America has always had a problem with porn.

Some people chalk it up to the fact that our country was settled by the repressed, puritanical dregs of English society. Other, less well-adjusted people insist that America resists porn because of our inherent goodness, and anything that remotely smacks of sexuality is deviant.

Well, chalk one up for the deviants.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, rejected a proposal Friday from ICM Registry LCC to create a new Internet suffix, such as .com or .org, that would apply only to porn sites — .xxx.

The idea was that ICM would offer porn sites their own suffix and make the vast Internet safe for the kiddies, all the while creating a virtual "red-light district" for all us filthy, filthy degenerates to visit far away from "respectable" sites.

Now, the real hilarity of this is that while ICM claimed it was doing this to protect Internet decency, the fact of the matter is that ICM is no altruistic, Jesus-based corporation looking out for all the good and pure little boys and girls.

Far from it.

The truth is, ICM is just a for-profit organization that was looking to make a buck. It first proposed this idiotic idea back in 2000 (twice!), and it was quietly rejected by ICANN, while getting a few sound bites here and there from various "family values" politicians. ICM was not on some idealistic crusade; rather, it just saw the opportunity to turn a quick buck off A) the Internet "boom," and B) the predictable, reactionary fears of decency groups. It would make $75 from every domain name. So it raised the issue again in 2005, which leads us to the present.

Interestingly, however, it seems as though everyone was against the domain creation, albeit for different reasons. Religious groups were against it because they feared giving porn its own domain would "legitimize" Internet pornography. Pornographers feared they would be placed in a digital ghetto. The ICANN feared being in the middle of a moral debate, and even the Bush administration bowed to concerns on both sides.

The fact of the matter is there is no reason to cordon off a certain section of the Internet for porn. Porn, like it or not, is a basic part of human society. And anytime that society expands into other realms, like the Internet, our basic interests are going to follow. It's as simple as that. The more people try to repress porn, the more it will proliferate because … (drum roll please) people like it.

It's no accident that the most visited sites on the Web are porn sites. These are not innocent kids bumbling into these sites; it's their parents. It's their older siblings.

Creating an Internet "red-light district" wouldn't "legitimize" Internet porn because, simply, it already is legitimate. It's everywhere, and if you're looking for it, you can find it. This isn't a musty copy of Penthouse in your dad's closet. It's out there, it's established and, like it or not (and face it, even those who most staunchly oppose it probably have more copies of "Barely Legal" floating around than your average liquor store), it's not going away.

And as for making it safer for the kids, how exactly does creating the Internet's very own porn repository make things safer for children? The second your average adolescent figures out there's a whole section of the Internet that can be easily and quickly found by searching ".xxx" — not, of course, that finding Internet porn is particularly difficult in the first place — well, suffice it to say, Curious George won't be quite so curious anymore.

And as for the Bush administration, it should've been in favor of the suffix. You prop that baby up, and you'd never have to worry about sexual education in public school again. Kids would not only be learning the "birds and the bees," but also the "lonely housewife and the pizza man." Which, I suppose, has merits of its own.

But the biggest issue at stake here is one that everyone but the pornographers were quick to gloss over: free speech. The ICANN was smart to knock this proposal down time and again, if only because it would have set a dangerous precedent about restricting access to certain parts of the Internet. Had the plan gone through, the Internet could have been open to all kinds of restrictions and censorship it otherwise never would have had to deal with.

So, chalk one up for the deviants.

Not only do we get to keep our prolific porno free on the Internet, but our porn benefactors have helped to strike a blow against censorship in the name of freedom. God bless America.

Pete Nichols is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at nicho261@msu.edu.