Ethics & Religion
Column #1,914
April 26, 2018
(second of two parts)
Parental Controls for Porn
By Mike McManus

As I previously reported, two days before his election, President Trump promised to "aggressively enforce existing federal laws to prevent the sexual exploitation of children on line." However, neither he nor the Justice Department has done anything to enforce the law.

Activists on the issue met with Attorney General Jeff Sessions six months ago, and will be seeing him again soon. Hopefully, Sessions will begin to enforce the law.

Millions are hurt by the lack of enforcement:

• The average age of exposure to hard core porn is 11-12 - and leads to low self-esteem.
• Most teens are sexting - sending or receiving sexually explicit pictures of themselves.
• 83% of boys and 67% of girls have seen group sex on line.
• There was a 774% increase of child porn images from 2005-2011.
• Married users of porn are 300% more likely to have an affair.
• The Am. Assn. of Divorce Lawyers says that 56% of all divorces involve the addiction of one spouse to pornography.

Today's zero enforcement is in stark contrast to what happened when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were presidents. Pat Trueman was the senior federal anti-porn prosecutor. The result? As I reported, there were 126 convictions of the top 70 producers of obscene material, such as Vivid Video. Among many who landed in prison: Ferris Alexander and Reuben Sturman, the biggest pornographers.

"All major pornographers were either put out of business or put in jail," Trueman asserts.

The result was a dramatic reduction of available porn. "Certain sex acts could not be depicted such as group sex, incest and fisting," Trueman told me. "It softened the nature of porn and dried up distribution channels in states where there were convictions.

However when Clinton became president Trueman and his staff was fired. Democrats believe in sexual freedom.

Therefore, parents especially need to take action to prevent their children from being exposed to hard core porn on their cell phones, computers or TVs. If you live in an area with Comcast, you are lucky because there are extensive parental controls to block it. Go to http://www.xfinity.com/myxFi from anywhere to block it. "Any device that is currently connected to your home network (either wired or wirelessly). The Admin Tool is accessible for all XFINITY Wireless Gateway models," reports Comcast.

"Navigate by selecting Parental Control - Managed Services." Parents can block the access of specific individuals, while allowing access to themselves or an adult child.

Verizon offers Parental Controls as well, but they are not as extensive or as sophisticated as Comcast. I found Verizon very difficult to reach for an interview.

Pat Trueman, who is now President of the National Center for Sexual Exploitation (https://endsexualexploitation.org), praises Comcast: "What I admire is that they are taking steps that the industry has not adopted in America so far to allow families, adults and children to be protected from pornography - on cable, TV and the internet. While we would like to see them eliminate all porn on cable and go to a complete opt-in program for the internet, Comcast is demonstrating real leadership."

What if you do not live in an area with Comcast or Verizon?

You can block all hard core porn from your computer. How? The American Family Association hired Steve Ensley. He has helped nearly 100,000 families protect themselves with web filtering services (http://afo.net/filtering.php).

What if you or a family member is addicted to watching pornography?

Ron DeHaas has developed a very creative answer he calls Covenant Eyes. People who acknowledge they are struggling with porn (70% of men), ask for an Accountability Partner who will help them go straight. Covenant Eyes will assign a partner, and will give that person a report on how often the porn struggler has looked at obscenity on his computer each month.

Result: the use of porn drops to 1/199th of the population! DeHaas asserts.

Some 300,000 Covenant Eyes parings have been made in 150 countries, 250,000 of whom are in the U.S. Go to http://www.covenanteyes.com.

Enough Is Enough has gotten McDonald's and Subway to voluntarily filter porn in stores.
Covenant Eyes says, "So let's take God, religion, the Bible, and morals out of the picture. How is porn ruining your life? Or is it?

"Let's address four major areas that porn negatively affects us: brain dysfunction, human relationships, human trafficking and personal success. https://cvnteyes.co/2qYUuB8.

These are important answers, but they are partial.

What's needed is for President Trump to fulfill his promise to enforce the laws regulating obscenity.

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Copyright (c) 2018 Michael J. McManus, a syndicated columnist and past president of Marriage Savers. To read past columns, go to www.ethicsandreligion.com. Hit Search for any topic.