Posted on 04/01/2006 5:37:42 PM PST by Panerai
The industry's VIPs mingle at political galas and Super Bowl parties. Their product is available on cell phones, podcasts, and particularly the Internet _ there it's an attraction like no other, patronized by tens of millions of Americans.
It's pornography. And if you're a consumer, John Harmer thinks you're damaging your brain.
Harmer is part of a cadre of anti-porn activists seeking new tactics to fight an unprecedented deluge of porn which they see as wrecking countless marriages and warping human sexuality. They are urging federal prosecutors to pursue more obscenity cases and raising funds for high-tech brain research that they hope will fuel lawsuits against porn magnates.
"We don't think it's a lost cause," said Harmer, a Utah-based auto executive and former politician who's been fighting porn for 40 years.
"It's the most profitable industry in the world," he said. "But I'm convinced we'll demonstrate in the not-too-distant future the actual physical harm that pornography causes and hold them financially accountable. That could be the straw that breaks their back."
The activists' adversary is a sprawling industry that, by some counts, offers more than 4 million porn sites on the Internet, that in the United States alone is estimated to be worth $12 billion a year. A tracking firm, comScore Media Metrix, says about 40 percent of Internet users in the United States visit adult sites each month.
Porn products are featured at popular sex expositions and retail chains such as Hustler Hollywood. Major hotels provide in-room porn, and adult film stars are now mainstream celebrities. Mary Carey attended a VIP Republican fundraiser in Washington in mid-March; Jenna Jameson's "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" hit the best-seller lists and she hosted a racy pre-Super Bowl party in Detroit in February.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
whoops...make that "meth" not "met"
Good night
While I'm not sure it would make it OK by me, I do think it would make a big difference. With respect to the libertarian argument about consent, there would be no question that a woman doing such things for free wasn't doing it because of financial coercion or desperation, though there would still be the question of other forms of coercion. For example, a Japanese drama I once watched had a scene playing on the reputation the yakuza has in Japan for forgiving debt for women who can't pay back loan shark loans if she'll make a porn movie for them. Not sure if that really happens or how often it happens, but I don't think that qualifies as "consensual" any more than statements hostages make seemingly willingly are "consensual".
"I knew it "taxing." Taxes, taxes, taxes. At least you admit you are a socialist. Because if anyone who earns their money gets to keep it, you just couldn't sleep at night."
I'm far from a socialist my friend. I only assume we'd tax the hell out of it, just like we do to cigs, and beer.
Define a "good job at parenting"? What are my obligations?
1) The roads were built and are owned by teh government, I have to follow their rules to use their roads, i accept that.
The country you live in is government by the government. You have to follow plenty of rules that have nothing to do with who owns the roads.
2) Uh, your trying to take away our freedoms so you have the freedom to not raise your kid? Nice try.
Uh, no. I'm trying to take away your freedoms so I don't have to hide my kids in my house with the curtains drawn to avoid pornography. To be perfectly honest, I care about my own liberty more than I care about your liberty. Sorry about that but I'm selfish that way, just as you are. Can you give me a good reason why I should care about your liberty in this matter?
Correlation isn't causation. There's a long history of porn in Japan, that just doesn't seem to make it into mainstream museums for some reason...
There's a heck of a low birthrate in Russia, as well, and they went through years of porn being suppresed by the Soviets. I think the factor that causes low birthrates is despair for the future, more than porn.
Sure it does. You'll notice that we arrest people for drunk driving because of the harm that drunk drivers often do, even if the drunk driver hasn't actually caused an accident or hurt anyone.
Actually, we arrest people for drunk driving because they're driving in a threatening manner. A person who manages to drive well, while legally drunk, isn't going to get pulled over and arrested.
What makes a gun different from alcohol, drugs, or sex is that unlike those activities, the gun does not directly affect the chemistry of the brain of the user. Shooting a gun doesn't cause an orgasm, a high, or mentail impariment the way alcohol, drugs, and sex do. It wasn't the gun that enabled those murders or encouraged them. Guns don't rob people of their ability to make sound and responsible judgements. Alcohol, drugs, and sometimes even sex can.
Give some people a gun and they turn from mild-mannered guy to swaggering bully. While a gun hasn't done that to me, I have to say the occasions I've gone target shooting at a local range has given me a bit of a high. Incrased adreneiline or testosterone, perhaps.
That's also why we ban child pornography and adult-child sex across the board rather than wondering whether a particular child is mature enough to make those choices for themselves (after all, Tracy Lords turned out OK, right?). We know that adults can't be trusted to no coerce children into sex and that sex can mess children up.
Well, we ban sex under a certain age, because for the law to be enforcable it needs to have a specific age, rather than judgement calls on maturity.
That would be a better argument if relationships between the sexes weren't also pretty messed up during those other periods of history, too. Do you think those conditions were ever what Japanese woman would have chosen if they had any say in the matter?
There's a heck of a low birthrate in Russia, as well, and they went through years of porn being suppresed by the Soviets. I think the factor that causes low birthrates is despair for the future, more than porn.
Should I point out the role that Eastern Europe and Russia now play in the coerced sex trade?
Actually, we arrest people for drunk driving because they're driving in a threatening manner. A person who manages to drive well, while legally drunk, isn't going to get pulled over and arrested.
Ever hear of drunk driving checkpoints?
Give some people a gun and they turn from mild-mannered guy to swaggering bully. While a gun hasn't done that to me, I have to say the occasions I've gone target shooting at a local range has given me a bit of a high. Incrased adreneiline or testosterone, perhaps.
Not direct. There may be a lesser effect. The important thing to notice here, though, is that people don't wreck their families over a crossword puzzle addiction or loose their jobs because they like chocolate. There are activities and substances that tend to reduce a person's ability to make rational decisions. Some people can deal with that. Other people can't. For those that can't, it's a big problem.
Well, we ban sex under a certain age, because for the law to be enforcable it needs to have a specific age, rather than judgement calls on maturity.
Does it have to be that way or do we simply do it out of convenience? If we can give millions of American teenagers a written and practical test to see if we'll let them drive, would it really be that much more difficult to give them a written and practical test to see if they are mature enough to sigh contracts, vote, etc. as adults?
I know men and families who have been wrecked by porn addiction, too. I would have never guessed it could be addictive and so mentally and spiritually stunting.
Look at all those men caught up in that recent internet sting operation taking their internet porn show on the road to molest kids. Some of them even suspected a police set up but could not stop themselves from approaching the house because they could not overcome their sex drive. It is not a victimless activity.
The pornagraphy of my youth - Play Boy - was nothing like what is known as internet porn.
**You are now even with the guy cruising some xxx site at this moment!**
What Little Jeremiah said is true. Anyone who under- estimates the damage caused by internet porn is a fool.
Sorry, but you don't have a right to a society that doesn't offend you.
To be perfectly honest, I care about my own liberty more than I care about your liberty. Sorry about that but I'm selfish that way, just as you are. Can you give me a good reason why I should care about your liberty in this matter?
I'm almost tempted to say that in that case, we don't have much more to discuss. You defend what you want; I'll defend what I want.
But the reason to care about another's liberty is that it makes it easier to protect your own. You seek to limit my liberty by limiting porn, believing that increases your liberty. Someone else, however, might not want their children exposed to religion and seek to keep more extreme examples of religion. Heck, in some cases that's what's happening.
Please note that I have no problem with religious displays. I think the effort to remove the 10 Commandments from courtrooms and crosses from city seals are wrong-headed. Maybe it's that I'm hard to offend, at least visually, but creches and crosses don't bother me, even though I'm not Christian. But there are people who complain about religion on television. While that's not a serious threat right now, it may be if they get religion banned from other parts of the public square.
From a strategic standpoint, I find it easier to defend freedom as a whole. You protect my right to look at porn if you're worried about your children seeing it, you close the metaphorical curtains. By the same token, someone who might be offended by preachers being on TV and worry about their children seeing it, can take the same steps.
Or we can go down the path of anything that has the potential to offend someone has the potential to be banned....
I gotta go, too.... later.
Plus who do you think is going to win if you turn america into a dictatorship of the mob, 70% of america doesn't go to church.
Agreed. It's just too easy and pays too well. Some women even claim to enjoy it. It has been around since ancient times and it's a fool's errand to try to stamp it out.
Right now the hazmat teams are trying to see if the wells in the neighborhood were contaminated. So - I'm not sympathetic to this idea that cheap and legal drugs are going to be a good thing.
I don't follow you. Drug legalization would take meth labs totally out of residential neighborhoods, and put them in industrial parks.
Actually, meth and crack use would probably fall off dramatically in favor of pot and snorts of powder cocaine, just as people went off gin and back to beer and wine when Prohibition ended. When drugs or alcohol are illegal, the producers and consumers have an incentive to keep them as concentrated, portable and concealable as possible.
-ccm
I would turn the question around and ask how tame it has to be before blue nosed Puritans say it's NOT over the line? Are we to go back to the days when Howl and Tropic of Cancer and Playboy were considered pornography? No thanks, chum, take it to Saudia Arabia 'cause it ain't going to fly in a free country...
The onus is on *you* as a would-be censor to prove harm, not on the rest of us to show why what we're reading should pass inspection with a handful of prigs and pecksniffs. Tell us exactly what you think is obscene and why you think it should be banned.
-ccm
bump for later read
No, but I do have a right, as a voter in a Republic, to vote to restrict those things that do offend me, just as you have the right to vote against those restrictions.
I'm almost tempted to say that in that case, we don't have much more to discuss. You defend what you want; I'll defend what I want.
That's exactly what I'm saying. That's why the Founders chose to make our government a Republic within a Federal system. And if these matters were determined locally rather than Federally for everyone, things would probably work a lot better.
But the reason to care about another's liberty is that it makes it easier to protect your own. You seek to limit my liberty by limiting porn, believing that increases your liberty. Someone else, however, might not want their children exposed to religion and seek to keep more extreme examples of religion. Heck, in some cases that's what's happening.
In other words, people are going to try to restrict my liberty whether I try to restrict their liberty or not. That's why I don't buy this whole idea that I need to tolerate someone walking around with a pornographic T-Shirt if I don't want someone else to try to ban my religious T-Shirt (or whatever). All that does is pretend that the details are irrelevant and they aren't. People passed a Constitutional Amendment banning alcohol, repealed that Amendment, etc. They didn't pass and repeal a Constitutional Amendment banning the sale of orange juice. Why? Because orange juice and alcohol are not the same thing and preserving my right to drink orange juice has nothing to do with preserving someone else's right to drink alcohol, any more than we have to preserve the right of adults to have sex with children out of fear that if we don't, they'll ban adults having sex with each other.
Please note that I have no problem with religious displays. I think the effort to remove the 10 Commandments from courtrooms and crosses from city seals are wrong-headed. Maybe it's that I'm hard to offend, at least visually, but creches and crosses don't bother me, even though I'm not Christian. But there are people who complain about religion on television. While that's not a serious threat right now, it may be if they get religion banned from other parts of the public square.
Please note that my objection to pornography is not simplistic. I'm not particular offended by basic nudity, nor do I want to ban all pornography from adults. I would, however, like to see the public space be more child friendly the way it once was. That means that I don't want to take your Playboy away but would prefer you'd read it at home and not on a subway. I'm also concerned about the more vile forms of pornography that involve the actual abuse and torture of those performing in it. Finally, I'm concerned about the effects that particularly violent and deviant pornography might have on those who consume it. We can't have a dicussion of that without talking about the details of each of those points, thus I don't have a lot of use for abstract discussions of "liberty". To me, liberty is a means to an end and even libertarians would restrict the liberty of others in the interest of property rights and safety, thus even libertarians understand that too much liberty, abused liberty, and liberty without responsibility are bad things.
From a strategic standpoint, I find it easier to defend freedom as a whole.
I think that's a strategy doomed to failure because such abstract defenses of liberty invariably defend the indefensible to just about everyone. There is a reason why the number of libertarians remains so small. Few people are willing to accept the full implications of libertarianism for a variety of reasons that probably wouldn't be fruitful to discuss here.
You protect my right to look at porn if you're worried about your children seeing it, you close the metaphorical curtains. By the same token, someone who might be offended by preachers being on TV and worry about their children seeing it, can take the same steps.
Yet the United States managed to do just fine banning pornography but not banning preachers. The reason I don't find this argument particularly persuasive is that I don't expect the preacher banners to ever get the numbers necessary to do it. If society ever shifted in that direction, I wouldn't see the problem in terms of liberty.
Or we can go down the path of anything that has the potential to offend someone has the potential to be banned....
In practice, that's the way it is. Remember, they banned alcohol by Constitutional Amendment. Then the repealed the ban. You either trust the democratic processes of our Republic or you don't. I do. The great lesson of Prohibition was that the people, after seeing it didn't work, repealed it. The system corrects itself but needs to move.
Believe it or not, I've never personally seen any porn, although as a teenager (rebellious idiot that I was) I read a little de Sade and it utterly nauseated me. Hard to imagine that in the Victorian era they had rampant bestiality, torture and homosexual porn... Although i wouldn't know one way or another.
The difference is this: in previous times, porn was written, or in the early days of photography, a few still pictures. It was illegal, and/or shameful. It was behind closed and locked doors.
Now? Living color, live action, and potentially in every home. "Adult" stores everywhere you turn. Society is saturated with it, and stuff that is now on regular TV is rife with highly charged sexual content.
You're ridiculous. You think I say that out of pride?
I say it for the simple reason that it's the truth. Anyone who doesn't see the results of sex saturation especially on children, and families, either thinks it's okay for families to be destroyed, or needs to stop looking at the screen for a while.
It pains me that children's lives are destroyed because of sexual libertinism. It bothers me that husbands and wives are torn apart because someone can't control his d**k. It bothers me that women are persuaded that being a slut is cool and that "saving yourself for marriage" is considered not only old-fashioned but mentally dangerous. It causes me heartache that sexuality is considered merely a commodity rather than a precious and private act to be shared by a husband and wife with a lifelong commitment, and a promise to care for any children who may come.
It grieves me that society is sliding into the abyss. Feral humans are the result - unwanted children, born to single mothers or parents who divorced, who are just the unwanted by-product of selfish self gratification.
The undeniable fact that pregnancy and sex cannot be separated, other than by the sugeon's knife, dangerous chemicals, or the abortionist's butchery. When sex has nothing to do with marriage, and everything to do with selfish gratification, children become unwanted trash. It's disgusting and it's ruining our society.
Years ago, I read that vice cops who been out on the streets a long time will you that anytime they bust a sex offender, they will find reams of porn in his house and that the crimes he committed were inspired by his porn collection.
"how tame it has to be before blue nosed Puritans say it's NOT over the line?" - a burka would not be over the line
The only reason no states or local communities (what to speak of the fedgov) can make any laws (practically speaking) to infringe the "rights" of pornographers or the losers who "use" it is because Larry Flynt and the ACLU teamed up, and the SCOTUS saw stuff in the Constitution that no one had seen up to that point. Certainly the gentlemen who wrote the Constitution didn't see a right to pornography in it.
So, thanks to a leftist organization and one of the foulest humans to ever walk the earth, porn is now everywhere. And sick losers can obsess over it freely. Have fun!
CORRECTION:
The only reason no states or local communities (what to speak of the fedgov) can NOT make any laws....etc
(proofread, lj, proofread.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.