn, doesn’t eliminate it. It pushes it to a black market, where the dangers are far worse. Instead of a (relatively) clean porn enviroment, we’d have a completely unregulated “black market” of porn. Does this mean little kids getting involved? Doesn’t this mean people who are filmed without their permission? Keep it legal so we can monitor it and regulate it.

This is by no means a pro-porn post. I’m indifferent on the subject. What someone does in their free time is none of my business. Frankly, I don’t want to know. Some people may say that porn is ruining relationships, and that may be true. There might be cases where it actually helps relationships though. In the end, its each individual’s responsibility to make their own choices.

The thing that frightens me about Rick’s stance on this is that its very similar to a utopian mindset. “If only we could pass enough laws and control people’s behavior, we could create a utopia!” Banning things for “people’s own good” is what the left does. Banning porn is no different than banning guns, banning sugary foods, or banning light bulbs. Let the market work, let people make their own decisions. The government has no place censoring the internet, or magazines people get. Come on, Rick.