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 ...
"So do prostitutes. Do you think prostitution should be legal?"
Yes, and so should drugs. If drugs were legal and cheap most prostitution would disappear.
This attack is bipartisan.
"Yes, and so should drugs. If drugs were legal and cheap most prostitution would disappear."
Why would men stop paying women for sex if drugs were made legal?
"Why would men stop paying women for sex if drugs were made legal?"
1) Most prostitutes are drug addicts and sell themselves to support their very expensive habit.
2) Most drugs supress a mans sex drive. Some make it impossible to have sex.
They don't get the luxury of considering the first amendment right of their attacker or of the porn industry.
This is the equivalent of a gun-control advocate saying that shooting victims don't have the luxury of considering the second amendment rights of gun owners and manufacturers.
There is no right that does not have potential negative consequences. But the effect of blocking the right, because of those consequence would be far worse.
I usually just 'ping'. Tonight I'd like to ask you to post your thoughts and defenses of the Catholic position on pornography. Stand up for our faith and against this scourge.
Yes, and so should drugs. If drugs were legal and cheap most prostitution would disappear.
I don't know if cheap and legal drugs would make prostitution disappear -- personally I find sex to be much more tempting than getting high and I doubt I'm alone in that -- but otherwise, I agree with RHINO here.
This attack is bipartisan.
Of course. They go where the money is.
So women sell sex to buy expensive drugs?
"1) Most prostitutes are drug addicts and sell themselves to support their very expensive habit.
2) Most drugs supress a mans sex drive. Some make it impossible to have sex."
It's an interesting theory, although I doubt it - because prostitution has always existed. As long as men are willing to pay for sex, there will be women to sell it - even women who are not drug addicts.
I'm still having trouble following your logic.
You think it would be a good thing for men to drug themselves into such a stupor they are unable to hire a hooker?
And what about the harm this type of person causes to others?
Keep in mind...I live in meth country.
Drugs are cheap here - meth is readily available to the poor as well as the rich.
I live by a lab that just got busted, so I got to see alot of the traffic - some of which crashed into trees alongside our road.
I saw the vacant stares and rotting teeth.
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.
Bob Dole would have something to say about that!
If he really wants to 'battle' porn than I suggest he start with the 'counter-cultural' Liberal Socialist Left, the queer lobby, etc...
Liberaltarians out in full force.
They don't want to see the truth of what pornography does. For a variety of reasons.
I know a boy who got ahold of his father's porn somehow or other, and got it on with another boy who may also have seen sexual content. These were 4 and 5 yr old boys.
These are seriously screwed up kids now. If anyone thinks that children or adolescents can see hardcore porn and not be harmed by it, such a person has no moral principles. Such people also think that one night stands, sex without marriage and commitment are harmless.
When families are destroyed, which they are by adultery, pornography, pre-and extra marital sex, then gradually the entire society goes to hell. Kids are aborted, or if they manage to run the gauntlet and get born, often turn into adults that also cannot commit to marriage. What to speak of the stepfather/boyfriend molestation rates.
Saying that if you don't like porn don't watch it is like saying you can live in the middle of a garbage dump and keep your house clean with no flies or rats. The atmosphere of sexual debauchery permeates our culture and there is no evading it. Kids are affected. Even if you turn your own TV off, throw it away, get a filter on the computer - their friends' families don't, the other kids at school don't, and so on.
Sex divorced from marriage is destructive, that's its nature. It's like fire - which can cook food and warm the house, or burn down buildings and cause pain and death. Sex is one of the most powerful bodily and mental urges, and when in the confines of marital commitment, creates families of children and bonds husband and wife. When used outside of marriage commitment, it creates unwanted children, aborted children, heartbreaks, hardness of heart, and exploitation.
Anyone who disagrees with me is a fool.
Suicide? Sex with an Aids carrier?
Then I'm a fool. But I'm a free fool.
See my comment above.
In every monotheist religion in the world, and some that aren't, sex has been confined by moral law within marriage.
"Because someone is inspired to commit crime by an object doesn't mean we can ban it. Mark David Chapman said he was inspired to murder John Lennon, by A Catcher in the Rye. Should we ban that?"
It takes a real leap to read A Catcher in the Rye and think "I want to kill John Lennon"
It is not as big a leap for a viewer of child porn to think "I want to have sex with a child"
"This is the equivalent of a gun-control advocate saying that shooting victims don't have the luxury of considering the second amendment rights of gun owners and manufacturers."
I don't think it is.
The second amendment was written to protect the people from the government - and from each other.
And while the first amendment gives us freedom of speech - still our society has recognized there are limits and people can be harmed.
I don't have the freedom of speech to announce my neighbor is a thief - when he isn't. This is considered harmful, and my neigbhor could take legal action.
Our society has recognized that child pornography is harmful - and it is illegal. Freedom of speech does not apply here.
It may take some time for our country to become fully aware of how harmful other forms of pornography are - and until then we will continue to see people hurting others because they are acting out sick fantasies they learned from their porn habit.
"There is no right that does not have potential negative consequences. But the effect of blocking the right, because of those consequence would be far worse.
"
easy for you to say.
I doubt the parents of a raped and murdered child would agree.
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