Of course, of course, of course Miss Weeks has the right to perform in pornographic skits, and the millions who consume them have the right to do so, too. They also have the right to stand on their heads all day, to smash their pinkie toes with ball-peen hammers, keep up with the Kardashians, etc. In his famous debate about marijuana legalization with Jesse Jackson, William F. Buckley Jr. asked that “we emancipate ourselves from the superstition that that which is legal is necessarily honorable. It’s perfectly legal to contract syphilis; that doesn’t mean that society is in favor of syphilis. As a matter of fact, it’s perfectly legal to vote for Jesse Jackson — that doesn’t make it reputable, does it?”
Similarly, we should emancipate ourselves from the superstition that people who do things that others look down on are necessarily martyrs to liberty. There has been much discussion of Miss Weeks’s having been “outed” as a pornographic performer by another student at Duke, and one wonders what the word “outed” could possibly mean in this context. Miss Weeks performs sex acts that are published on websites visited by millions and millions of people, and she was “outed” as . . . someone who performs sex acts that are published on websites visited by millions and millions of people. Like many similarly unreflective people, Miss Knox is not very deft at distinguishing between criticism, social pressure, and political repression. “I grew up Catholic, so I grew up in a very, very, conservative background and that, I think, really was kind of the impetus for why I wanted to become a libertarian.”
Lord Acton weeps.
