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.
The issue is not, never has been and will not be about keeping porn from children. That's a misdirection play. Of course, society can keep things from children. The issue is, that as you do that you do not do the same with adults. Or, in the alternative, do we structure all of society for what is suitable for the 8-year old child? Posing a fallacious argument is the signature of one who has no valid or rational argument left.
Huh? Libertarian? No, Presbyterian, life-long Republican with a brain.
Did I say you were rude and crude? No. I just said I have seen very rude and crude support for porn on other threads.
There are two ways to get people to stop doing things that harm themselves AND others.
1. Punish them, which includes making acts which harm people including OTHERs, illegal.
2. Convince them one way or another that such acts are harmful - by reason and argument, and/or a change of heart.
Pornography up until a generation or so ago was illegal in most states and localities. The ACLU and associated leftists got the SCOTUS to bend to their will, and now porn shops are spread across this great nation like MacDonald's.
You think the men who wrote the Bill of Rights would clap and cheer at the ubiquitous spread of pornography and say, "Yesss! That's JUST what we had in mind when we wrote the Amendments!"
Or do you think they would be horrified to see what sick, miserable crap is foisted on people in the name of free speech?
P.S. You like putting people in boxes, apparently. You put me in a box that doesn't exactly fit.
Freedom is not licence. Apparently you have mistaken the two.
You do realize that the men who wrote the Constitution did not intend for freedom of speech to include explicit pornography to be available to all; especially on the internet to children.
Just becuase you or someone else needs to view others having sex doesn't mean everyone else has to cater to your fetish.
Resisting the mindless arguments of controlling types is defined now as "defending pornography"? How silly.
I would resent any overture by anyone who lacks the courtesy and common sense not to presume something for the sole purpose of criticizing me for it. Hell, I might resent it to the extent of rearranging his nose.
You have committed the sin of presumption, the assumption that God will bless a nation that is confirmed in sin. That God will just let you slide. God's judgement fell upon Israel and Judah despite the pleadings of the prophets.
America got to this pass not because of "freedom of speech" but because bad judicial decisions in the 60's struck down obscenity laws. This can be reversed. Of course porn will never be eliminated entirely, but returning it to the level of the stag film instead of a multibillion dollar industry would be a great victory.
There is nothing in the least "small government conservative" about your libertarian, ACLU, Hollywood agenda of moral anarchism. The Founding Fathers understood that only a moral culture can be free. The fewer inner moral restraints people have, the more laws they need. The more they will demand the state protect them from the vices of others.
This is the fatal flaw in libertarian ideology.
A response you pro-pornography types is to equate it with free speech and declare that any attempt to suppress it would lead to tyranny.
Gee, that's odd. Like I said earlier, I have no recollection of pre-"Deep Throat" America being any kind of a police state. Even before "I Am Curios - Yellow", we seemed to have plenty of rights and freedoms. So your equation of suppression of porn with political repression is ridiculous.
Obscenity laws that were freely created by democratic consent of the governed to protect their families and communities were struck down by ACLU lawyers backed up by Hollywood and activist judges. THAT is what got us to this pass.
Your logic amazes me.
Looking at nude pictures causes one to become a psychotic cannibal?!
So by the same logic, using motor oil in your car causes you to become a circus clown.
Incredible.
Well, better legalize hookers... 'cause porn will kill ya.
The alcohol, serial killers arguement is valid.
Not all alcohol abusers are drunk drivers but very many are. And they are in fact the probable cause of most fatal traffic accidents. They do damage vastly out of proportion to their numbers.
So does pornography. Not all porn consumers are monsters. But porn will feed the evil of an already warped personality.
Society HAS legislated against porn for a very long time until activist judges decided that "Deep Throat" was free speech. And that is its right to do so before activist judges took that right away.
Same here. While the original intent of the First Amendment may not protect pornography as "free speech", by the same token there is no enumerated power who's original intent was to enable Congress to mandate the seizure of pornography by state or local police.
"there is no enumerated power who's original intent was to enable Congress to mandate the seizure of pornography by state or local police."
True, but because that power is not specifically forbidden to the states or the "people." As per the 10th ammendment, states can ban pornography and the Supreme Court should stay out of it. It was only "activist" judges that stole that power from the people.
The men who wrote the Constitution also didn't envisage an air force, what was the meaning of full faith and credit, due process, unreasonable search and seizure, equal protection of the laws, and about 37 other normatively ambiguous terms that permeate the document.
What you offer as agrument is what the law calls --ipse dixit--that's a phrase that means: "It is so because I say it is so, not because there is any legal authority, doctrine or common sense to my assertion."
Of course, when legal authority, constitutional doctrine, or just plain 'ole common, walkin' around sense fails it becomes mandatory to blame: the ACLU, judges, lawyers, liberals, godless heathens, Democrats, public schools, or any other person or institution that exhibits the slightest degree of the ability to engage in independent thought.
Making noise and stomping your feet in protest adds nothing to a discussion that calls for intellectual analysis. The problem with trying to argue with a fool is that you then have two fools arguing.
And your argument is "I like porn, I want porn, therefore porn shall be called free speech because I say so. And it has to be available everywhere so I don't have to take any trouble to find it. And if communities don't want it, too effing bad. My wants come before anything else, and I call this - freedom."
Free speech refers to expression of ideas, not obscenity. The ACLU and pornographers are the ones who got the leftist Nazgul SCOTUS to shove porn down everyones' throats, whether they want it in their neighborhood or not.
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