Posted on 07/11/2002 3:23:12 AM PDT by kattracks
Washington (CNSNews.com) - A trend toward normalizing pedophilia is the latest manifestation of a dangerous understanding of human sexuality that has come to be more widely held over the last 30 years, a leading analyst of cultural trends said Wednesday.
To reverse the trend, which poses a serious challenge to contemporary cultural conservatism, Americans must return to conservative sexual mores, Carson Holloway, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska, said at a symposium entitled "From Playboy to Pedophilia: How Adult Sexual Liberation Leads to Children's Sexual Exploitation," hosted by the Family Research Council.
In a relatively short time, American has gone from a society that Alexis de Tocqueville, speaking 150 years ago, said observed stricter sexual standards than any other country, to one in which casual sex is depicted with approval in prime time television.
A great gulf now separates pre-1960s Tocquevillian America from the present sexually liberationist ethos, Holloway said.
The change in sexual thinking and behavior was brought about by sexual liberationists' rhetorical emphasis on the autonomy of "consenting adults," and the triumph of the notion that anything sexual is morally permissible so long as it takes place between consenting adults, Holloway said.
By insisting that there can be nothing objectionable about any sexual act that takes place between consenting adults, sexual liberationists deny there is a moral nature of sex, he said.
Similarly, the defense of pedophilia is repeatedly made on the basis that relations can be voluntary and that the young, who are more worldly-wise than previous generations, can in some cases be the instigators of sexual activity with adults, Holloway said.
These social and cultural trends also are reflected in landmark legal decisions, he said.
In April, the Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited the distribution and possession of virtual child pornography that appears to depict real children.
"Reading the court's opinion, I was struck by the extent to which the members of the majority at least don't seem to live in the same moral universe as many of the rest of us," Holloway said.
"We learn, for example, there's a distinction between the indecent and the obscene, that pornography is not necessarily obscene and indeed that child pornography is not necessarily obscenity," he added.
With its decision, the court put materials that foster pedophile fantasies in the realm of constitutionally protected speech, Holloway noted.
The federal statute, which was enacted in 1996, had banned a range of techniques, including computer-generated images and the use of youthful-looking adults, which were designed to convey the impression of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
The court ruled, however, that non-obscene child pornography can be banned if it's produced using real children. Such material, the court holds, does not have constitutional protection because of the state's compelling interest in preventing the harm to children caused by their sexual exploitation, Holloway said.
"Thus the court seems to share the conventional view that the introduction of minors to sexual intercourse is wrong or abusive," Holloway said.
The justices also made it almost impossible to punish anything as obscenity, Holloway noted. The court ruled that the federal statute prohibiting virtual child pornography didn't take into account that for something to be considered obscene, it has to appeal primarily to the prurient interest, violate community standards, and be void of social, scientific, political or cultural value.
"What that comes down to is, if anything has the slightest sliver of culturally or socially redeeming value, then it can't be judged obscene, even if it's pure pornography from start to finish. And I think that's effectively emasculating any kind of laws against obscenity," Holloway said.
"It seems to me that any pornographic movie in which there's even one line of conversation could be redeemed on that basis," he added.
The cultural reaction to the behavior of President Clinton, who had sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, also demonstrated a change in Americans' attitudes toward sex, and a trend towards more promiscuous sexual activity among young people, analysts at the seminar noted.
"Clearly Americans disapproved of what Bill Clinton had done, but they didn't disapprove of it enough to want to get rid of him," Holloway said, in response to questions.
People objected to Clinton's lying and tampering with the administration of justice, but not to his sexual behavior, he said.
Holloway said there was a connection between the legitimization of homosexuality and the acceptance of President Clinton's sexual behavior. Interviews with "the man on the street" revealed that people believed Clinton did "what any man would have done."
"Well, if that's your moral attitude toward sex, then there's nothing wrong with anything any homosexual does either. It's hard to see a principled objection to what homosexuals do if what Bill Clinton does is just okay," he said.
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Making virtual child pronogrphy is like making a picture of rape. As ugly as it is, should that be illegal?
It's funny that anyone can make such a distinction between "simulated" and "real" child pornography. However, based on the arguments that have already taken place in this thread I can tell that we're going to have to agree to disagree. It has been argued in this thread and demonstrated over and over again in real life experience that what people injest into their minds they WILL act upon.
I know we hate the idea of "thought police" but there are things, in a moral society, that go beyond freedom of expression and fall into the realm of the detestable. When people fall into amorality they begin to have discussions about protecting practises that a moral person would only discuss in context of controlling and eliminating. Tolerance is more than an objective standpoint - it's passive acceptance.
You may see a distinction between "simulated" and "real" child porn but I, on the other hand, have seen over and over again how they are not seperate and their impact is real. Child porn and porn in general go hand in hand with child molestation. Child porn of any kind is indefensible and the harder you argue for its protection the more I realize how depraved our society has become.
As for the accusation of lack of rigor and emotional outbursts on my part... I think you'll find that I can be passionate about my convications, even blunt about them. For that I make no apologies. As for a lack of rigor... *laughs*... think what you will.
The above is counterfactual in a very real sense: If you photograph children having sex, you have coerced or enticed them into this, an act which ranks alongside rape (and often enough it is rape) and murder for real impact on a victim. But if you open a picture editor and paste a child'd head on a naked woman's body, where is the rape victim?
Again - people will act upon what they feed their mind. They will become the very thing they hate if they embibe upon it to the point of addiction, obsession... whatever you want to call it. It's human behavior. The only thing counterfactual in this discussion is that 'pretend child sex' has no victim.
The Nixon administration founded a huge commission to validate your opinion on this subject, and it failed dramatically. There is no demonstrated scientific or demographic causal relationship between any kind of pornography and any kind of associated sexual abuse. If anything, the available data gives a slight advantage to the reverse argument: imagined anti-social sexual behavior in healthy adult males helps keep actual anti-social sexual behavior down by satisfying urges without the need of an actual urgee.
To imagine that the pornography industry invents and imposes sexual urges on men is magical thinking akin to believing that siverfish build the houses they occupy. Men had anti-social sexual urges long before there was pornography--and that is what drives the porn industry, not the other way around.
All markets are consumer-driven: why would you expect anyone to believe that only the male sex drive is so weak and impotent as to reverse this iron law of economics? Men look at porn because male sex drives have an inherent tendency toward the anarchisic, nihilistic, self-absorbed, and just plain rude.
I did not assert that the porn industry invents or imposes sexual urges - they simply reinforce the behavior. The porn industry simply exploits the sexual urges of people for profit. Unfortunately their product demonstrably contributes to behavior that is destructive to society at all levels. Now that I think about it - I can't get in my car and drive without wearing a seatbelt and yet the effects of pornography are just as measurable and costly as traffic deaths from the lack of seatbelts.
We're really going to have to agree to disagree. I guess I should not be surprised that we're arguing about the finer points of first amendment rights in regards to simulated child pornography. After all - if we can throw out graphic depictions of simulated murder and violence of all kind to prove our point then I'll just quietly bow out of the argument. The last thing I have to say on this is just because society accepts graphic depictions of violence as "good" or "acceptable" doesn't mean that we are truly edified or somehow better off. Yes, I prefer to be wrong at this point.
Peace.
There have been times in world history when such laws existed. They were meant to shape thought as well as behavior. Even today we have laws on the books that are meant to shape thought as well as behavior. If I were a racist I cannot voice my prejudices because of hate crime laws and the litigious society in which we live. Is that a bad thing? No - is it hard to enforce. Absolutely. Don't get me wrong - I'm not for token laws (although we have plenty). But I am for our government taking as stand on what is RIGHT as opposed to what is WRONG and working to shape our lives in such a direction.
When I married my wife she thought I was a pretty good catch. Then she got to know me and my bad habits and she had a pretty rough time of it for a while there. She tried to change me and succeeded in some areas but failed miserably in others. At one point it was pretty rough but things got better. We learned to roll with the punches and take the good with the bad.
We have the same issue with government as far as I'm concerned. You take the good with the bad - do your best to fix what you can and do your best to not let what you can't get you down. The biggest thing we learned is that if we stood unwaivering on what is right as individuals the other would eventually come around if our position was truly just and defensible. I think we can do the same for and with our government as long as they are pursuing what is truly right and good.
It may be naieve but I think we can and should expect each other to be moral people even to the point of passing laws that legislate morality. Otherwise anything goes and we just continue to swirl down the drain. And I think the reality is that people are clearly interested in passing laws against thought. It's gonna happen and I think it's naieve to believe we can rise above such stuff. There's no neutral ground when it comes to right and wrong in this world. Those who think there is will end up getting trampled. Is that cynicle?
Lets try some another theory like yours: Virtually every very violent criminal learned how to drive--therefore, I must conclude that learning to drive is the cause of criminal behavior.
To conclude causuality from statistical evidence, you have to be able to calculate Bayes equation from a total population vs. an affected subset. Have you done that? No. Has your cites source done that? No. This is magical thinking with a reliability index akin to the spectral evidence (children's dreams) adduced in the middle ages to condemn witches.
Who has done that? Well, how about Nixon's Commission on Pornography and Obscenity, or the follow up Meese report intended to contradict the Nixon findings, but which had to conclude on the evidence--real evidence, by the way, not loud self-righteous gruntings and slight-of-hand--that the connection between pornography and violence against woman was "unreliable".
This is miserably obvious cow turds--male sexuality drives the pornography industry--not the other way round. Probably 100,000,000 US male adults view pornography--are there 100,000,000 rapists? I think perhaps not. Do rapists virtually all have pornography. Sure. Who is shocked? Does this mean the pornography drove them to criminal abuse? Of course not--what a comic book view of the world.
If violent, degrading pornography were being spoon fed to our children for an average of 5 hours a day, like the need to buy toys is pounded into them, than sure, you could make an argument for, say, restricting public license of a government granted monopoly of the airwaves, but you could not make an argument in our republic for suppression of expression, because "CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAWS" restricting freedom of speech. Those were bright guys who wrote that--why do you think they wrote only the 1st amendment with such forceful draconian language? Because the first thing you know, wanting to, say worship at the church of your choice could be declared porn.
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