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Battle Brews As Porn Moves Into Mainstream
Breitbrat ^ | 04/01/2006 | David Crary

Posted on 04/01/2006 5:37:42 PM PST by Panerai

The industry's VIPs mingle at political galas and Super Bowl parties. Their product is available on cell phones, podcasts, and particularly the Internet _ there it's an attraction like no other, patronized by tens of millions of Americans.

It's pornography. And if you're a consumer, John Harmer thinks you're damaging your brain.

Harmer is part of a cadre of anti-porn activists seeking new tactics to fight an unprecedented deluge of porn which they see as wrecking countless marriages and warping human sexuality. They are urging federal prosecutors to pursue more obscenity cases and raising funds for high-tech brain research that they hope will fuel lawsuits against porn magnates.

"We don't think it's a lost cause," said Harmer, a Utah-based auto executive and former politician who's been fighting porn for 40 years.

"It's the most profitable industry in the world," he said. "But I'm convinced we'll demonstrate in the not-too-distant future the actual physical harm that pornography causes and hold them financially accountable. That could be the straw that breaks their back."

The activists' adversary is a sprawling industry that, by some counts, offers more than 4 million porn sites on the Internet, that in the United States alone is estimated to be worth $12 billion a year. A tracking firm, comScore Media Metrix, says about 40 percent of Internet users in the United States visit adult sites each month.

Porn products are featured at popular sex expositions and retail chains such as Hustler Hollywood. Major hotels provide in-room porn, and adult film stars are now mainstream celebrities. Mary Carey attended a VIP Republican fundraiser in Washington in mid-March; Jenna Jameson's "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" hit the best-seller lists and she hosted a racy pre-Super Bowl party in Detroit in February.

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: ambulancechasers; boguslawsuits; intotheabyss; junkscience; lawsuitabuse; lawsuitlottery; libertarians; media; moralabsolutes; porn; psuedoscience; shysters; warongenesis
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To: Panerai

Guys like this always seem to have a great personal interest in this subject for "Research purposes..."


21 posted on 04/01/2006 6:39:21 PM PST by WestVirginiaRebel (Common sense will do to liberalism what the atomic bomb did to Nagasaki-Rush Limbaugh)
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To: WestVirginiaRebel
Guys like this always seem to have a great personal interest in this subject for "Research purposes..."

If they make it their job to lobby against porn, they can always write off their purchases as "business expenses."

22 posted on 04/01/2006 6:42:19 PM PST by Celtjew Libertarian
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To: Panerai

"North America's getting soft, and the rest of the world is getting tough, very tough"

- Videodrome


23 posted on 04/01/2006 6:44:07 PM PST by SlowBoat407 (The best stuff happens just before the thread snaps.)
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To: Panerai
"It's pornography. And if you're a consumer, John Harmer thinks you're damaging your brain."

John Harmer professor of neurology at the University of.... oh wait, John Harmer the auto executive and former politician. I gotcha. *wink* *wink* *nod* *nod*
24 posted on 04/01/2006 6:46:51 PM PST by NJ_gent (Modernman should not have been banned.)
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To: Lurker

Rectum damm near killed him


25 posted on 04/01/2006 6:53:06 PM PST by al baby (Father of the Beeber)
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To: martin_fierro
KittyPorn


26 posted on 04/01/2006 6:56:07 PM PST by al baby (Father of the Beeber)
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To: Panerai
It's pornography. And if you're a consumer, John Harmer thinks you're damaging your brain.

I should hope so. Not much point if I weren't!

27 posted on 04/01/2006 6:57:48 PM PST by JAWs (Ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed. Der er intet men.)
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To: Panerai
But I'm convinced we'll demonstrate in the not-too-distant future the actual physical harm that pornography causes

Like sprained wrists?

28 posted on 04/01/2006 6:59:23 PM PST by JAWs (Ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed. Der er intet men.)
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To: little jeremiah

"Pornography is not benign"

I think victims of rape, kidnapping, and murder would agree with you. Those who were brutalized by people who warped their minds with porn, and then went out to act out their fantasies.
With that thought let's remember Danielle VanDamme - kidnapped, raped, and murdered by her seemingly "normal" neighbor, David Westerfield -whose mind was twisted by his fascination with porn.


29 posted on 04/01/2006 7:04:24 PM PST by Scotswife
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To: Panerai
No one is forced to buy or look at porn. As for the effects, its like anything else in life: some people can handle them and some can't.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

30 posted on 04/01/2006 7:05:00 PM PST by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: Panerai

Tailgunner Joe flies in via a cape in 3..2..1...


31 posted on 04/01/2006 7:06:46 PM PST by Windsong (Jesus Saves, but Buddha makes incremental backups)
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To: Scotswife

Was it porn that twisted the mind? Or was it porn that the person used to try to divert an already twisted mind?


32 posted on 04/01/2006 7:11:24 PM PST by Celtjew Libertarian
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To: RHINO369
Do you think it's OK for a woman to be paid to be sexually tortured with needles, nails, fire, electricity, suffocation, and whips to the point of getting welts and bleeding? How about being paid to have sex with animals? If you don't, then you don't support the pornography that's already out there and isn't being prosecuted thanks to the Clinton Administration. If you do, then I'm curious where you would draw your line, if you have any. If someone paid someone a million dollars to be murdered for the sexual gratification of others, and the person consented to being murdered, would that be OK? And even if you do think it's all OK, how do you tell when such a "performance" is consentual or coerced, or do you think that's not an issue?

For more detail on porn and the effect its widespread availability has on children, even if their parents don't consume it, check out the web sites for Frontline's American Porn (you can watch this show on the web site or read a transcript) and The Lost Children of Rockdale County (transcript and other material). It used to be that the public space was child friendly and pornography was something consumed in private. Now parents need to hide their children indoors with the TV and radio off if they want to avoid porn. I'm sorry if I think it's backwards when nice people have to be prisoners of their own home and sleazy people get to run free.

What I'd also really like to know is how many of the porn advocates in these discussions have children and, if you do, how do you keep them away from porn (or do you at all)?

33 posted on 04/01/2006 7:11:34 PM PST by Question_Assumptions
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To: Lurker

The only physical harm I can think porn might cause is carpal-tunnel syndrome.


34 posted on 04/01/2006 7:18:54 PM PST by Junior (Identical fecal matter, alternate diurnal period)
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To: Junior
The only physical harm I can think porn might cause is carpal-tunnel syndrome.

Tell that to Bob Crane's two wives. See the movie Auto Focus for a dramatization of his life and the effect that porn had on it.

(Bob Crane was "Hogan" in "Hogan's Heroes", if you don't already know that.)

35 posted on 04/01/2006 7:21:02 PM PST by Question_Assumptions
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To: Question_Assumptions
The women who do porn are adults and they chose to do it.

Yes I know how easy it is for children to get porn, I'm part of the Internet generation. I'm only 20, and when I was 13 most guys I knew had computers and downloaded porn. It probably isn't the best thing for a kid but nobody I know turned out to be a sexual deviant.

You can't change the biological fact that young men are driven to have sex, even when people told them they'd go blind if they masturbated, they still did it. Your never going to keep young men from porn.

We live in a free society, unless my actions directly infringe on your rights you have no business telling me what I can do. So do a good job at parenting and your kids won't be exposed.
36 posted on 04/01/2006 7:22:20 PM PST by RHINO369
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To: Question_Assumptions
What I'd also really like to know is how many of the porn advocates in these discussions have children and, if you do, how do you keep them away from porn (or do you at all)?

Well, considering my 10 year-old son, once came across the word "porn," asked what it was, and then made it clear he wasn't interested in it, I'm not particularly concerned. No doubt, when he's a teenager, he'll stumble across his parents' stash, just like both his parents did.

My step-daughter turned 18 last year and a similar attitude toward her hasn't turned her into some sort of sex maniac or victim.

My basic parenting style is to explain to my children that there is an essential difference between what is appropriate behavior and interests for children, adolescents, and adults. Anything he is unsure about he is to ask one of his parents about and he knows that he will never get in trouble for asking us.

It's basically how my parents raised me on that topic and, if anything, I was too restrained in my teen and early adult years.

37 posted on 04/01/2006 7:25:00 PM PST by Celtjew Libertarian
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To: RHINO369
Yes I know how easy it is for children to get porn, I'm part of the Internet generation. I'm only 20, and when I was 13 most guys I knew had computers and downloaded porn. It probably isn't the best thing for a kid but nobody I know turned out to be a sexual deviant.

You kids have it so easy. When I was a teenager, I had to go skulking through my parents' night tables and closets to find porn. 8>)

38 posted on 04/01/2006 7:27:32 PM PST by Celtjew Libertarian
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To: Celtjew Libertarian

"Was it porn that twisted the mind? Or was it porn that the person used to try to divert an already twisted mind?"

It's probably a little of both.
A person who makes the decision, first of all, to view porn has made a decision to look at something twisted.
It is not real - it is a distorted and twisted image.
The image reinforces the desire - and maybe to "graduate" to a greater degree of depravity.

A man may stop here (viewing adult women) - or he may decide to view teenage girls. He may stop there or go on to view children.

It doesn't matter to the victims who are raped, kidnapped, or killed though.
They don't get the luxury of considering the first amendment right of their attacker or of the porn industry.

And as long as their are people out there who think this stuff is harmless - there will continue to be a steady flow of innocent victims.



39 posted on 04/01/2006 7:28:24 PM PST by Scotswife
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To: RHINO369

"The women who do porn are adults and they chose to do it."

So do prostitutes. Do you think prostitution should be legal?


40 posted on 04/01/2006 7:30:13 PM PST by Scotswife
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