 In an influential liberal defense of pornography, Ronald Dworkin expresses this commitment in terms of a right to “moral independence.” People, he says, “have the right not to suffer disadvantage in the distribution of social goods and opportunities, including disadvantages in the liberties permitted to them by the criminal law, just on the ground that their officials or fellow-citizens think that their opinions about the right way for them to lead their own lives are ignoble or wrong” (1985, 353). The fact, if it is one, that the majority of people in a society prefer that pornography be banned because they regard it as immoral or offensive is not a legitimate reason for interfering with (pornographers’) freedom of speech or for preventing consenting adults from consuming it in private. For allowing such illegitimate “external” preferences of a majority to dictate government policy would violate the right to moral independence of the producers and consumers of pornography. It would give moral majorities the power to dictate how members of minority or non-mainstream groups can live on the basis of the majority’s opinions about what sort of people are most worthy and what sorts of lives are worth living, and this violates liberal ideals of state neutrality and the basic right of all individuals to be treated with equal concern and respect.