Posted on 12/09/2004 1:16:14 PM PST by Lindykim
Pornography is Anything But a 'Victimless Crime' 12/8/2004 By Cheri Pierson Yecke How many more expert studies do we need to convince ourselves of this fact?
Jud Fry -- one of the characters in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! lives in a shack that is papered with pornographic images. He is a loner, lacks social skills, and is feared by his neighbors. He is clearly capable of murder. This insight into the character of a porn addict hit the Broadway stage in 1943.
Fast forward to 2004. A sexual assault and several attempted abductions of girls in the St. Paul, Minnesota, area are allegedly the work of 19-year-old Ryan Mely, who has been charged (for starters) with second-degree criminal sexual conduct. He apparently was a loner who was feared by his neighbors. Jud Fry is a fictitious character who bought his porn from an itinerant peddler. How did Ryan Mely get his start? Apparently, pornography was a family pastime. While some dads bond with their kids by fishing or playing hockey together, it appears that Mely and his father (a convicted sex offender) shared an interest in pornography. It was reported that sexually explicit material was found at the family home and on their computer.
Is anyone really surprised that pornography is involved here? It has been 60 years since a Broadway musical portrayed what social scientists and criminal analysis have now found to be true -- addiction to pornography can lead to violent sexual behavior. Dr. Victor Cline, a clinical psychologist and expert on sexual addictions, has identified four stages of progression among his patients.
The first stage is addiction, where the attraction to porn is overpowering and the viewer keeps craving more. The next stage is an escalation to more shocking and deviant images, as the earlier ones have lost their power to stimulate. Third is desensitization, where anything earlier seen as disturbing and repulsive becomes viewed as commonplace. Finally, satisfaction cannot be reached unless the perpetrator begins acting out the activities witnessed in the pornography. In effect, fantasy must become reality.
The events in which Mely was allegedly involved appear to follow this pattern. Perhaps the same is true for Alfonso Rodriguez, the man who allegedly abducted and murdered Dru Sjodin. Rodriguez apparently had an infatuation with Dru, who worked at Victoria's Secret, an upscale lingerie shop. On several occasions he allegedly called the store where she worked, asking for her by name.
Victoria's Secret is well known for its racy, soft-porn "fashion show" where voluptuous young models strut the runways in revealing lingerie. The liberal National Organization for Women called it "exploitative" and the conservative Concerned Women for America condemned it as a "high-tech striptease." Regularly protested by both sides of the political spectrum, the company announced in April that it will no longer air this event
The last Victoria's Secret "fashion show" aired on network television November 19, 2003. Dru was abducted three days later. Could it be that Alfonso Rodriguez, a convicted sex offender, watched the show and was propelled into Dr. Cline's fourth stage of sexual deviance? This is a question his judge and jury may consider.
In an interview the night before his 1989 execution, serial killer Ted Bundy revealed the influence of pornography on his life.
A case study for Cline's four stages of addiction, Bundy started his descent into sexual deviance and murder with magazines he found in the neighbor's trash. His addiction escalated until he felt compelled to act out his desires in more than 30 murders that were accompanied with violent sexual acts.
He warned Americans: "There are those loose in [your] towns and communities, like me, whose dangerous impulses are being fueled, day in and day out, by violence in the media, in its various forms -- particularly sexualized violence ... . There are lots of other kids playing in the streets around the country today who are going to be dead tomorrow, and the next day, because other young people are reading and seeing the kinds of things that are available in the media today."
Abundant evidence has demonstrated the tragic impact of pornography. How many more expert studies do we need to convince ourselves of this fact? The elections of 2004 have sent politicians the message that morals matter, so now is the time to focus on the impact of pornography -- the so-called "victimless crime."
Cheri Pierson Yecke is a Distinguished Senior Fellow for Education and Social Policy at the Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis. She is a former Minnesota commissioner of education and is author of The War Against Excellence. This article first appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Used with permission.
Concerned Women for America 1015 Fifteenth St. N.W., Suite 1100 Washington, D.C. 20005 Phone: (202) 488-7000 Fax: (202) 488-0806 E-mail: mail@cwfa.org
What's the next stage after FreeRepublic addiction?
snip...But you can't just ban the stuff, you know. It'll just go underground and become more seedier than it already is
Your argument is in the same category as the defeatist arguments used by pacifists......"Fighting them just makes them hate us more........Everytime we kill one, we create more terrorists......etc." So we should just live with the consequences of terrorism and porn because to do something about them just makes both matters worse.
I'll go back to the back of the classroom when somebody provides me some evidence. There is a lack of science on this topic, and your answer only underlines that.
Without the science, who are you to tell me I'm wrong?
That's twice, clueless. You have no more idea than I or anyone else on the dispositions of one of our founding fathers. Time to shut up unless you have something positive and uplifting to add. When you get to the place we are all going, and have an opportunity to ask Mr Jefferson about the rumors and accusations regarding his personal life, what do you think his response is going to be?
As a Christian Constitutionalist, I don't believe that laws can or should enforce positive moral behavior. This must occur as a result of self-control and personal responsibility based upon unchangeable moral standards which clearly define right from wrong.
As our nation's Rule of Law and Constitutionally guaranteed rights were and are based upon transcendant Natural Law, the first thing we need to do is to restore transcendant Natural Law to its' rightful place as the basis of our Rule of Law. It's "we are moral sovereigns unto ourselves" atheistic seculars who, in seeing things which don't exist in our Constitution {penumbras, auras, & emanations) 'created' the right to engage in and be obscene, which has unleashed filthy, foul language, porn, and even public 'faux' sex acts upon America.
We need to restore the concept of shame, and cause people who engage in morally unacceptable behaviors to be 'ashamed' of doing so. This will not necessarily lead them to cease and desist in such behaviors, but it will at least result in these things being done in 'dark,secretive' places and not in the public arena.
Speaking to porn specifically, we need to 'unmask' it and expose it for the unspeakably vile thing it is. Currently this foulness hides itself behind the word 'consent' and parades itself as 'free speech."
Here is how we need to speak of porn:
'Dark depraved sexual fantasies on celluloid that depict stripped, genitally exposed, and obscenely contorted human bodies as objects to be used, abused, laciviously panted over, and discarded."
"Obtaining a dark vicarious, even sadistic sexual pleasure from the degrading of and grossly disrespectful treatment of other people through depraved acts such as in urinating, defecating, and/or ejaculating upon the face of or into the mouth of a dehumanized being."
And for those whose addictive needs can no longer be met by the previous:
"Obtaining vilely unnatural, sadistic pleasure from seeing dehumanized beings subjected to gang-rape, mutilation, torture, and bondage."
This is how we need to speak of pornography. And we need to do so both relentlessly and determinedly. If everyone who is opposed to this river of filth were to speak of it in this manner, it would soon disappear of its own volition back into the filthy depths from which it arose.
I'll have to check out these threads more often...LOL
Gosh, that's such an important distinction, especially given the gravity of the subject!
And one more point: By stripping away the facade behind which porn lurks, and by defining it in descriptive terms that clearly and truthfully define it, we force its defenders into the very unhappy position of having to defend the utterly indefensable.
Don't remember this in the media accounts.
Personally, I think porn addiction is a symptom, not a cause. The desire for pornography reflects something that is already wrong with individual; it doesn't cause his actions.
BTW: Prohibition worked real well didn't it? The War on Drugs is rousing sucess, too, ain't it? If you believe that, you'll love the "war on smut."
Smut
(Tom Lehrer)
Smut, give me smut and nothing but,
a dirty novel I can't shut
If it's uncut, and unsub-tle
I've never quibbled, if it was ribald,
I have devoured where others merely nibbled,
And as the judge remarked the day that he acquitted my Aunt Hortense,
To be smut it must be ut-terly without redeeming social importance.
Por-nographic pictures I adore, indecent magazines galore,
I like them more, if they're hard-core.
Bring on the obscene movies, murals, postcards, neckties, samplers,
Stained-glass windows, tattoos, anything, more, more, I'm still not satisfied.
Stories of torture used by debauchers,
Lurid, licentious, and vile, make me smile.
Novels that pander to my taste for candor give me a pleasure sublime
Let's face it, I love slime.
All books can be indecent books, though recent books are bolder,
For filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
I can tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man!
I thrill to any book like Fanny Hill,
and I suppose I always will
If it is swill, and really fil-thy.
Who needs a hobby, like tennis, or philately?
I've got a hobby-Re-reading Lady Chatterly.
But now they're trying to take It all away
from us unless we take a stand and hand in hand
we fight For freedom of the press,
in other words smut (I love it!)
Ah, the adventures of a slut.
Oh, I'm a market they can't glut
I don't know what compares with smut.
Hip hip hooray let's hear it for the Supreme Court.
Don't let them take it away.
Copyright Tom Lehrer
I once worked in the copying department at a Staples. A middle-aged woman came in with some porn, featuring men, to be copied. The woman was very creepy. As a guy, it gave me a different perspective on the issue.
snip....Following your rationale, me looking at my wife while she's naked should be a crime
If you cannot see the difference between seeing your wife in the nude and 'peeping' at the nude bodies and sex acts of other people, then you've got an overabundnce of mental fog.
But then it would make sense that you do have this problem, since in order for one to succumb to the dark foul lure of porn and become its defender, one needs first to have one's brain become a an empty, clanging place devoid of moral standards. And therein lies your problem and the reason why you're wandering aimlessly to and fro in the wilderness......a lack of unchanging moral standards.
Wow...you have nailed it.
Yes, as I said earlier, I am also pragmatic, know it will never be eradicated entirely, but seek to move this out of the mainstream where it is encroaching upon our attempts to have a more balanced and wholesome lives.
I agree it needs to be exposed for what it is--it is deviant stuff, increasingly focused on all that degrades (again this does mean nudity, not even artful eroticism that carries respect for the subject).
It is just amazing that so many men puff and blow with transparent arguments about 'free speech" and consent.
When, if you pull away the layers, it is their desparate fear that their 'drug' will be less accessible.
They are so caught up in this (and they have been emboldened and enabled by a liberal media that ridicules and parodies the concept of shame--an essential dynamic in any sustainable, cooperative society based on common values (supposedly)) that they do not and will not consider the larger pathological implications of what this is doing to the psyche of our country.
As long as the user gets gratified--whenever they want, as quickly, as easily as they want--, the chips can fall where they may regarding our souls, our children and the future of our culture.
The encouraging news is that there are some brilliant male thinkers here at FR with a strong moral compass
that can see the deleterious cause and effect of this stuff.
These are the real men--what men were designed for, IMHO--to be convicted, strong leaders to look up to, to advance a vision that "betters' society. THOSE are the really sexy guys! :-)
It will take men like these to LEAD, and stand up for reason and virtue (not an obsolete concept in a civilized society) on this emotionally charged issue.
What a contrast with the worm that defends such dehumanizing fare as unharmful--all in the name of "getting off"
Those that do not want their candy taken away.
Sad that they will not make the distinction between the beauty of female nudity and the pervasive, sheer degradation we are talking about--tells me they must actually like the bad stuff.
Scary. We cannot let them and their dark appetites shape our world--it will be a cesspool.
Sorry Jeff...I can't even pretend you have a clue.
Btw, do you need a "study" to tell you "fire is hot"?
Owl_Eagle
"You know, I'm going to start thanking
the woman who cleans the restroom in
the building I work in. I'm going to start
thinking of her as a human being"-Hillary Clinton
(Yes, she really said that
Peggy Noonan
The Case Against Hillary Clinton, pg 55)
Are you implying there have never been 'obscenity laws'?
"Read the transcript of the Bundy interview. It's mostly Dobson expounding and Bundy saying, "Yeah, you're right." Of course the fact that Bundy was angling for a reprieve a couple of days before his date with Sparky didn't have a thing to do with his sudden willingness to tell Dobson exactly what Dobson wanted to hear."
and on the other hand, Berkowitz wasn't up for execution
and not eligible to be paroled. What would then be the point of his alleged conversion?
his talking or ?
Nope, can't have that...
The libertarians passionately fight for the "right" to defile not only themselves, but more egregiously, infect the rest of society with the same "right" -- in the name of "freedom."
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