My vote is in a brown paper bag...

Would you vote for someone who used to make porn films for a living?

This is the choice facing voters in a Kent constituency, Anna Arrowsmith is standing for the Liberal Democrats (clearly with a big "L") in Gravesham. Personally I wouldn't mind much, I'd prefer to look at it from an evidential point of view, i.e. is she any good? Obviously the porn industry, like many others, can be a problem at the fringes, issues like exploitation of minors and the portrayal of violence etc. often surface; clearly regulation and protection are essential, but not having any religious baggage I don't have any moral issue with it per se. It's interesting that most of the objections to Ms Arrowsmith that I've read in the various comment threads so far have been from God fearing folk playing the "morality" card. I can sympathise to some extent but tarring someone with the failings of any particular industry isn't a particularly good argument, it would be trivial to find plenty of MP's who have been involved with industries that have been tarnished with scandal or wrong-doing at some point, it doesn't follow that the individuals are that way inclined.

Anna (who operated under the pseudo-name of "Anna Span") also has strong feminist credentials (surprisingly for that industry) her film company is credited with making films that appeal more to women than men. This is an interesting twist, does this make the moral concern any less? I don't know, but intuitively I would regard this flavour of porn perhaps less exploitative than the regular kind (but I'm not sure why?).

I find it interesting that the popularity of pornography is built upon a misfiring of behaviours and responses hard-wired into every human being by evolution. Clearly, becoming aroused by looking at pictures or films of people having sex is pretty pointless from an evolutionary point of view (i.e. if reproduction is the ultimate goal of our genes) however we cannot avoid the same response as if it were real. You could argue that our religious urges are somewhat like this too. In our evolutionary past it was advantageous for us to seek agency in everything we experienced, behavioural rules of thumb in areas such as hunting and future planning developed this way; even now when we know what causes things like earthquakes and tsunami's people still seek that invisible agency and ask "why me".