Posted on 10/20/2005 4:56:55 PM PDT by wagglebee
For everybody that buys into this fight, the entire argument is revolving around men looking at pictures of women or of heterosexual behavior. That isn't all of it.
Nobody is discussing gay porn, which will NEVER be touched legally or otherwise. It is a huge, but under the radar part of the porn world. You can crusade til the moon turns blue against the heterosexual variety, but as with their bathhouses, the gays will never give up theirs.
When I was a kid, we routinely hung out in the porn theatres and adult bookstores. I'm going to provide a different point of view here. The internet glut of porn is preferable to seedy theatres and bookstores that used to poison neighborhoods and attract vermin.
Now, parents can control porn a lot easier than in my day. For many youngsters, sneaking online looks at the forbidden will be very much like looking at your sordid uncle's Playboys or video collection. Parents can very often control what is seen and viewed in their own homes. They set the limits, as it should be. In my day, my folks had no idea where I was hanging out.
As with abortion, practically speaking, the eradication of pornography has to take place by changing a mind at a time. Men are going to look at women, sometimes in provocative ways. The desire to do that will not be eradicated in this world. Right now, it's controlled very nicely. Where better than in one's own home should sexual appetites be controlled and limited?
Midge Decter, the wife of Norman Podhoretz, once said that men who use pornography are caught in long lasting puberty. Society is not going to make pornography illegal, despite the unique combination of left and right demanding it to do so. (The feminists hate it for their own reasons.)
We should encourage our young men to be chivalrous gentlemen, growing into good husbands and fathers. My own sons have absolutely no interest in adult materials. And fewer and fewer young men will as my own polluted, oversexed generation dies out. But take it away entirely and you create a massive new interest in the forbidden.
Good point! I'll add this point to my list of reasons to legalize prostitution!
And this is also a woman who refused to allow her children to go to the Nelcon Atkins Museum of Art (she refused to go as well - That was the place I suggested we meet on a first date, rather than a shopping mall. The reason didn't come out until our discussion on "porn"), due to the fact that there are nudes there. In addition to Playboy, she didn't approve of Michaelangelo. Her kids were in their teens. Her problem was with nudity of any sort, not porn. She had enough baggage to open a luggage store.
Mark
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