PHIL 2060 Chapter Notes - Chapter 19: American Civil Liberties Union, Harm Principle
11 May 2016
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Not all material that is generally offensive need also to be harmful in any sense recognized by the harm principle. ^ in the absence of clear decisive evidence of harmfulness, the american civil. Liberties union insists that the offensiveness of obscene material cannot be a sufficient ground for its repression. Counter: every act of deciding what should be barred carries with it a danger to the community. The suppression of the act itself is an evil to the author who is squelched. The power to censor and punish involves risks that socially valuable material will be repressed along with the filth . Counter: the overall effect of suppression is almost certainly to discourage nonconformist and eccentric expression generally. In order to override these risks, there must be in a given case an even more clear and present danger that the obscene material, if not banned, will cause even greater harm. (such evidence is never forthcoming)
