Letter to the Editor: Ad controversy is no laughing matter

Editor,

This letter is in response to the people accusing the Statesman of publishing pornographic ads. I’m not going to be glib or joking like previous “pro-porn” advocates, because I do not think that this is a laughing manner.

First of all, the ad in question is not porn. By claiming it is, you are only reinforcing the rest of the nations’ narrow opinion of Utahns as emotionally arrested children caught in a bubble. Note that few student newspapers in the rest of the nation would feel any conflict in publishing these ads. It’s people like you that will ensure we’re the butt of at least one of the jokes in Jon Stewart’s Oscar monologue this year.

Second of all, a clean mind is synonymous with an empty mind. I can understand if you have a moral objection to these images, but your moral objection is baseless unless you can take them in, let them swim around your mind, and find them to be lacking in the face of your chaste values. Faith isn’t worth very much unless it’s been tested.

Third, as far as I know these ads are only published around Valentine’s Day and Halloween. The Statesman also publishes quotes from Deutrononomy (a pretty vile book by modern humanitarian standards, it demands, among other things, that betrothed virgins be stoned to death if they don’t scream loud enough when they’re being raped (22:23-24)) in the ads for a religious bookstore. As a secularist should I cry “seperation of church and state”? No, because they also publish the “porn” ads and have made it clear that they don’t make calls based on content but whether or not the check clears. Far from exhibiting a lack of integrity, The Statesman shows that they are the very embodiement of it.

Alex Jackson