In flagrante in public ... inexcusable

Jewish World Review ^ | 3-16-04 | Leonard Pitts, Jr.

[SJackson]

Let me set the scene.

You're sitting in traffic with your 4-year-old. Suddenly you notice she's watching with rapt interest something in the next car. You glance over and realize that the other vehicle is equipped with one of those DVD screens that are available on certain late-model cars.

The option is usually marketed as a way of keeping kids quiet on long road trips. But what the folks over there are watching is more loin king than "Lion King." Because there onscreen, before your daughter's steadily widening eyes, is a pair of exceedingly fit people using their private parts in ways the child never imagined they could be used. It is, in other words, a porn flick. In traffic. In public.

This is not just something that could happen, but something that already did. And the mother in question, 26-year-old Andrea Carlton of Gurnee, Ill., was outraged. "You're not allowed to have sex in your car," she said, "so why are you allowed to watch it?"

We have the Associated Press to thank for bringing this incident to our attention. According to its recent story, more and more drivers are using their onboard DVDs to screen pornography. I won't call it a trend, because that probably overstates the case. But even if we're only talking about a few isolated incidents, it still seems to speak to a rather troubling aspect of life in America just past the turn of the century.

Call it the loss of the public square.

I'll elaborate, but first let me head off any misunderstanding. My concern here is not that some people choose to entertain themselves with pornography. Frankly, so long as no children or beasts are involved, I don't care what grown people watch in the privacy of their own homes.

Public spaces, however, are a different matter. It used to be that you were sent into the world beyond your front door with an understanding that the public square belonged, well ... "to the public." To all of us. You were taught that it betrayed a lack of class and intelligence to act as if it belonged to you alone.

Where I come from, we had a term for that understanding. We called it home training.

[aloysius89]

Dear Modernman,
Appropriate name. You are laboring under the distinctly modern fallacy that strict mathematical proof and complete linguistic accuracy and clarity are required of anything claiming to be true (including the law). I can recognize what I cannot define and a handshake contract is still a legal contract. I would like to have a long discussion about this but lunch time is short. I would just like to remind you that a certain previous president hid behind the claim that unless something could be completely and accurately defined it had no legal existence. His claim was "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."
p.s. I believe you misspelled Cthulthu.

[savedbygrace]

Ah, but one common element of that story and the issue at the heart of this thread is that of people assuming the place of God in their own lives.

In effect, they say to God, "You ain't the boss o' me."

God will have the last word, of course, whether a person believes that God exists or not.

[MineralMan]

"You are so right, it is so much safer to be flashed with porn at 70 mph. "

This is silly. I make it a serious point not to be looking into the interiors of other cars when traveling on the freeway. I watch the road ahead, check my mirrors, and always pay attention to the road and what's happening there.

I would never see what was on a video screen in another car. If I'm driving, I'm busy all the time.

But this is beside the point. I've already said that I think it is a bad idea to be viewing porn in an automobile on the highway. Does there need to be a law against it? I don't really think so. It hardly seems to me to be a large issue.

Besides, like your 80 mph driver, most folks who wanted to would just ignore the law. As you point out, the 80 mph driver is rarely ticketed, and the same would apply to the viewer of porn in the backseat of a car.

This is just a big non-issue, really. Some want all depictions of sexual activity banned in all places. That, despite your eternal hope, is not going to happen.

[Modernman]

I think you can be honest enough to state that a film where graphic sex intended to arouse the viewer is pornographic

Sure, that's an easy case. However, the problem is drawing the line on difficult cases.

[antivenom]

If it is marketed to make a buck at the expense of the female(s) exploited, it is porn. If it is written in a book in a way to INTENTIONALLY cause a boner it is porn.

Porn is a marketing tool...it just usually uses sex between people...then you have OBSCENE porn, where women are degraded (usually done in 3rd world counties) to have sex with animals and inanimate objects.

THERE I DEFINED PORN...as for your example of incest, that is sexual deviancy...big differnce between the two.

[biblewonk]

As an aside, do all the moral liberals on this board add a "-man" to the end of their handles? You should just start calling yourselves "metroman1, metroman2, metroman3, etc...

Wow, that's a very interesting catch.

[MineralMan]

I guess I don't get your point.....

[Myrddin]

Reasonable people granted gun owners the indulgence of their rights, and now those same reasonable people are victims of gun violence.

You really should lay off the crack cocaine. It impairs your judgement and causes you to make inane posts.

[antivenom]

I'm not surprised...

[MineralMan]

"If it is marketed to make a buck at the expense of the female(s) exploited, it is porn. If it is written in a book in a way to INTENTIONALLY cause a boner it is porn.
Porn is a marketing tool...it just usually uses sex between people...then you have OBSCENE porn, where women are degraded (usually done in 3rd world counties) to have sex with animals and inanimate objects. "

---

For some reason, when I viewed your message, there was no text. Some FR glitch, I guess. So I made a joke based on there being no text there. Now I can see what you wrote.

Pornography doesn't always have to do with women, as you suggested. There's a lot of gay porn out there. So that part of your definition is lacking.

We have a legal definition of pornography, sort of. But it fails to work, too.

Always, what is pornography is decided by the individual, except in the case of child pornography, which is pretty much universally condemned, since it exploits children who cannot legally consent to such activity.

Since you focus only on women, you miss a great deal in your definition.

[Modernman]

You are laboring under the distinctly modern fallacy that strict mathematical proof and complete linguistic accuracy and clarity are required of anything claiming to be true (including the law).

Accuracy and clarity are necessary for the existence of a functional law. If it was okay to write vague laws, we could simply have one law: "It is illegal to do bad things" and leave it at that.

a handshake contract is still a legal contract

Not always- in most states, an oral contract for land or with a duration greater than one year is not valid.

I would just like to remind you that a certain previous president hid behind the claim that unless something could be completely and accurately defined it had no legal existence

His answers to the deposition questions were legally correct- he was trying to narrow the scope of the questions.

[hopespringseternal]

I make it a serious point not to be looking into the interiors of other cars when traveling on the freeway

And I stand in my seat so as to get as much of my body as possible into another car running alongside me.

This is just a big non-issue, really. Some want all depictions of sexual activity banned in all places. That, despite your eternal hope, is not going to happen.

Sore loser concession. You sure wasted a lot of time debating an issue that is not a big deal and never going to happen there, sparky.

It's funny that we don't have any trouble defining obscenity when two people are doing some thing in public, but snap a picture of that same activity and you get a murky void even Solomon couldn't define.

[BSunday]

How about an explicit video recreation of a Biblical event such as this one? Would that be porn, in your view?

Seeing that it would constitute a depraved recreation by sinful men seeking to embellish the events for the sheer purpose of titillation, I would have to say yes. Does that cast an evil light on the Bible's truthful but non graphic rendition of a real event? Definitely not.

Why do you make such a distinction between the written word and visual media?

I didn't. I was making a distinction between a tasteful retelling of facts and human perversity.

Following your definition,

I wasn't making a "definition"

"Lady Chatterly's Lover" and the "Story of O" do not qualify as porn, while nude paintings by Michaelangelo do.

You're really quite funny. Do Michaelangelo's paintings depict in graphic detail people having sex with each other ? I didn't think so.

[familyofman]

"As an aside, do all the moral liberals on this board add a "-man" to the end of their handles?"

Hello - why did I get dragged into this? I'm just sitting here minding my own business, haven't even visited this topic & WHAM - out of the blue I get struck by lightning. I love you guys too.

For what it's worth, I don't think watching porn in a moving car is very bright. I don't like people using their cell phones, applying makeup, reading the morning paper, or saying prayers while facing Mecca while driving either.

Have a nice day in your dank, dark, neandrathal, socially conservative caves.

[biblewonk]

Have a nice day in your dank, dark, neandrathal, socially conservative caves.

So I guess you are a social liberal. I guess the SN implies that. Are you excited about the progress gays are making?

[familyofman]

"I guess the SN implies that."

What is SN - I don't copy.

"Are you excited about the progress gays are making?"

I wouldn't say I'm excited, but I'm not upset about recognition of rights. Marriage is a bit far - social unions (contracts) can accomplish the same thing. I don't think my marrige is threatened by anything going on (almost 34 years, monogamous) anymore than it is by high divorce rates and the amount of cheating on spouses.

[pragmatic_asian]

"Seeing that it would constitute a depraved recreation by sinful men seeking to embellish the events for the sheer purpose of titillation, I would have to say yes. Does that cast an evil light on the Bible's truthful but non graphic rendition of a real event? Definitely not."

Who are you to judge what is in the hearts and minds of others? How do you know that it's done for the purpose of titillation or that the people who do it are sinful? There are people who say the Mel Gibson movie is made by a sinful man for the purpose of slandering and inciting violence against an entire people. Would you ban the Passion of Christ because some sadomasochists get turned on by seeing explicit violence? I'm not titillated by porn at all but plenty of people are excited just by an issue of Sports Illustrated.

I don't consider people who participate in making porn exploited. Unless buy into the liberal concepts of personal responsibility, those actors and actress choose to get paid for doing that kind of work.

"You're really quite funny. Do Michaelangelo's paintings depict in graphic detail people having sex with each other ? I didn't think so."

So are you but I don't think it's intentional. There's plenty of art that depicts sexual intercourse. I don't consider sculptures or paintings depicting sex that I've seen at the Norton Simon, NY Metropolitan Museum, the MOMA, Musee d'Orsay, etc... porn. There's a lot of great Indian art depicting the Kama Sutra.

If you want to watch porn in a car, tint your windows (which is illegal here in California).

[biblewonk]

I guess it makes sense that you'd think that way. It's a pretty common way of thinking and only religious nuts like me have a real problem with what they are doing.

[BSunday]

Who are you to judge what is in the hearts and minds of others?

I judge no man. The Bible is the judge, not me.

I don't consider people who participate in making porn exploited. Unless buy into the liberal concepts of personal responsibility, those actors and actress choose to get paid for doing that kind of work.

I'm not really sure where THAT came from. I didn't call anybody exploited as far as I know.

There's plenty of art that depicts sexual intercourse. I don't consider sculptures or paintings depicting sex that I've seen at the Norton Simon, NY Metropolitan Museum, the MOMA, Musee d'Orsay, etc... porn. There's a lot of great Indian art depicting the Kama Sutra

You can call it art as much as you care to, I suppose.

[NittanyLion]

It's obvious to me that there are a number of posters on this thread who would define porn as anything they don't like, and that carries some sort of sexual connotation. They'd have a sliding scale based on their personal preferences.

You've correctly pointed out that a free nation cannot (and should not) function in such a manner. Well done.