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 ...
Wait a minute, it was okay the first way.
(Eyes crossing with tiredness)
LOL.
Yeah, like *population* is a huge problem in Japan. Aging, maybe, but sheesh. If porn is limiting Japan's population growth, then boy, have we ever got a solution for China. (What's worse, porn or abortion? Bwahahaha--yeah, AS IF porn really gets censored in China, right. Certainly not the 'porn' some here are so up in arms about.)
If adults can consent to sex, then they can consent to being photographed in the act*. If children cannot consent to sex (and I fully agree they cannot), then they should also not be photographed or SEE photos of sex--and I'm 100% on board with that. But just because people can find a way, through technology or other means, to get around such prohibitions, doesn't mean you can take away the extremely simple adult consents I just outlined. Sure, you can come up with special cases all day long, when various acts get more extreme or when 'consent' gets blurred, but that doesn't negate the basic situation. Analogies to drugs, guns, etc are specious.
*You may disagree with my premise, but in this day and age, it's utterly impossible, except in a police state, to regulate how people use cameras, video equipment, etc., in the privacy of their own homes, and even harder policing who they share such information with. But the practical difficulties in banning or even restraining porn don't seem to matter to it's diehard opponents. Nor the unintended consequences: if porn were as hard to come by in the US as it is in, say, Saudi Arabia, TONS of people would see a significant money-making opportunity. Hmmm, just like, ummm, prohibition? And then how bad would illegal porn and all its offshoot social problems become? But nevermind, it's all about brain damage.
Right.
Really? So you don't pay taxes? So they can't seize your property, with compensation, for public use as specified in the Constitution? You really need to consider just how restricted your liberty and property rights really are. Read the Bill of Rights carefully. Most of them are qualified rather than absolute.
The government exists as a union of the people of America. If the government oversteps its bounds we have a duty to end it. Right now there are things that our government does which do infringe on my rights but not enough to kill over or die over.
You are missing my point, which is that the classic libertarian ideal that anything that doesn't infringe on someone else's rights is legal is not the form of government we live in. In fact, it's far enough from that ideal that many hard-core libertarians would love to end it.
You don't want to ban public pornography you want to ban me owning pornography.
Really? Where did I claim that?
Unless your child lives in my laptop there's zero chance thats going to effect your child.
If you don't distribute it in public or display it in public, that is correct. And I'll thank you for your responsible excercise of your liberty.
And if you only care about your liberty, then none of us our free.
That is correct. But I would argue that none of us are ever really free. The pardox of liberty is that for it to be a good, it must be practiced responsibly. The irresponsible practice of liberty becomes a liability for others and society, thus we are only really free to practice our liberty responsibly -- that is, with restrictions. We can impose that responsiblity on ourselves or others will try to step in and impose responsibility with the law. But either way, liberty is never absolute or entirely free.
If all pornography is ever banned in America, it will not be because you responsibly view pornography in the privacy of your own home on your laptop. It will be because of the irresponsible use of pornography in public, the distribution of pornography to children, and the creation of pornography that abuses those it depicts. Thus it is in your best interest that pornography be practiced responsibly and not irresponsibly because the former will protect your rights while the latter will endanger them.
If you support using government to force the world to be how you want it your not a conservative, you are a liberal by definition.
Ultimately, people care about having a happy and prosperous life for themselves and those they love. Liberty, government, etc. are all ends to those means. What differentiates the conservative from the libertarian, in my experience, is that the conservative understands that liberty requires responsibility while the libertarian treats liberty as an end and does not demand responsibility. That's why most conservatives, for religous reasons or otherwise, are polite, law-abiding, and self-supporting even though they desire that the government leave them alone. They understand that their liberty requires responsibilty to maintain.
Where I think libertarians miss the boat is that they assume that a crass society of self-interested individuals who practice their liberty without responsibility (or the bear minimum responsiblity demanded by libertarian principles -- property rights and restrictions on attacks) is sustainable. I don't think it is because ultimately most people don't enjoy abstract liberty but the fruits of that liberty. And if the fruits of that liberty are a crass and unpleasant society, they won't enjoy it. In fact, they will treat it as a liability.
In fact, people frequently sacrifice liberty for benefits they value more. Civilization, itself, is a sacrifice of liberty for security. We give up our ability to do whatever we want to live peacefully with others for protection and prosperity. Civilization requires consideration for the reasonable wants and needs of others. And it's not unreasonable for parents to not want their children to be sexualized by pornography nor victimized as adults by the pornography industry.
Once the government comes for the drug addicts, the gun owners, the adulterers, the gays, the porno watchers, the speeders, the people who don't go to church, the people who swear, who the hell is going to be left when they make up some crazy law that makes you a criminal?
Do you think the government should ban child pornography and adults having sex with children? If so, why isn't that on your slippery slope? Humans are smarter than you are giving them credit for and are quite able to draw distinctions and reasonable lines between two things that are different.
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.
Lately, I haven't been going to church. So what? Whether we explicity recognize majority rule or pretend that it's restricted, you really can't stop the mob if it wants to do something badly enough. That's why it makes sense to respond to the wants and needs of the mob so that the mob doesn't deside to toss the whole thing out and start over. Contrary to our experience with the American revolution, such experiments in starting over often go quite badly.
Odd then that sexual assault rates are down substantially over the past few decades.
You hate the Roman Catholic Church and love porn.
Well, doesn't that just figure.
If only we could go back to the good old days, when there were no "rapes, kidnapping, or murder" since there wasn't any porn!
People like Westerfield and Bundy would have carried out their heinous crimes, even without their exposure to porn. Can I prove it? No, but then you have no causal evidence either: And Bundy making an execution eve interview blaming his crims on porn don't count.
Mark
The problem with sexual assault statistics is that some percentage of sexual assults is never reported, thus a reduction in the rate could be real or could be a change in the percent that are reported. Of course it's also entirely possible that easy access to pornography allows men who might otherwise attack and rape a non-violent outlet for their sexual urges. I'm not saying your point is wrong. I'm saying that it's not a slam-dunk statistic.
What adult channels does your cable system carry?!?! I'd get the heck out of that town, right away!
Mark
Just a note: Child porn is already a crime. Just thought you might like to know.
Mark
To the former agreed. So, in other words drug-addicted women, instead of getting money for drugs through prostitution, would get it through money the government took from taxpayers. I love how every solution, means more money from taxpayers. I agree that legalizing drugs would cost the taxpayers big time, but I'm not sure it would end prostitution.
Interestingly enough, in NV, in the counties where prostitution IS legal, the prostitutes employed by legal brothels are NOT drug addicted. I don't believe that any of the brothel owners would take a chance on losing their license in that heavily regulated business, given the amount of money it generates.
It's only where prostitution is illegal, that there seems to be a link between prostitution and drug abuse.
Mark
Hard to argue, well said!
Boy, change the word "porn" to "handgun," and you've got a Sara Brady advertisement for the banning of handguns... How many children and families could be saved by banning handguns, huh?
Mark
Valid point. I would guess that sexual assaults would be more frequently reported today given the increased attention in the media, but I have no proof of that.
Of course it's also entirely possible that easy access to pornography allows men who might otherwise attack and rape a non-violent outlet for their sexual urges.
That seems likely to me, the same way that video games may act as an outlet for potentially violent kids and young adults. (Violent crime of all types is down over the last 20 years, but again that's hardly proof).
I'm not saying your point is wrong. I'm saying that it's not a slam-dunk statistic.
Quite true.
You build a private road, on your own private property, and you can go as fast as you like, for as long as you like. Good examples of that is KCIR (Kansas City International Raceway), a drag strip that's in suburban Kansas City, or Heartland Park, a race track in Topeka, KS. I've taken my bike to Heartland Park for track days, riding it on the city streets and interstates, and I followed the laws required to ride the bike on public roads. However, once on the track, I had to follow track rules, which included things that made my bike illegal to ride on the street (like covering or deactiving all the lights and turn signals, and removing the mirrors). I was then free to ride as fast as I like, in fact, I was timed at over 127MPH on the straight there. And that was OK.
And I've got friends who've driven their cars to KCIR, and once on the track, managed speeds well in excess of the 45MPH speed limit of Noland Road in Kansas City, which is the street you need to drive down to get to KCIR.
Mark
Because it takes a whole lot more time and effort to "grow a beer" or a fifth of whiskey than a plant. And you can't tax people on what they can grow at home, if you don't know they're growing it.
Mark
Social engineering through taxation IS a socialist concept. Whether it be a "progressive" tax, or increasing taxes on "bad" things, like junk food, guns, or ammunition - Remember that 500% tax on bullets that Kenedy wanted to have passed?
Mark
I'll bet if they looked a little deeper, they'd also find that the sex offenders also ate an awful lot of junk food. And I'll bet that if you checked out Skilling's and Lay's homes, they both had LOTS of expensive stuff. I guess having all that expensive stuff caused them to commit all that fraud, huh?
Let's say it all together... Corellation is not the same as Causation! In fact, you could turn it around... I'll bet Skilling and Lay didn't have as much expensive stuff UNTIL they began their fraud. I wonder if it was the "sickness" within the sexual offenders that drive them to porn, and that not being satisfying enough, they moved on to "real people." After all, if there wasn't any porn 100 years ago, there must not have been any people doing the same things as todays "sexual offenders," right?
Mark
How to Argue Against Pornography
1. Remember that correlation = causation, even if it's an untested correlation! Did some psycho killer have boxes full of latex fetish porn? Then clearly, pornography causes otherwise harmless people to become psycho murderers. Remember, anything connected to a crime caused that crime.
2. Use anecdotal evidence, the more perverse, the better. Do you have a friend/relative/religious figure whose life went out of control as he bought pornography? Share it with us! We won't judge you for hanging out with perverts or failing to get your friends the help they need; we'll take you at your word that the presence of pornography drove these otherwise-rational men (or women) into self-destruction. If your story is especially kinky, it'll be more striking to the reader, which is the standard of proof.
3. Set up demonic straw men. Even though no one is discussing things like child pornography or bestiality, which are already illegal, doesn't mean you can't! With some clever wordplay, you can make it look like the college student with a dog-eared copy of Playboy in his bathroom is, in fact, a latent pedophile.
4. Get the weirdies! Did you know that some people derive pleasure from bondage, domination, baby roleplay, same sex relationships, fursuits, Slip-N-Slides, and Catholic school girl uniforms? Did you know that these people make pornography with consenting adults? Gross! Find the weirdest fetish you can and make a big deal about it; everyone else will be so grossed out by your find that they'll quickly agree with you that all pornography is evil.
5. Get the libertarians! You just know that everyone who advocates pornography is a pot-smoking, open-borders, sexually promiscuous, pacifist, atheist, libertarian, right? When you bring that up, you're sure to shut them down. If that doesn't work, just snidely ask them about their own porn collection, and they'll slink away.
6. Get the non-parents! All of this is being done for the chillrun. If someone doesn't have chillrun, how can they have a say in this issue at all? (If they do have chillrun, they are probably bad parents, or their chile is a statistical anomaly.)
I don't want to tax it, only that it will be taxed. Plus it will still be taxed as all products are, in Cook County IL thats 9%.
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