Here’s a great essay by the late Joseph Sobran from National Review in 1974 on Hugh Hefner and the Playboy philosophy entitled, “The Sage and Serious Doctrine of Hugh Hefner.” Here’s a sample:
The philosophy is no longer a regular part of the magazine, but it is briefly reformulated here and there: “Not coercing or injuring others is, we believe, essential to a free society. Beyond that minimum, we view morality as an individual matter, a highly personal belief in what is right or wrong.” And it pops up in occasional editorials, like the one that scolded the Supreme Court for its obscenity ruling: “The obscene is a subjective concept, existing only in the minds of the beholders . . . ” — the sort of sentence that will at last drive a teacher of freshman composition to leap from a bridge, though it is always uttered triumphantly, with obvious confidence that it cannot be answered. Moreover, the same editorial affirms, “there are ultimately 200,000,000 qualified judges of obscenity in the U.S. and . . . each has a right to his opinion,” raising the question: what can “qualified” possibly mean? or “obscenity”? or “right”?
The difficulties are plain enough, and I don’t mean to belabor them. But Playboy is not even consistent. State laws making fornication a crime, for instance, are “a shock to the conscience.” An odd way for Playboy to put it: the conscience? How does the conscience differ from all those “personal,” “individual,” “subjective” consciences? Is there a Higher Law obligating Rhode Island to let its citizens rut at their pleasure?
Read the whole thing. It should be noted that Hefnerism has won almost all the public debates on morality over the past five decades.
