A lot of people talk about the First Amendment in this business. After all, the First Amendment permits us to do what we do. We even have our own set of ‘heroes’ who have fought to preserve their rights (and by default, most of the rest of the porn biz's rights as well) -- specifically, those rights that allow us to produce and distribute images of consenting men and women engaged in a variety of sexual behaviors.

Of course, pornography probably wasn't on anyone’s mind when the First Amendment was drafted, but just like other expressions of speech and the press, the First Amendment provides equal protection for us in the XXX biz as well—theoretically, at least.

Today is Memorial Day: a national holiday to honor our war dead. And while those who gave their all may not have been thinking, “I’m giving my life to preserve the freedoms allowed by the First Amendment,” when they made the ultimate sacrifice, preserving those freedoms are certainly one of the reasons they gave their lives.

There’s another day in May that we should not forget for its reminder that our freedoms are sometimes paid for in blood. That day is May 4th. It’s was on that day in May, of 1970, that four students (part of a much larger group of students protesting the war in Viet Nam), were shot and killed by soldiers of the Ohio National Guard on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. In retrospect, those students also died--at least in part--defending the First Amendment.

Recently, while watching TV during the early days of the war in Iraq, Geraldo Rivera was interviewing a Colonel of the 101st Airborne. The borishly smug Rivera asked the Colonel what he thought of the people back home demonstrating against the war. The Colonel gave Geraldo an unexpected answer: “…the day those people aren’t allowed to express their views is the day we have no right to be here.”

To most of America, making a connection between the blood our nation has sacrificed to preserve its freedoms and the right of the porn industry to exist might seem appalling and misguided-- to the loved-ones of our fallen heroes it may even be offensive. But when politicians begin telling us who those freedoms should be applied to, and who is exempt from those rights, it is the very same moment in which that blood becomes spent in vain. Sure, in the grand scheme of things preserving the rights of pornographers might seem unimportant, but when a group like the adult biz is forbidden the rights that are fundamental to the First Amendment, everyone else becomes at risk of losing those same rights as well.


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