Ruth Institute Blog

by Melinda Tankard Reist

It is time to get real about the social poison masquerading as “adult entertainment”.

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…

by Patrick A Trueman

An exclusive focus on prosecuting child pornography cases ignores a well known fact about adult porn.

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…

by Robert P. George

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…

by Jennifer S. Bryson

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…

by Patrick A. Trueman

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…

Internet porn is everywhere; even “nice” guys are hooked. So where does that leave their girlfriends?

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…

In the end, porn doesn’t whet men’s appetites—it turns them off the real thing.

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…

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…

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…

This is the sort of thing that causes teen sex. If sex ed does do any good, this stuff undoes it. If we want to lower teen pregnancy and abortion, we should be fighting against horrible stuff like this pushed on teenagers.

by Charlie Butts and Bill Bumpas

MTV’s new show Skins may be violating federal law. Whether it is or not, several advertisers are abandoning ship. Read more…

Dr. J. is fond of joking that the so-called “Octo-Mom” has had fourteen kids and no known act of coitus.

This, it seems, is soon going to change.  It seems that Miss Octo has hit a rough patch, financially speaking.  And, seeing as how she does not have anything as outlandish as a husband, she just might try to get out of her troubles the old fashioned way:  porn.

Reports TMZ:

Vivid Entertainment boss Steven Hirsch just met with the guy who holds the note on Octomom‘s home — and by the sound of things … he’s even closer to banging out a deal for the Octo-crib.

As we first reported, Hirsch is looking to take the note off the hands of Amer Haddadin as a way of “beginning a relationship with Octomom” — since she’s turned down all his previous job offers.

Hirsch still needs to see some paperwork — and the inside of the actual house — before things go any further … but he tells us things are going in a very “positive” direction.

So, Dr. J is going to have to change her joke seeing as how Octo-Mom just might be making the contractual arrangements to participate in one or more acts of intercourse, and this time there will be videotape evidence thereof!

Normally, I would consider this a step down for a woman, but considering Suleman’s past history, I can hardly see how her story could get any trashier by a performance such as that.

It seems to me that Octo-Mom would have been better off with a husband and a normal life.

by Blake Robinson

Socially responsible investing, once associated with causes like combating South African apartheid, has the potential to become a serious way to combat the harms pornography causes in our society. The proliferation of Corporate Responsibility departments at corporations attests to the continued importance of socially responsible investing, a practice that has and continues to have a serious impact on America’s leading businesses. It’s now time to apply these principles to the issue of pornography. Read more…

It’s a nasty job, but somebody had to show us just how powerful and destructive the porn industry is.

by Pauline Cooper-Ioelu

The Playboy bunny is the symbol, par excellence, of how the porn industry has co-opted mainstream culture. I will always remember the day I jumped into my friend’s car, only to realise that I was about to sit on a seat plastered with that insidious little rabbit. After a mild interrogation, my friend revealed that it was not the only piece of playboy apparel she owned; a pencil case, t-shirt, and earrings were among her prized Playboy possessions. Without much thought, she had supported the porn industry via her purchasing power and by the fact that she was willing to be a walking advertisement for the porn world’s top brand. With countless naïve consumers doing the same thing as my friend, Hugh Hefner is laughing all the way to his Playboy mansion. Read more…

I like it. Way to go.

by Melinda Tankard Reist

When Melinda Tankard Reist’s latest book, Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls, was published last year, a reviewer described it as a “collective shout against the pornification of culture”. “I liked the phrase so much I decided to give it to a new grassroots campaign I’d been thinking about,” says the Australian advocate for women and girls. Here she talks to MercatorNet about the impact that campaign is having. Read more…

My sister noted recently that pornography used to be something people viewed secretly and were ashamed of. Now the old question, “Read any good books lately?” might as well be replaced with “Watch any good porn lately?” And the answer too often is yes. Pornography is a growing problem and here is why:

by Mary Eberstadt

As the impressively depressing cover story “America the Obese” in the May issue of The Atlantic serves to remind us all, the weight-gain epidemic in the United States and the rest of the West is indeed widespread, deleterious, and unhealthy—which is why it is so frequently remarked on, and an object of such universal public concern. Read more…