Posted on 05/19/2005 11:05:47 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
On February 2, 2003, when seven-year-old Danielle van Dam disappeared from her family home in the middle of the night, every mother’s nightmare was played out on national television for almost a month while authorities searched for the girl. When Danielle’s body was found at the end of that month, the police and prosecutors discovered a frightening story about a neighbor of Danielle’s who had computer files filled with child pornography and even a sickening cartoon video of the rape of a young girl.
According to a report by Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media, on the link between pornography and violent sex crimes, the prosecutor in the Danielle van Dam case said “The video represented [the defendant’s] sexual fantasies and inspired the abduction, rape, and murder of Danielle.” According to Raymond Pierce, a retired NYPD detective who worked on the sex-crimes squad for many years and is now a criminal-profiling consultant, about 80 percent of rapists and serial killers are heavy pornography users. I was a victim of an attempted rape by a disturbed man who turned out to be involved in pornography.
May is Victims of Pornography Month. Today Senator Sam Brownback (R., Kan.), Rep. Katherine Harris (R., Fla.), Rep. Joe Pitts (R., Pa.), and leaders from the values community will participate in a summit to explore the troubling connection between pornography and violence against women and children.
Florida attorney general Charlie Crist advises parents that “we must never lose sight of the fact that sexual predators make the online world a dangerous place for innocent children. Parents must be ever-vigilant to make sure their children are not exposed to images and messages that would have been unthinkable just a generation ago.” Crist warns that we cannot allow the Internet to be a “pipeline for pornography aimed at children.” But while parents can use available means to protect their children when they are in their own homes, there is a cultural climate surrounding our children that threatens them the way Danielle van Dam was threatened. Because of the availability of pornography online, there is no way of knowing what lurks in the hearts of our neighborhoods.
More needs to be done to evaluate the connection between violent predatory behavior and pornography, and to crack down on these violent predators. Police and law-enforcement officers across the country report brutal instances in which those addicted to pornography utilized its sadistic images on their female and child victims.
Just this past February, the New York Times reported a story about a teenage babysitter who had raped three young children he was watching in their homes. According to the Times, his pattern was to watch pornographic videos with the oldest of the children, a 12-year-old boy, and intimidate them all by torturing them with a knife and threats to their family members. Perhaps one of the most notorious serial killers, Ted Bundy, participated in an interview with Dr. James Dobson shortly before he was executed. In the interview, Bundy explained, “I’ve lived in prison for a long time now. And I’ve met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence like me. And without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography — without exception, without exception — deeply influenced and consumed by an addiction to pornography.”
Since 1956, the Supreme Court has made clear that the First Amendment does not protect obscene materials. If we know from the perpetrators themselves how obscenity contributes to violence against women and children, what can we do?
We need to fund more studies of the addiction to pornography and its effects on violent behavior. Parents can install filters on any computer used by children and keep the family computer in a central location, not in a child's bedroom or someplace where parents might not regularly see it. We need to demand tougher law enforcement on the state and federal level. The Bush administration is stepping up federal enforcement of obscenity laws. This is a good first step. Contact the U.S. attorney for your district and ask what they are doing to enforce the laws. We need tougher state penalties against both possession and distribution of child porn and passing any kind of pornographic material to kids. Experts indicate that pornography is often used by pedophiles to break down the resistance of child victims. Parents should check out their state’s penalties for child rape and make sure offenders are going to jail and staying there for these offenses. Florida, for example, just passed a tough new law after the tragedy involving Jessica Lunsford, whose killer was a recently released violent offender. We should pass legislation to address the threat to children on the Internet. This includes chat sites, websites, spam, and peer-to-peer networks. Peer-to-Peer networks are of particular concern because they are widely visited by kids and offer porn for free without any age verification.
As Rep. Katherine Harris has pointed out, "Pornography displays human beings as objects, obliterating the wall between an individual's sick fantasies and the compulsion to act upon them. Often, the monsters who hurt women and children start with this malignant desensitizer." We need to all work together to find better ways to protect women and children against this violence.
Do not confuse your opposition to the death penalty with Christianity. "An eye for eye" is the biblical prescription.
As far as the death penalty goes, the fight is not between the Christians and non-Christians or the moral vs. the immoral. It's between the coddlers and the justice dispensers.
And DNA has given us powerful new ways of making sure that the guilty can be identified, ending some of the concerns of the past.
Or how it eats a hole in your soul!
I'll add to that cable and satelite TV as well, and you're right, it's causing a lot of people to get their panties in a wad. The reason is access. Historically, you had to either go to the seedy side of town, or maybe deal with mail order companies. Now, with these three methods of delivery (and you could add a forth, with video/dvd porn rentals as well), you can watch porn in the privacy of your own home, and nobody outside of your home knows about it.
And that's what's driving these busybodies nuts! The fact that they can't tell you "No! You can't look at that!"
Mark
Actually, regular deep sea fishing is safer than being a cop. It's the very limited Opelio & King crab seasons in AK that are real bad.
BTW, I have never worked on an Alalskan fishing boat of any kind. East coast, yes.
Nice strawman. Where did you get it? I have never said porn causes anything. That's a strawman that the porn pirates erect to beat up so they don't have to respond to the real argument.
AMEN TO THAT BROTHA!
I am not joining the debate, either side. It's too much funn to watch the dogfight.
I assume you want your daughter whoring on the tv. At least you're consistent.
I dont get your point???
Its all crap/ not art.
That is the whole point of this thread. If you are not one of the posters that believes that access to pornography encourages people to be sexual predators then I apologize.
Actually, research shows that for many men, the more they look at porno, the more problems they have "getting it up" for the real thing.
Something goes haywire in the brain.
This is one of the biggest problems psychologists and family therapists have to deal with.
And if you really think about it, if a guy cannot "get it up" for a real woman, and can only find pleasure in his own hands, he's become homosexual. So, according to much research, the guys defending their use of porno on this thread, if they are "normal," are becoming increasingly impotent and unable to satisfy their wives, as they become more stimulated by a man's hand - their own.
I'm not going to turn this into a death penalty debate, but it is decidedly un-Christian to take pleasure and glee from the suffering of others, period.
Besides that, I will leave you with a quote from the Sermon on the Mount; you know, pretty much the foundation upon which Christianity rests:
5:38-5:39
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Some folks manage to come to work everyday but ARE addicted to porn. I've seen quite a number of cases where someone's computer keeps crashing and the computer folks find huge amounts of hard-core porn on their work computer. There are others who just have a lot of soft-porn, but it's still what they are into at work.
Coke is constantly beaten by Pepsi in blind taste tests. Coke controls it market share through advertising. It presents itself as a hipper product and people in turn want it, even if they actually prefer the taste of Pepsi.
Yeah no kidding.
See #232 above.
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