Speaking of Porn

I think that there's porn, and then there's porn.

I don't care for the second kind, also known as hard-core. Students at the University of Maryland feel differently, and intend to air a hard-core porn film in the name of academic freedom and free speech. My feeling is that they're doing what college students frequently do -- picking and choosing the rules that they like, interpreting them to get the result they want.

(Yeah, that sounds like the Bush Department of Justice to me, too. And maybe the Obama one, just a bit.)

Academic freedom exists within the bubble of the campus; as such, it can do things about which the external society would disapprove. Free speech means the right to say what you believe; it doesn't mean that you can use the facilities of the first to say it. Put another way, I may believe that garden gnomes are an infringement of my right to life, liberty, and so forth, but that doesn't mean I can expect to get a loaner gun from the local cops so I can blast them into little bitty shards, just because the cops and their weapons are functions of the society I support.

Want to watch porn? Go right ahead. Just don't be surprised when the state refuses to pay for it.