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 ...
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."
"North America's getting soft, and the rest of the world is getting tough, very tough"
- Videodrome
Rectum damm near killed him
I should hope so. Not much point if I weren't!
Like sprained wrists?
"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.
(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.")
Tailgunner Joe flies in via a cape in 3..2..1...
Was it porn that twisted the mind? Or was it porn that the person used to try to divert an already twisted mind?
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)?
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.)
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.
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>)
"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.
"The women who do porn are adults and they chose to do it."
So do prostitutes. Do you think prostitution should be legal?
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