Ethics & Religion
Column #1,877
August 17, 2017
Porn Harms Children & Marriage
By Mike McManus
The Utah Legislature declared that "Pornography is a Public Health
Hazard," inspiring South Dakota, Arkansas and Tennessee to make similar
declarations.
Utah's resolution cited 45 pieces of evidence documenting the harm of
pornography. For example, it noted that "Most teens are sexting- either
on the receiving or sending end of sexually explicit images of
themselves or their friends!"
Utah also reported "The average age of exposure to hardcore pornography
is now 11 to 12 years of age. This early exposure is leading to low
self-esteem and an increased desire among adolescents to engage in risky
behavior."
The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers reported that 56% of all
divorces involved one party having an obsessive interest in pornographic
websites. Men who use porn are also 300 times more likely to have an
affair!
An article in JAMA Psychiatry reports an equally alarming - and widely
unknown phenomenon - that "pornography consumption is associated with
decreased brain volume in the right striatum, decreased left striatum
activation and lower functional connectivity to the prefrontal cortex."
"Decreased brain volume?" Wow! More than half of all divorces?
Patrick Trueman, President of the National Center on Sexual
Exploitation, correctly asserts that "Pornography is now a public health
crisis and every family in America has been harmed by it, or is
concerned about the potential."
I asked him what laws he recommends to protect Americans from porn's
harm.
"We don't need any new laws," Trueman replied. "We need enforcement of
existing laws that prohibit the distribution of hard core pornography on
cable and satellite. These are felonies."
Yet he charges that not one case was prosecuted during the Obama
Administration. Nor were any cases prosecuted during the George W. Bush
Administration.
Trueman would know. From 1988 to 1993, he was in charge of prosecution
obscenity cases for the Justice Department. During the Reagan
Administration, the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography issued
a report in 1988 that concluded by a narrow 6-5 margin that "Pornography
is both causal and symptomatic of immorality and corruption."
However, in its next to last meeting, only three of the 11 Commissioners
appointed by Attorney General Meese concluded that the most widely
available pornography was "predominantly harmful."
Penthouse could not believe it. "What on earth?" asked
Penthouse. "The
Meese Commission - conceived by prosecutors and ordained by the legions
of decency - had just voted that pornography could actually help
families."
I was stunned and was the only reporter covering the Commission's
meetings who did not work for pornographers. I wrote a column which
charged, "The Commission could not agree if it was harmful, for example,
for films to depict graphic portrayals of fornication, of orgies
involving a number of men and women, or homosexuals doing fellatio on
one another, or a man performing oral sex on a woman, or incest
involving adults!"
I provided the names and addresses of the "libertarians" and suggested
that readers ask them to explain the facts that Alaska and Nevada
residents buy five times as many pornographic magazines per capita as
North Dakota, and have a rape rate that is six times higher. "Mere
coincidence?" I asked.
"An FBI study of 37 murderers confessing multiple killings, found 29
used soft core pornography to fuel their anticipatory fantasy," I wrote.
My columns sparked about 1,000 letters. One of the liberals, Dr. Park
Dietz, studied a sample of them and shifted from a liberal to a
conservative position. He told the Commission that "I have spent my life
with assassins, rapists and have little contact with...the day to day
concerns of ordinary people. But in the citizen mail, the concerns were
overwhelmingly in the direction of asking us to `do something about the
problem.' And I was moved by the witnesses who came before us as
victims, and by the law enforcement people who were almost unanimous in
citing a link between porn and crime.
Dietz persuaded two others to join with conservatives on porn's harm,
creating the 6 -5 majority.
Result? Trueman and his staff prosecuted the two dozen largest
pornographers in America and put them in jail!
Trueman is now gathering a cross-section of America's most prominent
Christians to meet with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to urge him to
once again begin prosecuting the law.
However, he may not be successful. Therefore I urge all readers and
parents to install a block on all computers and I-phones in the home to
sexual images - at no cost. To learn how, write Steve Ensley, (sensley@afomail.net)
who has helped 74,000 families protect themselves from porn harm.
___________________________________
Copyright (c) 2017 Michael J. McManus,
a syndicated columnist and past president of Marriage Savers. For previous
columns go to
www.ethicsandreligion.org. Hit
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