Pornography as a Social Problem

I am just getting started with reading my sociology textbook and have already discovered a few things that I don’t like, the primary thing is the author. The author has the audacity to call pornography a “social problem”, and classes it with rape, pollution and the spread of AIDS. I personally take offense to this because in my opinion pornography is part of sexual expression. Even at its worst I do not feel that pornography is much of a social threat, unless the author believes that it to be a component of Social Darwinism. In my view of pornography (beyond the scope of just basic sex pornos), I see pornography as expanding the possibilities with variety in sexual intercourse and taking sex to a level beyond the basic animal actions. Some pornography can be artistic and tasteful, something which I suspect that such a prude as the author of my text probably had not considered before, as even considering it academically would probably violate his sensibilities. I do not understand how someone in the social sciences can be so closed minded. Perhaps this direction for a minor wasn’t such a good idea, these people are a little too stuffy for me. It seems like in sociology anything related to sex is a bit taboo. If it isn’t race related, these people don’t seem to care about it. I guess having Freud being one of the founders of modern Psychology wasn’t such as bad thing after all, he was open to all possibilities.