Is pornography moral?

[Lurker]

Nathan:

I don't want to get too involved in this discussion, but I took a look at one of your links, as I found its claims to be somewhat interesting - (though obviously I only read parts of it). Diana Russel concludes that there is most likely a causal relationship between consumption of pornography and levels of rape, not only a correlation, (p. 66). One of her pieces of "evidence" for this is one study that suposedly shows that U.S. States with the highest rates of porn consumption also have the highest numbers of rapes (It would be intereting to see these numbers, and the method used). She then says:

"If the rape rates were very low in this country, or if they were found
to have declined over the past few decades, these facts would likely be cited
to support the view that pornography does not play a causative role in rape".

(As the argument against this she uses some survey done by herself - hardly an unbiased source). As a matter of fact, U.S. rape statistics have declined for the past decades, even though there has been a obviously massive increase in porn-watching. This seems to stand in clear contrast to her hypothesis.