Pornography
For over a century there has been great debate about the role of pornography in American society. Despite years of social crusades and legal and political wrangling, America remains in the latetwentieth century deeply conflicted about how to handle the "problem" posed by the existence of pornography, which Webster's International Dictionary defines as "writing, pictures, etc. intended to arouse sexual desire." To some, any mention or depiction of human sexuality is pornographic and should be censored; to others, no depiction of human sexuality, no matter how "perverse," should be forbidden to adults (with the exception of child pornography, which no one defends). Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's enigmatic 1964 statement on pornography perhaps best captured the opinion of most Americans concerning pornography; in his comment regarding Jacobellis v. Ohio, Stewart acknowledged that while he couldn't define pornography precisely, "I know it when I see it."
Pornography has always been present in American culture, though the "problem" of pornography has certainly been exacerbated by the ubiquity of media representations of pornography in the late twentieth century. Up until the middle part of the nineteenth century, widely shared social, religious, and cultural prohibitions against pornographic materials kept such materials largely hidden.
