Posted on 09/30/2002 1:16:31 PM PDT by 11th Earl of Mar
Edited on 04/29/2004 2:01:19 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
ANNAPOLIS JUNCTION, Maryland (AP) -- A lieutenant colonel at the Army War College pleaded guilty Monday to killing his wife, saying he beat and strangled her as they fought about his use of the Internet to find pornography.
Lt. Col. David Bartlett Jr., 46, reached a plea deal with prosecutors in the slaying of his 39-year-old wife, Suzanne.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
First of all, how do you know what kind of porn the Colonel was watching? He could've had a fondness for really disgusting stuff. Secondly, do you honestly think she should've kept her mouth shut and not confronted him about this?
Depends on how you define "damage". Any subjecive definition which simply surveys the individual's emotional landscape to see if he "feels" damaged, begs the question. Of course he doesn't feel damaged. Neither do pedophiles "feel" damaged by their acts.
But, from a Christian point of view, any viewing of any sexual act between other people is a moral error which dulls the moral sense to the degree the heart, or volition, is part of the conspiracy.
Also, if it damages the relationship between a man and his wife, he can argue all day it has not affected him, and that in itself would be evidence of his spiritual idiocy, since it has obviously soiled the most precious thing he has, whether he perceives it or not.
How many modern women do you know of that take any hint of sexual obligation seriously? If the man is bound by "it is better to marry than to burn with lust" yet his wife is subjecting him to constructive abandonment (refusal of sex) what would you expect of him. What guidance does the Bible give about such a wife?
I submit that any man in a properly functioning marriage has no use for pornography. Furthermore, if he had blown out his own brains instead of murdering his wife, would you even care?
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. The same argument is used to "prove" that guns "cause" crime; do you buy that? But in any case, child porn is already illegal.
Course we can't talk about that or we would be Christian fanatics or sexual puritans. Sounds so liberally PC. Not to worry pal because your thugs far outnumber ours so this will continue to be swept under!
Well, what else can we do? If it weren't for our porn thugs busting (not a grammatical error in this case) into people's homes and forcing them to look at naughty pictures, nobody would ever want to look at porn. </sarcasm>
That is my position. No one has a "right" to do evil things. So no one has a "right" to access pornography.
Should pornography be outlawed then? That question is a matter for prudential decision-making. Simply considered as a practical matter, it is impossible to criminalize all vice. What criteria then should be used to determine whether a vice should be criminalized?
It's my understanding that Aquinas' main principle for determining whether or not a particular vice should be criminalized (and for determining the penalty) is whether or not the penalty will generate more vice than the vice being suppressed. That certainly seems like a reasonable basis for formulating laws regarding vice.
How would this apply to pornography? Certainly there is nothing intrinsically immoral about criminalizing pornography. Someone posted a thread discussing taxing pornography heavily which seemed like a good idea to me. All advertising for pornography should also be outlawed. Those seem like good first steps to me.
Pre-Teens get blowjobs in school hallways. Why should they bother with porn when they get the real thing.
Non-sequiter alert.
the place has become statists central...they use the term liberty and those who believe in it as perjoratives.
Pornography's very amusing isn't it? Especially when you think that the people involved in it are someone's son or daughter.
Luke 108"When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. 9Heal the sick who are there and tell them, 'The kingdom of God is near you.' 10But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 11'Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.' 12I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.
At least you were able to answer the question. Others were smart enough to avoid it because when stated explicitly the problem becomes obvious.
Decisions are made by the human will, which by its very nature is free. Under a materialist rubric*, true freedom cannot exist. Everything must be determined. So if there exists a causal relationship between pornography and violence, it must be a one-to-one correspondence which would be obvious under your laboratory conditions.
But people have free will and according to the grace that they have received can resist temptation to varying degrees. Therefore we cannot expect to see a one-to-one correspondence between exposure to pornography and violence.
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*We can know with certainty that we do not live in a materialist world (and that the existence of free will is a logical possibility). In a theoretical materialist world, both the assertion that "truth exists" and the assertion that "truth does not exist" are equally "valid" since both are equally the result of "matter in motion." There would exist no objective basis for determining the validity of either assertion.
In this actual world, the world we live in, we know many truths with certainty: "truth exists," "the whole is greater than its parts," "1 + 1 = 2," "the good is to be done and evil avoided." Since we know with certainty that truth exists, we know that we logically cannot be living in a strictly material world where truth could not be known with certainty.
The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. Crack addicts aren't troubled by using crack either.
Would that not be asking to prove a negative?
Not really. If there is a correlation between pornography and rape, for example, it certainly would be reasonable to assume a causal relationship. The burden of proof would be on the skeptic.
No one's arguing a one-to-one correspondence. That's a straw man. Here's what I'm arguing:
1) Pornography is inherently evil.
2) Pornography harms everyone involved with it to varying degrees.
3) Long term use of pornography can indirectly lead to death in as much as any other vice. "The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23)." Always spiritually. Sometimes physically. The idea is intuitive enough and experience certainly bears this out.
We will be judged by what we do. Certainly. But it doesn't necessarily follow that things cannot influence our wills. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why Paul says: "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things." (Philippians 4:8)
That's hardly a recommendation. Besides, violence can be portrayed morally and immorally. Depiction of violence can be used for valid artistic reasons. Depiction of violence can even be a moral good (displaying photos of aborted children). Depictions of violence can also be pornographic. But there's no valid justification for a woman exposing her privates in public, etc.
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