The New York Times yesterday published a preview of a weekend magazine article called “Teaching Good Sex” — a long and detailed account of how one teacher, with full support from his elite school, is promoting sexual pleasure as a goal for 17-year-olds and even younger teenagers. Read more…
It is now widely acknowledged that the unprecedented mainstreaming of the global pornography industry is transforming intimate sexual relationships and public life, popularising new forms of hardcore misogyny, and strongly contributing to the sexualisation of children. Yet challenges to the pornography industry continue to be dismissed as uncool, anti-sex and moral panics. Read more…
Note: This essay is part of the 2012 Election Symposium on The Public Discourse.
Since President Obama took office, the Department of Justice has not initiated one adult pornography criminal case. The reason, we are told, is that investigators are overwhelmed with child pornography cases. Problematically, a growing number of law enforcement officers and investigators report that consumption of adult pornography leads to consumption of child pornography. Read more…
Every member of the community has an interest in the quality of the culture that will shape their experiences, their quality of life, and the choices effectively available to them and their children.
Theorists of public morality–from the ancient Greek philosophers and Roman jurists on–have noticed that apparently private acts of vice, when they multiply and become widespread, can imperil important public interests. This fact embarrasses philosophical efforts to draw a sharp line that distinguishes a realm of “private” morality that is not subject to law from a domain of public actions that may rightly be subjected to legal regulation. Read more…
by Charlie Butts
According to Morality in Media (MIM) president Pat Trueman, it is “a major step forward from an influential country that could have worldwide effects,” as the idea is to shield children from explicit material. To help accomplish this, parents and guardians will be able to use a site called Parentport that allows them to complain about websites, products, services, or programming that they believe is not appropriate for children. Read more…
Captured caches of terrorist material often include pornography. Could pornography pose a risk to national security?
A federal grand jury recently indicted Army soldier Naser Jason Abdo, age 21, on three charges related to a plot to attack soldiers near Fort Hood, Texas. When authorities arrested him, they found in his possession bomb-making materials, a gun, ammunition, and the article ”Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” from a recent issue of al-Qaeda’s English online journal Inspire. Initial questioning of Abdo indicates that his intended targets were U.S. military personnel… Read more…
Ending child pornography is as much a matter of vigorously prosecuting those who distribute adult pornography as it is a matter of prosecuting child pornographers. Presidential candidates should pledge to initiate adult pornography criminal cases and fund research into the adult-child pornography link. Read more…
By David Amsden
For Jonathan—an attractive, Ivy League– educated musician and adjunct professor—it all started a couple of years ago, when he was working as a temp in the sleek offices of a Madison Avenue ad agency. There he was, seated at his desk, half-heartedly going over pitches for new accounts, when a colleague tapped him on the shoulder. Read more…
By Naomi Wolf
At a benefit the other night, I saw Andrea Dworkin, the anti-porn activist most famous in the eighties for her conviction that opening the floodgates of pornography would lead men to see real women in sexually debased ways. If we did not limit pornography, she argued—before Internet technology made that prospect a technical impossibility—most men would come to objectify women as they objectified porn stars, and treat them accordingly. In a kind of domino theory, she predicted, rape and other kinds of sexual mayhem would surely follow. Read more…
These researchers are probably not members of the Religious Right. They are
probably old-fashioned feminists who worry about the over-sexualization and
exploitation of women.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — A study by University at Buffalo sociologists has found that the portrayal of women in the popular media over the last several decades has become increasingly sexualized, even “pornified.” The same is not true of the portrayal of men. Read more…
by Charlie Butts
While congratulating the Department of Justice on a recent child porn bust, one anti-porn crusader argues investigators need to ascertain the roots of suspects’ desire for child porn. Read more…
This is an older article I thought I’d repost since the topic has been kicking around here quite a bit lately.
by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
As the author of a book called Smart Sex, I have become an expert on many forms of Dumb Sex. One of the weirdest to come to my attention is pornography addiction. I know, I know, we all have First Amendment Right to view just about anything we want, as much as we want, any time we want. But that doesn’t mean that every legal activity we choose is intelligent. If you’d rather view pornography than have a relationship with a real person, you’ve got a personal problem. And if you’ve got a nation full of young men mesmerized by porn videos, sex will become a spectator sport. That’s gotta hurt the birth rate. And it’s hard to believe its ultimately as much fun or as satisfying as the Real Thing. Read more…
I personally have seen three marriages destroyed by porn addiction. This stuff is never innocent. It is addictive; it does mess with your mind. It’s destructive.
by Marcia Segelstein
Last week radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham told a story of traveling by train from Washington, DC, to New York with her young daughter. Walking up the aisle to get a snack, the little girl pointed to the computer screen of a man sitting two rows ahead of them. “Why are those people swimming naked, Mommy,” she asked. It turns out that their fellow passenger was watching “full blown porn,” as Ingraham described it, in easy view of anyone who happened to be sitting nearby or walking past. How, she wondered, have we reached this point? Read more…
This doesn’t surprise me:
BOSTON (Reuters) – Men who pay for sex are more likely than men who do not pay for sex to commit a variety of offenses including violent crimes against women, according to research conducted in the Boston area. Read more…
The last paragraph here is really distressing. I wish I hadn’t read it. The scenarios are either condoning, encouraging, or mocking child sex abuse. Whichever way, how did this magazine get away with it with no backlash? How is this okay in ANYONE’s book?
by Marcia Segelstein
Sunday Morningrecently profiled the grandfather of porn, Hugh Hefner. The piece, called “Hefner at 84: Still a Playboy, Activist, Rebel,” was, as you can probably guess from the title, what’s called in the business a “puff piece.” This wasn’t a hard look at the cultural chaos Hefner helped to spread, or the pornography industry he helped spawn. Nor was there a hint of how sad and pathetic Hugh Hefner looks in his signature silk robe, giving a grand tour of the Playboy Mansion as an old man. Read more…
In the 1980’s, my hopelessly outdated mom counselled me not to kiss a boy on the first date. I tell my daughters not to kiss (or, for that matter, date) anyone they wouldn’t be prepared to marry. As someone who espouses values possibly more old-fashioned than those held by my pre-sexual-revolution era parents, I found this Mail Online item worthy of note. Read more…
This is so disturbing. What is HAPPENING to our world? Anybody reading this article still think porn is harmless and okay?
When I see stories like this NY Times piece on sexually exploited children and teens, I’m tempted to wish the world had ended as predicted last month. As North America — along with many countries around the world — prepares to celebrate Father’s Day this coming Sunday, here’s something sobering (nay, horrifying) to ponder: Read more…
British Prime Minister David Cameron has taken a lead in the battle against the pornification of culture and the sexualisation of children. A review he commissioned has come up with recommendations that would give more weight to parents’ concerns and encourage retailers and television and music executives to protect children from sexual images. Read more…
Dr J’s most recent episode of “From the Front Lines of the Culture War” is now up for your listening pleasure. In it, she interviews Bill Duncan, attorney and president of the Marriage Law Foundation, on a wide range of topics. Their discussion includes Prop 8, DoMA, de facto parenting, and more. Check out CatholicRadioOfSanDiego.com for more information on the show.
We also have her interview on Issues, Etc, split into two topical parts. The first deals with the propensity of the Baby Boom generation to solve marital problems–large and small–preferentially with divorce. The second–graphically–explains what passed for an extra-curricular sex ed seminar at Texas A&M and how it’s related to the widespread use of pornography.
by Michael Cook
Nearly every day, it seems, you read about the discovery of a gene for genius, for obesity, for voting conservative, for cancer, for chocaholism, for alcoholism, whatever. Scientists’ bombastic press releases are taken reasonably seriously by glossy women’s magazines and hucksters selling genetic testing kits, if not by their colleagues.
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