Posted on 05/14/2014 10:36:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Thirty years ago Congress passed protective measures regarding pornography. On May 21, 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Child Protection Act, which was supposed to protect persons younger than 18 from exploitation by pornographers. (Other measures were designed to keep those under 18 from accessing pornography.) Two months later President Reagan signed into law the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, designed to keep persons below age 21 from purchasing alcoholic beverages.
Now, visualize this scene: Herbie, 13, walks into his local tavern and asks for a vodka martini—shaken, not stirred. Tex the barkeep asks, “Are you at least 21 years old?” Herbie says, “Sure.” Tex serves him. As he sips, Herbie pulls out his iPhone and watches a pornographic scene. I suspect most of you know what’s wrong with that picture: In all 50 states Herbie would not get his martini. Tex or anyone else would card him, demanding a driver’s license or other official proof that Herbie is at least 21. But the porn? No one would interfere.
The poet Ogden Nash (1902-1971) wrote, “Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.” Today, I’d add another line with a different rhyme scheme: “Porn’s even faster but it leaves you forlorn.” I won’t go into detail here, but relatively few porn sites electronically card users. Some require use of a credit card to access much of their content, but even they are like bars at which persons of any age can get drunk.
And yet, pornography is a huge problem not only among adults but among children and teenagers as well. If you’re sending your very well-mannered children to college and the dorm Wi-Fi has no filtering mechanism, they are likely to be exposed early and often to hard-core porn—and some become addicted. Even if it does have a filter, your son and perhaps your daughter will probably see porn at some point.
Why the difference between alcohol and pornography, both products that sideswipe many teens? Thirty years ago President Reagan at the signing ceremony said he would appoint a commission to investigate pornography, and he did. Attorney General Ed Meese headed it up, citizens including James Dobson served on it—and the press ridiculed its serious conclusions. The U.S. Supreme Court also failed to take pornography seriously enough to change the almost-anything-goes attitude it had pioneered during the 1960s.
Now, as the group Enough Is Enough reports, porn makes up more than one-third of the internet industry and earns its purveyors more than $3,000 per second. Porn sites get more visitors each month than Twitter, Netflix, and Amazon combined. Most teens view pornography online, and one survey of 16- to 20-year-olds found nearly one out of four young men and one out of 10 young women admitting they tried to kick the habit but could not. Many young men expect dates and wives to perform as do actresses in the 11,000 porn films shot each year.
Need other dire stats? Witherspoon Institute conference research (proceedings published as “The Social Costs of Pornography”) showed that two-thirds of 18-to-34-year-old men visit porn sites regularly. (My hunch is that many of them go to church less often in part because they marry less often, and they marry less often in part because they access pornography more often.) Many men find it harder to relate to real women. Most divorces involve one partner compulsively using pornography.
Does this evidence mean legislators should act? Here’s the problem: A push to restrict pornography can play into the hands of those who hate Christian truth-telling. Now that influential atheists and secularists hope to restrict evangelistic efforts, our legal protection is the First Amendment proclamation of freedom for religion, speech, and the press—but since pornographers also rely on that amendment (as mistakenly interpreted), limits on it will rain on the innocent as well as the guilty.
A hard truth: Christians are a minority in America, and minorities should oppose increases in majoritarian power. A hard question: If we now should be quiescent on one issue to lessen the likelihood of a spillover to another, what hope do we have for constructive change? Not much, except what Christians have learned throughout the ages: Our hope is in the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He changes hearts and viewing patterns.
There are some who are so driven by their addiction that they strike out at anyone who they perceive to be the enemy of that pursuit. It is sad.
If you reduce it to absolutes, you don't need any more. Anything is enough for whatever you need it to be.
I saw no claims. Only questions.
The Bible is an excellent source of education material. There’s a whole lot of wisdom in that book.
2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;”
This passage sums up my belief, too. It doesn’t say every single word in the Bible is perfect or that God wrote it or that every translation is flawlessly done, but I have no doubt the Bible is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. I also believe most translations are faithful enough to the original to be equally profitable. I don’t get hung up on minute details. I try to read in context.
In regards to porn, I’m a heterosexual who can look at a naked woman without wanting to “do her” (as some so crudely say). Just because I’m not immediately driven to sin by porn, that doesn’t mean it’s good for me to view the stuff. It’s better not to feed temptation with porn, and those natural hungers are better directed toward my wife in the first place. One might not get burnt by playing with fire (porn), but it’s probably wiser to avoid the fire altogether.
Lot of truth in what you say. Women are dirrerent from men in many ways. God has put us together in marriage to complement eachother. It is a man’s responsibility(as hard as it is) to try figure out his wife’s emotions in order for intimate responses. Porn can be an escape and short circuit that ensures that this process never happens. Good comment. I’m an elder in a church and I hear so many men that are frustrated by their wives. I just want to assert that a woman who turns “cold” is vaery dysfunctional for a marriage. Humans are created in the image of God and desire long term intimacy. The yin and yang and mars-venus conflicts must be resolved.
Good comment. I’m an elder in a church and I hear so many men that are frustrated by their wives. I just want to assert that a woman who turns “cold” is vaery dysfunctional for a marriage.
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Women who go cold in marriage are beyond my understanding. Sometimes men are poor lovers or leave out romance, but women shut out men often.
I think the first time I used it was back around 2002.
If we go back far enough, it’s possible Cicero said something similar... I haven’t read everything on Cicero, but it sounds like something they would have said.
:-)
“The more you know...”
FReegards.
“I don’t think it’s as clear cut as you suggest. Porn could be considered addictive for some people.” then you wrote, “porn is not harmless.”
Your link is irrelevant to me because you argue against claims I did not make.
But, hey, I took a Psych 101 class in college, too, and can divine that it makes you feel better to pretend that you “respect Liberty” as you argue against it.
What have I written that shows I don’t respect liberty?
Where exactly did he say that?
Seems to me it’s like the Temptations’ song... “just your imagination”.
“To me the word “children”, which you used, does not mean “young adults in college”, but minor children.”
To the rest of the world, it also means “offspring”, no matter what their age.
I think lil j just likes to argue.
Go home, Troll.
Um, that’s pretty impolite. All I asked was what I wrote that proves I don’t respect liberty. I haven’t been impolite to you or anyone else. What’s the deal, Noamie?
I don’t see why all porn site addresses don’t start with “xxx” instead of “www” or at least have the start www.xxx...then whatever. Then they would be easy to filter. I wouldn’t restrict their content at all. However, if you want to access it you must type the xxx. I’m no expert, but this seems easy.
In post #14, you wrote that porn addiction was a phrase concocted by feminists. That certainly implies you don’t think porn addiction exists—that it’s something made up. That’s why I wrote that I thought porn addiction is real and provided a link to personality traits of addiction. I know some people who share those traits in regards to their use of porn, again making the case that porn addiction is real.
Maybe you weren’t making the point that porn addiction doesn’t exist. Maybe you were just trying to be funny. I don’t know, but I didn’t treat you poorly simply because I disagreed with what you posted. Calling me a troll is a personal insult.
troll: a troll is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, [1] by posting inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[3] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29
Have I done something wrong here? Pointing out my personal opinion that porn is addictive and harmful seems relevant to the thread. I’ve also been civil, and I don’t recall making any posts that prove I don’t respect liberty (which isn’t the same thing as anarchy btw).
Who the hell are you to call CitizenUSA a troll just because he disagrees with your pro-porn point of view? Is this what FR has descended into?
And it’s not just your personal opinion. It’s the educated viewpoint of Dr. Judith Reisman and other respected researchers.
Many relevant links, here are two:
http://www.drjudithreisman.com/porn_as_erototoxic.html
Snipping, it’s a long article.
Porn as Erototoxic
Jump to related articles
The term erototoxin has been introduced by Judith Reisman, PhD, in order to operationalize how the human brain processes erotically stimulating intimate scenes that appear outside, in the public media, a documentably unnatural, dangerous environment for such scenes. The resulting harms to the observer may present as physical impotence and/or as emotional, in the inability to bond. Such psychopharmacological dysfunctions will afflict many or all repeated pornography users. While the visual stimulus’ entry into the limbic system is virtually automatic and autonomic, it still allows for some levels of frontal cortical discernment commonly undeveloped in the adolescent brain. Although the tragedy of pornography use is thoroughly documented anecdotally, science is just beginning to confirm the involuntary anti cognitive nature of media eros.
Neurosurgeons Hilton and Watts explain in Pornography addiction: A neuroscience perspective, that all addictions cause chemical, anatomical and pathological brain changes “collectively labeled hypofrontal syndromes ... damage to the ‘braking system’ of the brain ... well known to clinical neuroscientists, especially neurologists and neurosurgeons.” “Patients with traumatic injuries to this area of the brain” the authors report, “display problems-aggressiveness, poor judgment of future consequences, inability to inhibit inappropriate responses that are similar to those observed in substance abusers.” Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) stated, “addictions such as pornography ...” Hilton and Watts agree. They urge a medical study of “the pathology of pornography” similar to the study of cholera, when its Public Health implications were “perhaps as primitive as that of pornography today.”
Snipped
And here’s another one, a bit less scientific:
http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo26/the-porn-factor.php
The Porn
Factor
The Path from Playboy to Sex Offender Is Well Traveled
- See more at: http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo26/the-porn-factor.php#sthash.1x8lTh8W.dpuf
In December 1953, Playboy magazine was launched and immediately began normalizing a new world order of autoerotic sexual fantasy. Hugh Hefner (until reading Kinsey in college, a virgin like most single young men) pledged that his “romantic” magazine would turn his “Playboy men” into skillful lovers, readying them for lifelong marriage. Yet his monthly magazine ridiculed virginity and marriage while glamorizing adultery and rape and showing consumers ways to trick women and children into illicit sex.
By 1969, millions of Playboy users, struggling with their unexpected, porn-induced “diminished arousal response,” began eagerly embracing the amplified stimuli offered by Penthouse. This gave us another generation of intimacy and potency challenged men.
By 1974, millions of Penthouse users, struggling again with a diminished sexual response, turned to Hustler for help. Hello to yet another generation of arousal—challenged pornography addicts, millions of whom became pushovers for internet pornography.
Snipped
Well mannered children in college. 17 and up. Porn doesn’t harm them. That’s what he said.
I’m someone’s child too, at age 64. The context he used it in was “young people”.
Porn lovers cannot think rationally and lie. That’s the way it’s always been on these threads. Plus they all get very angry and aggressive.
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