And many people who purchase pornography consume it in the privacy of their homes and cannot comprehend why a private matter should become a public problem n4. The word 'social problem'suggests a negative condition, that something is amiss or warps the social fabric. In order that a situation or state of affairs be perceived as a problem, value judgments are passed to make the situation appear distressing, evil or inmoral. There is thus a moral dimension in the structure of a discourse on social problems. Those who object to pornography are actually those who are morally squeamish about the kinds of sexual acts that are represented.
Pornography is a representation of something, an image in words or in pictures.
It is perhaps not precise enough to say that people's reactions towards pornography are based on their moral assumptions. Actually, people's moral assumptions lead them to define what pornography is in the first place. This is particuarly so since pornography is so flexible and so difficult a term to really pin down. Words like 'sexually explicit', 'obscene', 'vulgar' are all subject to different interpretations, a fact well known in the legal history of obscenity trials. Since there is no precise definition of pornography, people tend to identify 'pornography' with any representation of sexuality which they object to n4.