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 Democrats, of course, will have to insist on calling me a 'Tsar'"
tee hee...It's that "nuanced vision thing"!
"Oh come on, can you be any more dramatic? "Force porn on every community"??? Please! You make it sound as though whole communities are forced to sit down and watch hours upon hours of copulation based programming against their will. I would laugh if I didn't know that you were deadly serious in your beliefs"
Uhhh reality check...they are already trying to do that in our public schools!
"The first part of your statement is not true, unless you can cite some evidence to back this claim. The second part of your statement is irrelevant. Adults have the right to consent to be degraded for money. Again, no rights are harmed."
I cited general examples of evidence of the influence of porn on our nation. I could find enough specific examples to make your eyes cross over. Ted Bundy cited pornograpy as tipping him over the edge, for example!
The larger issue I'm trying to get at here is not the specific example of porn but rather the consciousness and political motivations behind its influences. There is an attempt to tamp down and eliminate the morality and religious consciousness in this nation in order to destroy our nation from within and bring her down to the dust. Communists have cited the use of porn and homosexuality as a means of breaking down our society.
Liberal leftists have continued that line of attack in the name of "rights and diversity", in order to destroy the foundational consciousness that nurture our RIGHTS. That being done, we as a nation will totally lose our rights!
By steadily chipping away at our nations blood spilt religious and moral heritage, those so doing hope to create a nation at war with itself and with its own conscience, thus leading to its destruction!
Total crap. I just don't want Peter Singer's world view the law of the land.
And by Singer's world view I mean the POV that says "what's right is whatever I, in the flickering recesses of my mind, happen to think is right. Screw thousands of years of tradition, screw thousands of years of history, screw all the religious codes in the history of the world, screw it all. What *I* think should trump it all."
That world view. And people like you and Modern Man just skirt around the fact that it is only moral absolutes that prevent our society from going off the abyss into the world Singer wants. You and Singer have the same world view. He's just taken it to the logical end. (well, more towards the logical end.) You're just skirting about the edge, refusing to look down into the chasm that your belief system will take everyone, while you live off the credit of previous generations who adhered to moral absolutes.
Your rebellious attitude is what blinds you.
Precisely.
Porn destroys the values of restraint and deferred gratification without which civilized life is impossible.
And as I have argued elsewhere, to ignore the moral preconditions for democracy is idiotic. Pornography destroys those moral preconditions. Caesars happen when a moral, responsible citizenry has been turned by a depraved, sadistic popular culture into a "bread and circuses" mob.
I guess we'll only take pornography from you when we pry it from your warm, sticky fingers.
In a free society, the question of consent is key to determining whether an activity can be banned by the government or not. By brushing it aside you put yourself in the camp of those, both on the left and right, who think that the government knows best what individuals can and cannot do with their bodies.
So your argument boils down to this: it isn't my fault when I derpersonalize/objectify another human being in order that I can slake my personal dark sexual fantasies upon that body, it's the fault of the "driverless" body {objectified human being} for consenting to allow me to do it.
No. My argument boils down to this: consenting adults can consent to do pretty much anything they want, so long as their actions do not harm the person or property of another.
Furthermore, it's my "right" {freedom of speech} to objectify/depersonalize other human beings when I feel a {sexualized} urge to do so."
Exactly. Now you get it. Freedom of speech isn't always pretty.
Neither do I. What's your point?
You and Singer have the same world view.
Nonsense. If anything, you're closer to Sanger in your love of using the government to attain your moral and ethical ends.
Porn is an inanimate object. It cannot destroy values or harm morals, any more than guns can kill people.
People destroy values and morality through their actions. Tell me, how does a consenting adult viewing or reading pornography in private in any way harm the morals of society?
LOL!!!!
You improved on my commment above, for sure.
:->
What you pour into your mind molds your values. Even you should be able to comprehend that. If you put sadism and depravity into your mind on a continual basis, it is as destructive of your moral values as eating only fast food would be of your physical health.
Look at what sadistic mass entertainments preceeded by live sex shows did for the moral character of Roman civilization.
Look at you. Porn has given you a very selfish definition of freedom that acknowledges only your right to gratify yourself immediately. Are you capable of sacrifice, of effort, of duty or patience ? Are you capable of looking beyond a woman's breast size ?
MM thinks that watching porn is fine and has no ill effect on the watcher/wanker. StS and I opine that it does have ill effect. Nothing will change MMs viewpoint unless and until he has a change of heart.
Here's an anecdotal story, there are probably plenty more like it.
I knew a man and a woman - she wanted to marry him, he was skirting around the edge. She got pregnant, there were signs a miscarriage might be iminent. He went to a porn movie, (this was before the Internet) where he went often without her knowledge. She started having a miscarriage, couldn't get ahold of him, went into shock, unconsciousness. He finally came back in the nick of time to save her life.
He continued visiting porn emporiums on a very regular basis. They wound up not getting married, primarily because he couldn't form a real relationship with a real woman. He later married, and divorced - she couldn't handle a man who was always fantasizing (and wanking over) other two dimensional women. His life is screwed, the ex-wife is damaged, and I believe there is a child who now has a broken home.
This is merely an anecdote. But the moral of the story is that many, many men have serious pornography attachments, and this attachment destroys relationships. A man cannot respect himself or women while indulging in pornography.
MM, your views are created by the ephemeral desires of your mind. StS's and my views are created by the Eternal. Your views, if the guideline of society, will lead it into chaos, and then totalitarianism.
Only a moral people can handle freedom. Those who are slaves to their sensual demands become slaves of whoever is the big dog.
Except the US has *never* existed under that utopian point of view from the point of its foundation onward. If you demand examples, try prostitution, public intoxication, becoming a drug dealer, dry counties, etc....
"Porn is an inanimate object. It cannot destroy values or harm morals, any more than guns can kill people."
Wrong analogy. Guns can be used by criminals to kill innocent people. Guns can be used by honest citizens to protect themselves and others. Guns can be used for good or ill.
Porn, however, has only one purpose - to demean human sexuality.
You like its purpose, and therefore, since you worship your own flickering desires, you deem it worthy. Your own desires are not the center of the universe.
Oh lets not split hairs shall we Modernman!....the people possessing a consciousness of amorality who push porn and an atmosphere of moral unrestraint are of those who are chipping away at the moral foundation of this nation.....is that a better explanation for you?
If only porn were an inanimate object...it could be launched into space and into the hellish sun where it belongs!
Nonsense. That is certainly not my definition of freedom.
As I've said, my definition of freedom means being free to do whatever you want, so long as you do not harm the person or property of another.
What do you consider freedom?
You find minimal government intervention in citizens' affairs a 'utopian' point of view? How sad for you.
That's your view, sure. Millions of your fellow citizens disagree with you, of course.
A thread for your reading pleasure while you try to kill some time.
- It is interesting to see people claim that pornography is "forced" on them, as no coercion is involved. They are free to ignore it as they wish.
- By the same token, they would use coercion THEMSELVES to ban it...the coercion of the government.
An odd disconnect, there. The seeming bottom line is the old "I don't like it, so I want NO ONE to partake of it". The only conclusion one can draw from this, and the apparent feeling that it is "forced" on them by its very existance, is that perhaps the temptation is something they find a bit too strong.
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