A Pornographer’s Rights

A while ago, The Onion made a satirical post with the heading “Christian pornographer refuses to film sex tape for gay couple”. It was supposed to be a jab at the stunning hypocrisy of ‘some people’. Many took it as cogent proof of the special hate leveled only at homosexuality. Sin is sin, they cried. Why would anyone decide they were above one sin but not the other?

When the post-turned-meme got to my corner of the internet, acclaimed author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie had also just published her flaming piece — It is obscene: a true reflection in three parts. The responses to the article were revealing. There was no island of unanimity anywhere, not even in rainbow heaven. Lesbians were as bigoted as any straight white male, in their staunch refusal to have sex with a ‘penis-haver’ who identified as female. Feminists too, did not quite like the ‘I felt like a boy/girl’ argument that Trans people were making. The biggest weapon in their fight for equality between men and women was their insistence that all differences between the sexes was socially constructed. Therefore these Trans comrades were only reinforcing the biological determinism they had sworn to eliminate.

Now, if the elite left, in their all-inclusive rainbow glory, are unable to herd together on their boundaries, how are we (‘the peasants’) supposed to sort through such a sophisticated task?

Coming closer to home, I look at my own life and observe with mirth my own wonky distinctions:

I do not think women should be able to vote, but they should be able to be elected into office;

I believe all people are equally stupid yet I feel the Igbos are still superior in some way;

I am as pacifist and agreeable as they come, but I believe everyone should own a gun;

I believe men and women are equal when considered as wholes, but I support double standards for the sexes on individual variables.

I have also encountered quite a few people who had a bug in their discrimination algorithm:

A girl once told me that women should not wear trousers but leggings were fine;

A friend hated smoking but was cool with weed;

Another wouldn’t eat anything that was once alive but his favorite meal was Nigerian fried rice (the base of this dish is chicken stock);

Vegans wail for the environment but grow their precious soybean at the expense of the earth’s forests;

and the most interesting of all,

Men who found gay sex repulsive but fantasize at the thought of women doing ‘it’.

So what does all this tell us?

We all draw a line somewhere.

Our lines may be illogical to others, but we draw them anyway. And they make sense, at least to us. Granted, the Christian pornographer did draw a particularly tenuous line. One would think that of all the things the word ‘Christian’ would be forced to qualify, pornography would be beyond the pale. Still, he retains his rights to draw his own boundary lines where he deems fit. The only rule is and should be: in drawing thy line, thou must not impede me from drawing mine.

Now, you may ask, how then do we run a society if everyone draws such diverging boundary lines?,

The answer is found in the market. Capitalism, the operating system of the market, has a feature known as economic freedom. This means that everyone can create and engage with the market to the extent they desire. Therefore, under capitalism, if a person’s or business’ line excludes you, another exists with you as their ideal client. If none exists, all the better. You have just discovered an opportunity entrepreneurs all over the world would kill for. Pick a domain name and buy a machine to count your money.

Divergent boundary lines only become a problem when its owners decide to equip the government with the power to legislate to every other person where they should draw their own line. This growing moral tyranny from cowards who spend their lives ‘dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good’ (T.S Elliot), is the reason why our feature story will be accorded a single line in any ‘news’ paper.

To these people, I stand with Oscar Wilde to say ‘selfishness is not living your life as you wish. It is asking others to live their lives as you wish’.

This also is the reason I parted ways with traditional Conservatism. I am a Christian who believes in the superiority of God’s methods against any other system. Yet, I firmly oppose giving any central governing office the power to make laws with moral bases or goals. The person who will hold that office can pinky swear that he would only use those powers to establish God’s law, but what happens if he stops being godly? What if he interprets the Bible differently? What if a Molech-worshiper assumes that office?

I believe it is better to allow everyone draw their lines where ever they deem fit, and have the central government exist to protect our individual abilities to draw our line and not preclude others from drawing theirs.

Anything more, and we would have the Big Tech situation on our hands. They elected themselves as the moral standard against hate speech, but censor only the speech that their favourite ideology hates.