Porn should be legal

Thanks for accepting. Ill start by showing why porn is good. C1: Porn reduces crimeAnthony Amato of Northwestern University found that "the incidence of rape in the United States has declined 85% in the past 25 years while access to pornography has become freely available to teenagers and adults (1).""Pornography is more available and consumed than ever before—8,500 adult films are produced each year. At the same time, according to FBI statistics, the incidence of rape has decreased....violent crime rates, including rape and sexual assault, are among the lowest since records began being kept in 1973" (2)This change can be most attributed to pornography access. Amato theorizes that pornography reduces sexual tension by allowing potential criminals to "get it out of their system". Their sexual desires can be expressed in video rather than forced on someone in real life. Additionally, rape is against the law, so porn videos cant show it or pretend like a video is about rape. This means that most porn videos show consensual partners, which can subliminally send the message that consensual = good. Finally, porn is often vulgar or cynical in nature, so aggressive men use it to get their fix of testosterone instead of raping someone.A comparison can be made to violent movies. We often think that viewing violent or sexual acts makes our brains more aggressive and more likely to be prone to such things. However, violent crimes actually decrease during and after the hours that violent movies are shown (3). The same page estimates that 1000 crimes are prevented each weekend by violent films. We can extend this logic to pornography. If watching violent movies empirically reduces violent crime, it logically follows that watching porn could reduce sex crimes. This conclusion is supported by my empirical evidence given at the top.C2: EconomyMaking porn illegal would have severe ramifications on the economy. Globally, the porn industry generates over $97 billion dollars a year (4). Thats also a lot of tax revenue govements will have to live without.There'd also be an employment problem. For instance, in California over 12,00 jobs are provided by porn (5). Globally it supplies hundreds of thousands, if not millions of them. Seeing as the world, and the United States in particular, isn't doing to well on the economic scale right now, we need all the jobs we can get. C3: Harm principleThe harm principle tells us what actions we can justifiably take. Mill writes, "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others" (6)Prefer a Harm Principle (or some people call it, Libertarian) framework. At the point where we limit the individual's right to do what they want with themselves, we reduce everyone's inherent right to freedom. For instance, we can try to *persuade* an obese person to diet and lose weight, but if we use violence to force them to do it, we're impeding on their basic right to freedom by controlling meager things like what foods they eat. As such, we should only limit actions (or make them illegal) if they're impeding on someone else's rights involuntarily.At first glance, pornography doesn't seem to hurt anybody. All participants are volunteers for the job, and no one is damaged by having sex next to a camera. As previously shown, pornography reduces crime rather than increasing it, so it doesn't have any bad impacts on the external world. The participants themselves aren't harmed either. However, even if they were, it doesn't matter because acting in porn is voluntary. We respect the freedom of others and allow them to do whatever they want to themselves so long as they aren't harming anyone else. So even if harm could be linked to those engaging in pornographic activities, that not a reason to ban it.In other words, since porn is participated in voluntarily and watched voluntarily, Pro must show that porn is causing some terrible thing to happen that overrides our right to autonomy to justify suppressing it.I look forward to my opponent's response.1. http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu......2. http://www.radfordreviews.com......3. http://businessshrink.biz......4. http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com...5. http://www.blazinggrace.org...6. http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk...