Pornography: Harmless Fun or Public Health Hazard?

Citizen Link ^ | 05.19.05 | Daniel Weiss

[Coleus]

Testimony by Daniel Weiss, Senior Analyst for Media and Sexuality, Focus on the Family, at the May 19, 2005, Summit on Pornography: Obscenity Enforcement, Corporate Participation and Violence against Women and Children.  Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this forum. My name is Daniel Weiss and I serve as Focus on the Family’s Senior Analyst for Media and Sexuality. As we consider pornography and the law, we must answer a foundational question: Does the state have a compelling interest in protecting people from obscene materials?  Folks on this panel may agree that the state does have such an interest, but U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster came to a different conclusion. Dismissing the Justice Department’s case against Extreme Associates, a company producing rape and torture films, Lancaster wrote that “the government can no longer rely on the advancement of a moral code … as a legitimate, let alone a compelling state interest.”

Aside from ignoring clear Supreme Court precedent, Lancaster’s ruling recognized no harm posed by obscene materials. However this case is ultimately decided, it underscores a declining lack of recognition in legal and cultural realms of pornography's threats to individuals, families, and society.

Ultimately, for obscenity law to be consistently and effectively enforced, our culture must understand the facts on pornography.

More than 25 years ago, Dr. Victor Cline identified the progressive nature of pornography addiction. Once addicted, a person’s need for pornography escalates both in frequency and in deviancy. The person then grows desensitized to the material, no longer getting a thrill from what was once exciting. Finally, this escalation and desensitization drives many addicts to act out their fantasies on others.¹  At a Senate hearing last fall, medical experts corroborated Cline’s early breakthroughs. New technology is allowing doctors to look inside addicts' brains to determine just how damaging pornography is. The witnesses described research showing the similarity of porn addiction to cocaine addiction. Further, because images are stored in the brain and can be recalled at any moment, these experts believe that a porn addiction may be harder to break than a heroin addiction.²  Now, no one is seriously advocating the legalization of cocaine or heroin, but somehow the pornography industry has convinced a large segment of the population that viewing porn is not just harmless fun, but is also a fundamental right.

By not calling pornography what it is — highly addictive and destructive material — we are heading for troubled times. Dr. Patrick Carnes, a leading researcher on sex addiction, estimates that 3 to 6 percent of Americans are sexually addicted.³ That’s as many as 20 million people.  This epidemic isn’t confined to individuals, however. Pornography is one of the leading causes of family breakdown today.

Two-thirds of the divorce lawyers attending a 2002 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers said excessive interest in online porn contributed to more than half of the divorces they handled that year. They also said pornography had an almost non-existent role in divorce just seven or eight years earlier.⁴

A poll conducted through my own organization’s Web site found that 50 percent of more than 50,000 respondents had been negatively affected by pornography.  This devastation isn’t confined to adults either. The Justice Department estimates that nine of 10 children between the ages of 8 and 16 have been exposed to pornography online.⁵ Software company Symantec found that 47 percent of school-age children receive pornographic spam on a daily basis,⁶ and representatives from the pornography industry told Congress’ COPA Commission that as much as 20 to 30 percent of the traffic to some pornographic Web sites are children.⁷

Ralph DiClemente, a behavioral scientist at Emory University, described the danger of this exposure. He said, “[Children] can’t just put [porn] into their worldview, because they don’t have one.”⁸ He went on to explain that pornography becomes a building block in a child’s mental and emotional development.  When pornography becomes a filter through which the rest of life is understood, serious damage occurs. A 2001 report found that more than half of all sex offenders in Utah were adolescents — and children as young as 8 years old were committing felony sexual assault.⁹

The porn industry fights laws such as the Child Online Protection Act, which requires pornographers to use age verification systems, because they know this flood of pornographic imagery is creating a new generation of consumers.   This increased culture-wide sexualization is generating incredible public health risks. One in five adults in the United States has an STD,¹⁰ and 19 million new STD infections occur annually, almost half of them among youth ages 15 to 24.¹¹  Pornography is also a significant factor in sexual violence. The FBI reports that the most common interest among serial killers is hardcore pornography. Another study found that 87 percent of child molesters were regular consumers of hardcore pornography.¹² Just last week, the nation mourned 8-year-old Jessica DeLaTorre, who was abducted, raped, and murdered by a porn addict who had viewed child pornography at an Internet café the night before.

Many of you may also recall Ted Bundy, the serial killer from Florida. In an interview with Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson, just hours before he was executed, Bundy described how early exposure to pornography consumed him and led him down his murderous path. He said he was ultimately responsible for his actions, but that the messages in pornography primed him for those actions.

As horrifying as this is, we should not be surprised. Although the Supreme Court was clear in Miller v. California that hardcore pornography enjoys no First Amendment protection, lax federal and state law enforcement has essentially given obscenity the protection denied to it in the Constitution.  This lack of enforcement has allowed a back-alley enterprise to grow into an unprecedented global trade in human persons. Pornography turns people into commodities. Men and women become sexual objects to be bought, sold, used and discarded. The last time the United States recognized human beings as consumer goods, it took a civil war to end it.

We should not be shocked with skyrocketing STD infections or marital and family breakdown. Nor when men rape women and children or even when children rape one another. These developments are entirely consistent with the explosive growth in pornography.  It's not harmless adult entertainment, as some would like us to believe, but a real, measurable and undeniable threat to individuals, families and society.  The crucial question before us is not whether or not the state has a compelling interest in protecting society from the harm of pornography, but rather, given the overwhelming evidence of harm, why it chooses to do so little?

Thank you.
Last revised on May 19, 2006

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¹ Dr. Victor B. Cline, Pornography’s Effects on Adults & Children (New York: Morality in Media, 1999), p. 5.
² "The Science Behind Pornography Addiction," U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Web site, (expert witness testimony), http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/witnesslist.cfm?id=1343 (18 May 2005).
³ “Sex Addiction Q&A,” SexHelp.com, http://www.sexhelp.com/sa_q_and_a.cfm (16 May 2005).
⁴ “Is the Internet Bad for Your Marriage? Online Affairs, Pornographic Sites Playing Greater Role in Divorces,” PR Newswire, 14 November 2002.
⁵ Prepared statement of Attorney General John Ashcroft at National Prosecutors' Symposium on Obscenity, 6 June 2002.
⁶ “Symantec survey reveals more than 80 percent of children using email receive inappropriate spam daily,” Symantec News Release, 9 June 2003.
⁷ Dick Thornburgh and Herbert S. Lin, eds., Youth, Pornography and the Internet, (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2002), p. 78.
⁸ Dean Schabner, “Danger Zone?” ABCNews.com, 26 June 2002.
⁹ “Child on Child,” KSL TV, May 7, 2001.
¹⁰ W. Cates Jr. “Estimates of the Incidence and Prevalence of Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the United States,” American Social Health Association Panel, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 1999; 26 (Supp): 2-7.
¹¹ H. Weinstock, S. Berman and W. Cates, “Sexually Transmitted Diseases Among American Youth: Incidence and Prevalence Estimates, 2000,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2004; 36(1):6-10.
¹² W. Marshall, “Report on the Use of Pornography by Sexual Offenders,” Report to the Federal Department of Justice, Ottawa, Canada, 1983.

[IncPen]

I'll believe it when I see it.

[MovementConservative]

Porn is not reality. Men get caught up in a fantasy world instead of developing real relationships.

[CrawDaddyCA]

The crucial question before us is not whether or not the state has a compelling interest in protecting society from the harm of pornography, but rather, given the overwhelming evidence of harm, why it chooses to do so little?

Not buying the argument. As we've seen with gun control laws, once the government starts to pass 'except in this case' laws violating an Amendment (in this case the 1st), it won't stop. More and more people will want to pass more and more laws.

I'm not a big fan of porno, but as the saying goes, I've seen this movie before.

[MHGinTN]

There ought be a specific designation on the net for pornographic sites, perhaps '.prn'. ANY obscene material not using that nick ought be forced off the net and fined heavily. How to enforce this? The industry ought to be the source for enforcing this approach, if they're truly interested in protecting children from smut.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Here we go again. More bogus studies. More worrying about what other people are doing in their lives.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Men get caught up in a fantasy world instead of developing real relationships.

Maybe a few do, and they have bigger problems than porn. The rest see it for what it is, and enjoy it in moderation. Don't try to infringe on their right to do so in peace.

[lesser_satan]

bump for later

[Valpal1]

Why do you believe porn is political speech deserving of 1st ammendment protection?

Porn is far more similar to commercial speech (advertising) which is not protected by the first ammendment.

I've got no problem regulating and taxing the snot out of it. Be a nice little cash cow, bet it would bring in enough to fix/save social security. LOL, then the porn consumers could say they were saving for their retirement.

[Strategerist]

ANY obscene material not using that nick ought be forced off the net and fined heavily. How to enforce this?

Umm, you are aware that the internet extends to other countries, right?

So you're choices are 1) cutting off the US internet from other countries 2) one-world government (of the dictatorial variety, or 3) Airstrikes and Marines landing in countries with less-effective internet regulations than we have.

[MHGinTN]

Typical ... 'it's too hard so we can't fix the problem.' And in typical liberal style, you offer extreme negatives rather than consider reality. If international crime can be fought so can this blight upon humanity.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

"Men get caught up in a fantasy world instead of developing real relationships."

I know most porn is for guys -- one way to tell is that the videos always end when the guy climaxes as opposed to the girl.

But there is great porn for women out there. You just have to look for it.

And lots of real relationships are enhanced by porn.

YMMV although for your sake I hope it doesn't.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

"this blight upon humanity"

Porn?

Aww. Come on. Lighten up. Live a little.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

"Porn is far more similar to commercial speech"

Amateur porn? Nah.

[Pyro7480]

I guess we know where your mind is, given your posts.

[cryptical]

I've got no problem regulating and taxing the snot out of it.

This is a conservative board. Regulating and taxing the snot out of belongs over at DU, with all the other socialist ideas.

[Caesar Soze]

I think junk food advertisements are more harmful than pornography. At least pornography encourages a vigorous, active lifestyle. Junk food advertisements encourage health problems and increases in the cost of medical care.

[Valpal1]

Discouraging a behavior through taxes or encouraging a behavior by not taxing it is a standard conservative theory.

I prefer to stop taxing beneficial economic behaviors and taxing harmful anti-social behaviors.

Let's legalize and tax recreational drugs too.

[cryptical]

Discouraging a behavior through taxes or encouraging a behavior by not taxing it is a standard conservative theory.

For some values of "standard conservative theory". Got a cite, or are you just making that up?

The "standard conservative theory" I'm a proponent of encorages freedom, and taxes citizens to pay for limited government services in a fair manner.