Posted on 05/14/2014 10:36:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Thirty years ago Congress passed protective measures regarding pornography. On May 21, 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Child Protection Act, which was supposed to protect persons younger than 18 from exploitation by pornographers. (Other measures were designed to keep those under 18 from accessing pornography.) Two months later President Reagan signed into law the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, designed to keep persons below age 21 from purchasing alcoholic beverages.
Now, visualize this scene: Herbie, 13, walks into his local tavern and asks for a vodka martini—shaken, not stirred. Tex the barkeep asks, “Are you at least 21 years old?” Herbie says, “Sure.” Tex serves him. As he sips, Herbie pulls out his iPhone and watches a pornographic scene. I suspect most of you know what’s wrong with that picture: In all 50 states Herbie would not get his martini. Tex or anyone else would card him, demanding a driver’s license or other official proof that Herbie is at least 21. But the porn? No one would interfere.
The poet Ogden Nash (1902-1971) wrote, “Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.” Today, I’d add another line with a different rhyme scheme: “Porn’s even faster but it leaves you forlorn.” I won’t go into detail here, but relatively few porn sites electronically card users. Some require use of a credit card to access much of their content, but even they are like bars at which persons of any age can get drunk.
And yet, pornography is a huge problem not only among adults but among children and teenagers as well. If you’re sending your very well-mannered children to college and the dorm Wi-Fi has no filtering mechanism, they are likely to be exposed early and often to hard-core porn—and some become addicted. Even if it does have a filter, your son and perhaps your daughter will probably see porn at some point.
Why the difference between alcohol and pornography, both products that sideswipe many teens? Thirty years ago President Reagan at the signing ceremony said he would appoint a commission to investigate pornography, and he did. Attorney General Ed Meese headed it up, citizens including James Dobson served on it—and the press ridiculed its serious conclusions. The U.S. Supreme Court also failed to take pornography seriously enough to change the almost-anything-goes attitude it had pioneered during the 1960s.
Now, as the group Enough Is Enough reports, porn makes up more than one-third of the internet industry and earns its purveyors more than $3,000 per second. Porn sites get more visitors each month than Twitter, Netflix, and Amazon combined. Most teens view pornography online, and one survey of 16- to 20-year-olds found nearly one out of four young men and one out of 10 young women admitting they tried to kick the habit but could not. Many young men expect dates and wives to perform as do actresses in the 11,000 porn films shot each year.
Need other dire stats? Witherspoon Institute conference research (proceedings published as “The Social Costs of Pornography”) showed that two-thirds of 18-to-34-year-old men visit porn sites regularly. (My hunch is that many of them go to church less often in part because they marry less often, and they marry less often in part because they access pornography more often.) Many men find it harder to relate to real women. Most divorces involve one partner compulsively using pornography.
Does this evidence mean legislators should act? Here’s the problem: A push to restrict pornography can play into the hands of those who hate Christian truth-telling. Now that influential atheists and secularists hope to restrict evangelistic efforts, our legal protection is the First Amendment proclamation of freedom for religion, speech, and the press—but since pornographers also rely on that amendment (as mistakenly interpreted), limits on it will rain on the innocent as well as the guilty.
A hard truth: Christians are a minority in America, and minorities should oppose increases in majoritarian power. A hard question: If we now should be quiescent on one issue to lessen the likelihood of a spillover to another, what hope do we have for constructive change? Not much, except what Christians have learned throughout the ages: Our hope is in the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He changes hearts and viewing patterns.
A pretty silly remark. Anybody who hasn't been exposed to porn long before he goes off the college hasn't tried to access it.
Why should he start doing so simply because he's at college?
Porn actors are basically paid to have sex in public. How is this different than prostitution? Well, Congress calls it “free speech”.
I think the author’s point is not that an 18 year old has never seen porn, but in an unfiltered environment, with unfettered access, and others doing so without supervision 24 hrs. per day....the odds of developing an addiction are infinitely higher.
I’m no libertarian, but I can’t think of any way short of shutting down the Internet that would be an effective way to prevent porno access from those of any age who seek it.
For my own children, they must get permission for each and every web site they go to. No private email. CERTAINLY no social media.
Possible. However, it should be noted that traditional porn sites are dying, due to competition from free porn sites similar to Youtube.
and earns its purveyors more than $3,000 per second.
Again, quite possibly true. But the biggest effect of the interwebs on porn has been to kill off the middleman.
Instead of a "porn king" getting rich off exploited women, the norm is more often a women entrepeneur selling her "services" directly to the consumers, via private shows and such.
The porn industry is heavily invested in keeping age verification out of the Internet.
It’s tantamount to giving beer to 13 year-olds and defending it by saying “I couldn’t card him because he couldn’t show me an ID”.
To which I respond: Liquor? I barely know her...
Prostitution the original exercise in free enterprise and supply and demand!
It’s a State issue pretty much. Some States say it is, some say it isn’t. State lines usually aren’t crossed so that won’t involve Fed Law.
What upsets me the most about COPA was that it COULD have been written to not be over-broad and survive constitutional challenges. But, worrying more about impressing constituents than doing anything tl help them, the morons we elect passed a law so braod that a First year Law Student would know it was unconstitutional.
Clinton and Janet Reno deliberately halted Justice Department activities to enforce pornography laws.
The pornography explosion began under Janet Reno, not only because of the technology expansion of the internet, but because the feds deliberately did not target pornographers.
The alcohol comparison is a good one, by the way. Pornography damages people and marriages and families.
You are a great parent who cares
Here’s another catchy phrase that works for more than just “porn”...
“World proof your kids as there is no way to kid proof the World.”
“Porn addiction” is a feminist phrase concocted by women who have spent 0% of their time trying to understand just how much a young man likes and dsires sex.
Hint: They like it a lot.
It’s like saying that a runner has water addiction and a shoe fetish.
How is politics any different from prostitution ?? With the exception that you’re generally not satisfied, when a POLITICIAN screws you. . . . (evil grin)
Decades ago, as a young teen, the only thing a newsstand guy cared about when I wanted to buy a copy of Playboy was whether I had money to pay for it.
When I was a teenager you had to rely on the “Porn Fairy” leaving magazines in the bushes.
It’s sure a far cry from my youth, where if you wanted to access porn you had to bribe somebody’s drunken uncle to travel downtown to the red light district and bring you back a couple of magazines an a brown paper bag.
My guess is that if the truth were known, porn is the underlying problem that caused the fairly recent increase in ED.
It’s also the likely reason that the young nowadays see nothing wrong with depravity like homosexuality. If they’re looking at depravity all day every day, they become sheeplized and indoctrinated.
/mark
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