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.
snip...Yes, if it was their daughter, son, wife, sister, or brother being used and exloited like a slab of meat they would feel and think differently.
Modernman.....Honestly? No, I wouldn't.
Your response is not predicated upon how "modern and/or enlightened" you are. Ancient barbarians would be right at home with your callously cruel response. So too would a certain class of "modern" Asian males who have no problem with selling their daughters into prostitution.
All of those barbarians have something in common with you........making use of other people.
My position on this is quite simple. Even if a family member of mine chose to take a job I did not like, I would still not want government to step in and prevent them from taking that job.
That's the difference between me and you- I don't expect government to solve my problems for me.
Sure. If someone is forcing porn mags on you, call the cops.
People have a right to not have their children assaulted by pornography.
Of course. Anyone who knowingly gives or sells porn to kids is violating the law. What's your point?
Just because some people have a twisted desire to watch other people have sex, doesn't give them an inalienable right to buy it everywhere
What makes you think you can buy porn everywhere?
Do you expect governent to protect you from murderers? thieves? rapists? child molesters? terrorists?
The issue here is not that you don't want government to 'step in", because you Do want it to 'step in" to keep you safe. It's that you see no wrong in porn {depersonalizing and using people in order to act out dark sexual fantasies}.
Those people violate rights, so it is the proper role of government to attempt to protect the citizenry from their depredations.
Pornography, on the other hand, violates no rights. Therefore, it is not the proper role of government to protect me from it. Following your logic, government should protect people from anything 'bad,' whether consensual or not, such as alcohol, tobacco and fatty foods.
The issue here is not that you don't want government to 'step in", because you Do want it to 'step in" to keep you safe. It's that you see no wrong in porn {depersonalizing and using people in order to act out dark sexual fantasies}.
No. The issue here is that the proper role of government is to protect the rights of the people. No rights are harmed by consensual adult pornography consumed by other consenting adults.
Hey let's not be abusive...you're stuck on the child porn issue as though that was the most egregious error in my thinking, but I'm questioning whether or not the 1st amendment was meant to be an amoral document? Don't dance away from the question.
Are we free to say anything we want where ever we want and in any context? Did our forefathers envision the first amendment as a hedge aroung the free expression of Porn?
That is what I hear you saying!
And inaliable rights come from where...God...? Imputed morality?
Unfettered free speech allows me to say certain people are inferior, but if there is no accepted morality can any body really say I'm wrong? You think an appeal to "intrinsic unaliable" rights trumps my arguement?
My question really is did our founding fathers in their thinking, really intend our 1st amendment to become the amorally twisted document that the courts say its is today?
Was is to be viewed as stripped from all moral and religious boundaries, allowing the filthy communications and pornography that exists today?
Slavery was wrong because it violated "intrinsic" moral laws...that is a moral arguement. Porn is wrong because it also violates intrinsic moral laws...that too is a moral arguement.
If we applied the same reasoning to slavery as we now do with porn, slavery might not have been abolished since the arguement now is that you can't legislate morality. After all there are many people who still believe that is right to have slaves...who are we to impose our morality on them?
Nothing you wrote addresses, much less rebuts, the distinction I noted.
My definition of "child" is some what looser in this context. In my exploration of the broader question of the 1st amendment and its implied lack of moral restraints as envisioned (and celebrated) by the courts today, I made the mistake of throwing the child issue into the mix.
I should have better explained that I see children impacted by porn thru its dissemination in our society, in that access to it (after the magazine or movie leaves the book-store) is still distressingly easy. Surely "barely legal teens" are highly sought after in these industries, the more child like they look the more desirable! They are still "children" in the experiential and moral sense, though "legally" at 18, they are free to act in any way they wish...unless they want to drink...then they are "children" till age 21(but that is another issue all together)
I'm after the more meatier argument, this notion of pure unfettered speech, supported by an amoral interpretation of the 1st amendment. Is that what we really want? Is it what we really mean by "free speech?
I mean there are laws against my inciting a false panic in a movie house by yelling "fire!". I can't directly utter a verbal threat against the president's life despite my intrinsic unaliable rights to free expression. Public saftey concerns may allow cops to restrict where I burn flags or have anti-American protests.
Clearly we have made some judgments about certain types of speach as we do have ordinaces in place to restrict such speach as hazardous to the public good and order!
Even the attempts by Demoncraps to bring "hate speech laws" into fruition, shows that the first amendment may be in need of an infusion of moral vision and clarity!
That's the plain meaning of the First Amendment; thus the burden of proof is on those who want to read in a different meaning. That burden is not met by noting general statements of the Founders about morality; it could be met by statements specifically endorsing nonliteral readings of the First Amendment.
Thats a pretty rough generalization isnt it?
Thats a pretty rough generalization isnt it?
I'm in perfect agreement with you that there is now way in Hell that the Founding Fathers created the First Amendment to protect porn.
The problem is that we no longer live in a Christian country like they did in 1789. We have more than half of our courts controlled by liberal-socialist jurists, we have them subservient to the left-wing American Bar Association, and we have both of those groups in the utter thrall of the ACLU.
It is with great trepidation that I would restrict pornography because if we can find an argument for such a restriction that would pass judicial review I have no doubt that some left-wing lawyer will find a left-wing judge to apply the law to political or religious expression.
Could a crucifix with Jesus' half-naked body on it be construed as pornography? Do you think for one minute that some leftie won't use this argument to try to force Catholic churches to pull down their crucifixes? All it will take is one liberal judge somewhere to start the fire and five liberals on the USSC to codify it.
It isn't that I like porn. I just know eneough not to trust liberals to read the law, any law, the way it is written.
Remember the liberals say the 2nd Amendment was written in 1789 to protect the right of the government to have a National Guard that was organized in 1892.
I just don't trust liberals if we handed them such a weapon they could pervert and use against us.
Thats a pretty rough generalization isnt it?
Sad.
Thats a pretty rough generalization isnt it?
Just because someone falls to one of these temptations, doesnt make the thing he preached against any less evil! It puts on display his or her humanity and fragile fallen state.
I'm not trying to rebut the notion of inalienable rights as you stated so much as I'm trying to get to a clearer discussion of this notion of the first amendment as a document stripped of all moral under pinning as the courts currently view it.
Certain types of speech are restricted in this country, and in the military(under the UCMJ) more so. We see this as necessary for the public order.
Demoncraps would like to see "hate speech" laws in place that would actually restrict speech in the name the moral redefinition of America under the guise of "diversity". It is "good" that we have no over-arching notion of "good" so that none may be offended and none may feel restricted...is what the DIVERSITY chaps are arguing. "We must put this idea into action and to re-infuse our tattered 1st amendment with a new morality"...is what the leftists are saying. "Amorality is good while moral speech and religious expression is actually an attack on the first amendment" is the broader implication of what these groups are working toward.
That is why the porn issue is so important in this first amendment issue. It has become the trojan horse in the assault against the moral and religious sensibilities of millions of people. It is being used as a lever to pry our constitution away from its religious and moral roots...(religion and morality being the twin pillars upon which our freedoms rested according to Washington).
Christians who passionately love our freedoms and our constitution, never the less are torn in their consciences when they say "well I have to let even the pornographers have their say cause its free expression and that trumps even 3000 years of accepted morality." By being forced in accepting the amoral interpretation of the first amendment as the current courts envision it, Religious and moral folk often have the uncomfortable notion that they are like a Democratic Catholic politician trying to play both sides of the abortion issue!
A Creator or human reason. Take your pick.
Unfettered free speech allows me to say certain people are inferior, but if there is no accepted morality can any body really say I'm wrong?
You make your argument, I reply with logic. We let the good people of America decide which one of us is making sense. Marketplace of ideas and all that.
My question really is did our founding fathers in their thinking, really intend our 1st amendment to become the amorally twisted document that the courts say its is today?
We can only deal with what's in the Constitution. The FF were smart enough to realize that they could not predict how the world would change, so they left the Constitution deliberately general.
There is no test, nor should there be, as to whether speech is moral. A neo-Nazi, a pornographer and the Pope all have the same right to put forward an idea. The 1st Amendment does not judge whether that idea is a good one, that's up to the people.
Was is to be viewed as stripped from all moral and religious boundaries, allowing the filthy communications and pornography that exists today?
In a word, yes.
If liberals are able to get "hate speech" and "Diversity" laws passed and recognized by the courts, they will have wrested the 1st amendmend from all moral restraints any way!
Porn was the 1st amendment trojan horse that allowed an even greater attack on our nation's founding principles; its free expression doesn nothing to shore up free speech; it only helps the Diversity police accelerate the attack upon our religious and moral heritage by labeling MORAL PEOPLE AS THE TRUE ENEMIES OF THE CONSTITUTION !
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