To the Editor:

. . . There is a general, and mistaken, view that pornography must be protected under the First Amendment—that prohibitions against smut are an infringement on freedom of speech. I consider this belief to be extremely pernicious and dangerous. . . . Since we already have anti-pornography laws, the above viewpoint leads to the conclusion that we are already violating freedom of speech. Moreover, it leads many people to conclude that in some cases we should violate freedom of speech, as when Norman Podhoretz says [“Living with Free Speech,” November 1972]: “Americans commanded to accept absolute freedom of speech may be compared with Christians commanded to turn the other cheek: neither can succeed in obeying but both are required to try, and both will be led uneasily into casuistry whenever it becomes necessary to sin against the clear sense of the injunction” (emphasis added). . . .

The point which must be understood here is that freedom of speech was never intended to apply literally to speech but to the communication of ideas by whatever means one might wish to employ. And pornography is not an idea, it is a mode of expression. . . .

I would argue that what makes something pornographic is that . . . it contains the implicit notion that sex and the human body are evil. Be that as it may, however, to prohibit pornography is to prohibit a certain way of expressing something, not to prohibit the free expression of an idea; the idea itself can always be expressed in a neutral manner—i.e., physiologists and psychotherapists continually talk about sex but they do so in a non-pornographic way. . . .

Howard S. Katz
New York City

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Norman Podhoretz writes:

I’m afraid that Mr. Katz’s distinction doesn’t wash. If we aren’t free to say things in whatever way we wish, we may have the freedom to propound abstract propositions, but we don’t have freedom of speech.