Posted on 07/30/2006 10:29:51 AM PDT by wagglebee
Would you try to put out a fire with gasoline?
No? Then you might disagree with an MSNBC online article, "Porn: Good for America!" by Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor. Reynolds suggests that pornography reduces rape!
As proof, Reynolds quotes a U.S. Department of Justice claim that in 2004 rape of "people" over age 12 radically decreased with an "85 percent decline in the per-capita rape rate since 1979" (DOJ's National Crime Victimization Survey of "thousands of respondents 12 and older").
But the FBI also estimates that "34 percent of female sex assault victims" are "under age 12" (National Incident-Based Reporting System, July 2000).
Since the DOJ data excludes rape of children under age 12, child rape may be up 85 percent, for all we know.
Although the FBI and local police departments are now swamped with teachers, police, professors, doctors, legislators, clergy, federal and state bureaucrats, dentists, judges, etc., arrested for child pornography and for abusing children under age 12, the Department of Justice excludes those small victims from its "rape" rates. Why?
Do DOJ, FBI harbor pedophiles?
You have to wonder: Are there pedophiles and other sexual predators in the governmental woodpiles?
When I worked for DOJ's Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in the 1980s, someone high up killed the order to collect crime-scene pornography as evidence in prosecutions. No Democrat or Republican administration has yet mandated such on-site pornography collections. Whom is DOJ protecting?
Reynolds, writes less like an objective scholar than a pornography defender:
Since 1970 … porn has exploded. … But rape has gone down 85 percent. So much for the notion that pornography causes rape. … [I]t would be hard to explain how rape rates could have declined so dramatically while porn expanded so explosively.
He opines that pornography possibly prevents rape (the old discredited "safe-outlet" theory).
The DOJ's preposterous "85 percent" decrease in rape ignores the obvious. The U.S. FBI Index of Crime reported a 418 percent increase in "forcible rape" from 1960 to 1999. That fear means we now keep our doors, windows and cars locked. Women seldom walk alone at night. Parents rarely let children go anywhere unaccompanied. Many states let people carry guns for self-defense. Rape Crisis Centers do not report rapes to police. More women perform as sexually required. A conflicting DOJ 2002 report says "almost 25 percent of college women have been victims of rape or attempted rape since the age of 14."
Why don't the feds call child-rape 'rape'?
In 1950, 18 states authorized the death penalty for rape; most others could impose a life sentence. Following Alfred Kinsey's "scientific" advice in 1948, many states redefined "rape" so the crime could be plea-bargained down to a misdemeanor like "sexual misconduct."
Missouri redefined rape to mean 11 different crimes for 11 different sentences, magically lowering "rape" rates. Like all states that have trivialized rape, Missouri relied on the Kinsey-based 1955 American Law Institute Model Penal Code.
"Rape" was eliminated from New Jersey's laws and replaced with a variety of terms during a 1978 penal law revision.
For example, Dr. Linda Jeffrey notes that the charge to which child-molesting teacher Pamela Diehl-Moore pleaded guilty was reduced to a second-tier crime, "sexual assault" – i.e., sexual contact with a victim under 13, or penetration where the "actor" uses physical force or coercion, but the victim doesn't suffer severe personal injury, or the victim is 16 or 17, with aggravating circumstances, or the victim is 13 to 15 and the "actor" is at least four years older. (Whew!)
Sex criminals copy what porn depicts
DOJ experts should read reports such as "Sex-Related Homicide and Death Investigation" (2003). Former Lt. Comdr. Vernon Geberth says today's "sex-related cases … are more frequent, vicious and despicable" than anything he experienced in decades as a homicide cop.
In "Journey Into Darkness" (1997), the FBI's premier serial-rape profiler, John Douglas wrote, "[Serial-rape murders are commonly found] with a large pornography collection, either store-bought or homemade. … our [FBI] research does show that certain types of sadomasochistic and bondage-oriented material can fuel the fantasies of those already leaning in that direction."
In "The Evil That Men Do" (1998), FBI serial-rape-murderer-mutilator profiler Roy Hazelwood quotes one sex killer who tied his victims in "a variety of positions" based on pictures he saw in sex magazines.
"Thrill Killers, a Study of America's Most Vicious Murders," by Charles Linedecker, reports that 81 percent of these killers rated pornography as their primary sexual interest. Dr. W.L. Marshall, in "Criminal Neglect, Why Sex Offenders Go Free" (1990), says based on the evidence, pornography "feeds and legitimizes their deviant sexual tendencies."
In one study of rapists, Gene Abel of the New York Psychiatric Institute cited, "One-third reported that they had used pornography immediately prior to at least one of their crimes." In 1984, the U.S. Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence reported, "Testimony indicates that an alarming number of rape and sexual assault offenders report that they were acting out behavior they had viewed in pornographic materials."
More pornography equals more rape of children and women. We need to ask whether Big Government is now selling out to Big Pornography as it did to Big Tobacco for half a century.
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Lawyers are not the defenders of a moral code. This is not their problem or fight.
Isn't Glenn Reynolds the real name of the famed conservative blogger "Instapundit"??
In my beloved state of Indiana, we have the ACLU suing to allow prisoners to possess/view porn in prison. The argument I hear most commonly is "Where do we draw the line? What about National Geographic!?!" Unbelievable.
College professors have the time and money to live in a universe of their own making.
Glenn's a good guy but I think he is wrong on this. What you put in your mind always affects how you behave after. If a person's exposed to degrading pictures in any way, it'll coarsen him. A person who's got a little violence anyway, will be influenced by porn, seek more of it, and seek to extend it.
Porn does not rape, people do.
Unbelievable. Of course "rape" has decreased enormously, if not almost disappeared from the radar. The author made the excellent point that it isn't even called "rape" any longer, but "sexual battery" or a host of other non-descript terms. If Mr. Professor had included all the terms now used instead of "rape" in his skewed statistics, I believe he wouldn't have even had an article to write.
I would think that the greatest agent in reducing rapes has been the advent of DNA typing technology. A very small percentage of the population is responsible for a very large portion of its sexual crimes. DNA technology has helped to identify a bunch of those people, and put them in prison.
BTTT... and bookmarked
(Just FYI, not wading into this discussion).
Larry Flynt's Daughter Blasts Pornography
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3819eab51d8a.htm
I tend to find these kinds of arguments somewhat insulting. The vast majority of American men are not and will never become rapists regardless of how much pornography they are exposed to. Arguing that pornography will turn them into rapists is a bit like saying a handgun will turn them into bankrobbers. It implies that we have no willpower or sense of decency and are basically animals that can't be trusted.
Excellent point. It's the old 80/20 rule. I have no proof of this, but I'd venture a guess that 20% of all rapes are caused by 80% of all rapists, and 80% of rapes are caused by the 20% who are serial rapists. The majority of the 20% will be caught due to the advances in forensic science (primarily DNA) over the past couple decades. I don't believe porn is a significan factor, but I can't believe that porn reduces rapes either.
"It implies that we have no willpower or sense of decency and are basically animals that can't be trusted."
True, but apparently there are a number of people who have no sense of decency.
I've always been curious why the stats in the U.S. are so much higher than Europe or Japan. Is there a cultural difference or something to account for this?
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