November 2, 2011

Column #1,575

 Fighting Pornography

By Mike McManus

            When Pat Trueman led the fight against obscenity for the Reagan and Bush I Administrations, there were 120 convictions in five years.  “All major pornographers were put out of business or put in jail,” he told the Maryland Coalition Against Pornography recently.

 However, there has not been any prosecution for the past 20 years - since Bill Clinton was elected.  Meanwhile, the Internet multiplied the sexual revolution 1,000-fold. Everybody has access to pornography in their homes or offices, but few seem to realize its dangers.

Trueman told of a high school girl in Richmond, CA. who was in charge of the Homecoming Dance. She left the dance on school property and was surrounded by boys who repeatedly raped her while recording the grisly business on their cell phones.

“Why were so many high school kids willing to rape a fellow student?” he asked. “Because they have seen what it was like in videos, they wanted to experience it themselves.  The harms of pornography have reached pandemic levels.”

Trueman suggested that a porn warning label was needed, like the FDA requires for prescription drugs.  The warning might look like this:

1.      Pornography can lead to sexual dysfunction, even in young men.  Married men no longer get excited about their wives, and can’t perform.

2.      Consumption of pornography will lead to addiction, a significant percentage of whom will become addicts who never recover.

3.      Porn will affect their relationship with their wife and prevent them from having a satisfying sexual experience for the rest of their life.

4.      Porn users will require harder and more deviant materials, leading to the worst, which is child pornography which had been virtually eliminated 17 years ago.

5.      Consumers are 400 percent more likely to visit prostitutes, which will lead to sexual trafficking.

6.      Violence in porn is so common it will lead to violence with your wife or girl friend.

7.      You are likely to take unwanted sexual liberties with people of the opposite sex.” 

8.      There is an increased likelihood of extra marital affairs. “Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in in his heart.”

9.       Over the last 20 years, girls have changed their self image.  It is not enough to be a straight-A student because if they are not sexual enough, they have a negative self-image.

10.  Modern day porn is leading to a generation highly populated with sexual perverts.

These points seem harsh or sound exaggerated.  However, Richard Land, President of

the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, told the National Press Club this week: “There are more women and girls in sexual slavery today than in 1861.”

However, Trueman, who now leads Morality in Media is “more hopeful” than he has been in many years.  He has launched a War on Illegal Pornography that could lead to a new consensus among conservatives on the need to begin enforcing the law.  Few realize the Supreme Court has held that hard core pornography is illegal. 

He thinks a new Administration could come to power which would begin enforcing the law once again.  For example, all of the obscenity in motels and hotels are from a single company, LodgeNet, which is based in conservative South Dakota.  “That company would go down,” he asserts.

If prosecutors win a victory over Verizon for its transmission of filth into homes, there would not just be a fine or jailing of executives, but a confiscation of the Verizon equipment used to transmit the porn.  When GTE faced a similar likely seizure by the Justice Department  years ago, it stopped transmitting, and helped prosecutors make a case against pornographers.

What’s more interesting is that porn companies are not growing in their profits, as in the past.  “They are running out of business and may not be able to spend large sums in a battle,” Trueman believes

Richard Land suggested another answer for sexual trafficking and prostitution: “Go after the customers. It’s time to put the johns in jail.”

However, the long term key to winning this important battle is equipping citizens with the strategies to fight the good fight.  Trueman has created an important website, which I urge you to visit: PornHarms.com.

Become a foot soldier in this battle!