Daily Inspiration Quote by Chester Brown

Chester Brown’s line reads like a civics-class platitude until you remember who’s saying it: a cartoonist whose work has repeatedly dragged private life into public argument. The blunt pairing of “buy or not buy porn” with “monogamous or promiscuous” isn’t accidental. He’s collapsing two moralized arenas - commerce and sex - into the same category of personal choice, daring the reader to admit how selectively we defend “freedom” when desire gets involved.

The intent is libertarian in the old, prickly sense: not a celebration of porn or promiscuity, but a refusal to grant the state or social consensus veto power over adult behavior. Brown’s phrasing also smuggles in a critique of shame. “Allowed” implies permission, as if sexuality requires a hall pass from lawmakers, clergy, or the commentariat. By putting “monogamous” and “promiscuous” on equal grammatical footing, he denies the usual hierarchy where one is virtue and the other is pathology.

Context matters because Brown isn’t speaking from an abstract podium; he’s speaking from a medium that has historically been policed for obscenity and dismissed as unserious. Cartoonists know censorship isn’t theoretical. The subtext is defensive and strategic: if you can defend the unpopular choice (paying for porn, choosing promiscuity), you’ve actually defended freedom. If you only defend the respectable choice, you’ve defended your preferences.

It’s also a quiet jab at “choice” rhetoric that stops at the bedroom door. Brown forces a modern reader to confront the line between protecting people and controlling them - and to notice how often that line is drawn around sex.