Security is like Heroin in a nation. 
Posted on 11/19/2004 3:07:51 PM PST by Lindykim
Porn Like Heroin in the Brain by Stuart Shepard, correspondent
Senate committee discusses pornography and the First Amendment.
Experts on pornography's effects on brain chemistry testified at a Senate hearing this week where a key point of discussion was whether porn is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment or addictive material that should be unlawful.
Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover described how pornography is analogous to cigarettes, noting that "it is a very carefully designed delivery system for evoking a tremendous flood within the brain of endogenous opioids." It's time, he added, to stop regarding it as simply a form of expression. "Modern science," Satinover said, "allows us to understand that the underlying nature of an addiction to pornography is chemically nearly identical to a heroin addiction."
Dr. Mary Anne Layden with the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania explained how a pornographic image is burned into the brain's pathways.
"That image is in your brain forever," she explained. "If that was an addictive substance, you, at any point for the rest of your life, could in a nanosecond draw it up."
Dr. Judith Reisman, president of the Institute for Media Education, called on the Senate to take action against pornography, saying it's time to mandate that law enforcement begin to collect all data and pornographic materials found in the possession of anyone involved in criminal activity. Doing so, she added, would yield data showing whether pornography is being used as a how-to manual for sex crimes.
"The evidence the panelists presented showed an overwhelming harm from pornography," said Daniel Weiss, media and sexuality analyst with Focus on the Family. He hopes the Senate will turn the evidence into action.
TAKE ACTION/FOR MORE INFORMATION If you think Congress should be taking serious action against pornography, you can start by thanking Sen. Sam Brownback for calling the hearing, then contact your representatives in Congress and let them know what you think. For help in contacting your elected representatives, please see our CitizenLink Action Center.
Also, to learn more about one person's struggles with pornography, we suggest the resource "An Affair of the Mind: One Woman's Courageous Battle to Salvage Her Family From the Devastation of Pornography." Author Laurie Hall shares her courageous struggle to protect herself and two children from her husband's addiction to pornography.
Man, I wish I had your memory. Unfortunately, I have to refresh the ol' porn buffer every so often.
Moral Absolutes Etc. Ping List -
Here we go, on a journey to find out what are the limits of set in stone morality - are there absolute limits to right and wrong, moral and immoral behavior? Are such limits sectarian in nature? Should religious or spiritual absolutes be the guide to laws or not? If not, where do guidelines for right and wrong come from?
(I haven't read the article yet, will later this evening.)
One thing for sure, FR has a bunch of rabid pornography supporters. Gird your figurative loins, roll up your figurative sleeves, and have at'em.
Did the founders of this country envision naked titty dancing and the most graphic of graphic sexually explicit pornagraphy being protected under the label of "freedom of speech"? If not, why not?
Let me know if anyone wants on/off the Moral Absolutes Ping List.
It could be possible that there are a large number of citizens of this US who don't really give a tinker's dam what you think. Or even if you do. So what you think really doesn't have much of an impact- or shouldn't have- on other free citizen's lives.
The Framers of the constitution were interested in protecting political speech not purile entertainment.
And of course you can show this exactly where in all of their writings or the Constitution itself??
However, they wouldn't be for protecting "Debbie Does Dallas." It is not political speech, it is entertainment.
So they weren't trying to protect religious speech either, just political. If religious and political speech are OK, then not entertaining speech? Maybe they weren't protecting making a joke as "free speech". It seems that speech is speech- political, religious, entertainment or whatever and our rights to it are not given to us by the government, but by our Creator.
One of the major reasons that they enshrined individual rights in the Constitution and particularly the First Amendment was that they understood full well that people have different views and no person's views should be forced upon another- particularly and specifically by the government.
"What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is wrong."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1817
Since there are many here who don't seem to agree with your "interpretation" about "Debbie Does Dallas" and "enterainment speech", then I would suspect that legislating for or against it would be "wrong".
I can't seem to find anywhere in the Constitution or the writings of the Founders anything that would separate "speech" into different categories- some to be protected and others not. In fact, the First Amendment is the first of 10 amendments notably called "The Bill of Rights", that spell out the immunities of individual citizens. Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech..." Nowhere is there any limitation on exactly what constituted "freedom of speech".
In fact, nowhere in the Constitution does it indicate that the unalienable rights, endowed by our Creator, could be limited only to "political" things but not "entertainment" things. I suspect that you will not find anywhere in the writings of our Founders any limitations or distinctions such that you espouse. In fact, quite the opposite:
"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Benjamin Rush, 1800
Enshrining YOUR particular thinking into law would be "tyranny" over the minds of others that don't share your views.
The Founders knew far too well the kinds of tyrannies that had been wrought by government sanction against certain types of thought and ideas. Therefore, they were trying to create a place that would be free from exactly those tyrannies. They knew, from personal experience, that as soon as the government could control what kinds of things could be spoken of, the next thing was being persecuted and jailed because they spoke of those things. And then thinking of those things. And then the "thought police."
The power of proscribing speaking about one's hobbies or pastimes or entertainments would certainly turn to proscription of speech about one's politics or religion.
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
-- Daniel Webster
I'm sorry, but your good intentions for the assumption of power over my entertainment doesn't give me any good feelings. Quite the opposite. And I certainly don't need you to be my master.
Porn ping.
If the standard is that only speech that is explicitly political or explicitly religious are the only forms covered by the First Amendment, it won't take long before a federal bureaucracy gets to decide wheather or not you get to own a copy of the Shooter's Bible, IMHO.
A moral society has moral laws and safeguards the tone of its culture. Funny, I don't remember pre-Deep Throat America being some kind of police state. It was an America were communities were free to protect themselves from the moral anarchism of "free speech" lawyers.
Because Christians understand that the marketplace is not where the moral tone of a nation should be set. Christians understand that righteousness exalts a nation and evil degrades it. The prophets understood that just because priestesses were giving away sex in the temple of Asherah and Israelites were chosing to patronize it doesn't make it good or right.
To the libertarian, ACLU, Hollywood secular mentality, porn is protected speech. It wasn't before 1960. Bad legal judgements destroyed the power of communities to enforce moral norms. And now we will have the power to fill the judiciary with judges who will reverse this.
To the Chrisian and the conservative, porn is cultural srychnine. To your party of cultural anarchy, which has nothing in the least to do with conservatism, hey, anything goes if someone will pay for it.
But the romance novels, like porn, or drugs, have a cumulative effect. They impoverish the real life and the development of real coping skills to the point that the addiction really is the only thing going on in the person's life.
It's naive to presume porn isn't a real problem just because it isn't your problem.
Don't you think the industry knows their product has this effect? They count on it. They plan for it and manipulate it.
Security is like Heroin in a nation.
Why would a small government republican vote for Bush? He's not about decreasing the size of government, certainly not after giving millions to the NEA. That apple didn't fall too far from the tree.
A lot of people like to drink alcohol
A certain percentage of them become alcoholics who drink while driving and cause accidents and death
Now I'll rephrase your conclusion slightly to see if your 'logic' holds up:
"The behavior of drunk drivers is not relevant to the question of whether or not there should be restrictions on the sale and use of alcohol."
It doesn't.
expose themselves as the perverts they are
We know what YOU are thinking...
How is this distinguishable from an "addiction" to good sex? And where does sex begin and tittilation end? (I suppose Bill Clinton could be invited as an expert witness.)
Of course, you do realize that pornography was locally banned throughout America from its founding through the 1950's without leading to the Taliban.
This isn't an issue with an easy answer. How do you ban pornography in the age of the internet? But equating oppostion to porn with the Taliban is silly.
An immoral society will inevitably lose its freedom. Just look at Europe. A good case can be made that the more sexually libertine a society becomes, the bigger and more controlling its government becomes.
Patently false. Don't fight logic. A=A.
But so you don't misunderstand my position, I am not against restrictions on the production or dissemination of porn. I just don't believe that the "serial killers" argument is either correct or helpful to the debate.
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