That Easterbrook piece Ramesh links to is very disappointing. I don’t mind it when liberals complain about violence or excessive violence. But it would be nice if Easterbrook dedicated a little thought to the very real differences between sex and violence and the arguments about both. One major difference between movie violence and movie sex is that sex is usually employed to demean traditional notions of morality while movie violence is more often used to re-enforce it (at least that’s what I tried to argue here). Obviously that’s not always and everywhere true. But I am at a loss as to why even the smartest liberals tend to assert an apples-and-apples equivalence between sex and violence. Or, just as often, they assert that violence is always worse.