"The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak." - Not Mark Twain
The quote above, commonly misattributed to Mark Twain, is in response to to censorship. Like the quote suggests, it does seem true that the argument for censorship boils down to its enforcement to prevent the moral, or other sort of, corruption of minors. There are socially accepted views which should be established in minors and there are those that should be kept from them. In this day and age I doubt there is much support for moral censorship in regard to adults.
It seems that there are two child rearing philosophies that would put parents on one or another side of the child censorship debate. One was already sketched above, that children need to be protected from deviant views. The other, which could be cautiously deemed the 'liberal' approach, assumes that people can think from a vantage point beyond particular belief systems, and should develop this impartial mind set. In contrast with the first view on child rearing, it would actually encourage a child to explore diverse belief systems so he can become intelligently impartial.
Personally I have serious doubts that any human can be impartial or not hold any socially motivated views. Despite this, however, second theory of child raising hopefully results in a certain consciousness of other viewpoints which I believe is a positive one. Censorship for minors, unless you are attempting to impose ideological purity, is unnecessary and theoretically damaging for an open society.
I agree that most censorship is both unnecessary and unethical. However, I think that in some cases it is justified. For example, because exposing children to excessive violence, gore, or sexual imagery at a young age often causes psychological harm to those children, and as such censoring those things is justified. Of course, adults can take advantage of media including the above elements, as long as they ensure that it does not end up making its way into the hands of minors.
ReplyDeleteCertain things which American society considers worthy of censorship are certainly unjustly banned or restricted. Rating a film higher because it includes people of the same gender kissing is ridiculous; if exposing children to images of people kissing is psychologically harmful (which I am pretty sure it is not) then all films showing people kissing should be rated higher, up to an including 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.' Furthermore, no adults should ever kiss whilst in view of children. To do otherwise is clearly an illustration of homophobia; homoromantic behaviour is not inherently more 'edgy' than heteroromantic behaviour, nor is it more closely linked to sexual behaviour. There are many other examples of unjust censorship as well, but I think that there are also some things which should be censored due to their effects on the psychological well-being of children.
P.S. I also posted this on my blog if you'd rather read it there.