42 senators seek crackdown on adult pornography
AP
Forty-two senators have signed onto a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder calling on him to increase federal prosecutions of adult pornography.
The letter calls on the Department of Justice to "vigorously" enforce federal obscenity laws "against major commercial distributors of hardcore adult pornography." It asks Holder to instruct the FBI and U.S. Attorneys to "work together to combat the growing scourge of obscenity in America."
The senators pointed to a briefing last June where they said experts explained that "today's hardcore pornography is typified by extreme violence against women," adding that "pornography consumption can contribute to sexual harassment and sexual violence."
"Another expert warned that Internet adult pornography normalizes sexual harm to children, while another addressed the growing connection between pornography and sex trafficking," they continued, before pointing to the identification of a pornography addiction disorder.
"We believe it is imperative that the Department, with cooperation by the FBI, investigate and prosecute all major producers and distributors of adult obscenity," they write. "We need your leadership."
The senators add that "adult obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment."
Most of the signatories to the letter, which was sent earlier this week and posted by Politico, were conservative Republicans, though a small group of Democrats - including California's Dianne Feinstein - also signed on.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, who signed the letter, has complained that the Justice Department has focused disproportionately on "fringe" fetish pornography instead of large-scale pornography producers.
As Politico's Josh Gerstein points out, "winning cases against large-scale operators could be complicated since they could argue that their very success demonstrates that their products do not violate community standards."
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No one has ever claimed that the First Amendment covers everything. But it is basic to First Amendment jurisprudence that there is only ONE kind of speech which can be censored because of the undesirable consequences that speech might produce on the recipient's MIND, on the recipient's thought or morality. And that is obscenity. And why is there only one such category of unprotected speech? Because the philosophy of free speech is inherently distrustful of the GOVERNMENT taking a paternalistic stance and trying to decide FOR the people how they should think, what books they can read, what they can say to each other, etc.
Obscenity is thus an anomaly in the law of free speech, and we should be very much on our guard to stop it from expanding. Personally, I think we should get rid of the concept of obscenity altogether--it just doesn't fit in with the rest of First Amendment principles, and it is clearly just a relic from a much more conservative and puritanical society.
So yeah, all your examples about how government agencies regulate the medicines we take and require security measures at airports are, once again, 100% IRRELEVANT. No one has said that we need to be free of all government regulation. What we HAVE said is that we need to be free of all governmental PATERNALISM: the government cannot think for us, cannot decide what thoughts we can and cannot have. It cannot ban something because it is worried about the THOUGHTS we are going to get from it. That would be a step in a very dangerous direction. And anyone who truly loves freedom will cringe at the thought of it.
Increasing obscenity prosecutions, as I've shown below, would do NOTHING to hamper the consumption of porn. All it would do is jeopardize those freedoms that we hold MOST sacred--the freedom to think for ourselves.
Manforchange knows this already. If he wants to put people in jail, it is NOT because he wants to protect families and marriages. It is because he wants to think FOR us. We will not let him.
And the problem with your arguments, manforchange, is that putting American porn producers in jail for producing porn will not make ANY change in the amount of porn consumed by Americans. None whatsoever. All it will do is waste tax dollars, further glut our prison system, and send billions more American dollars to foreign companies.
Putting producers in jail will NOT "hamper" the AMOUNT of porn consumed. If anything, it will only make the *kind* of porn consumed in the U.S. even MORE extreme (Japanese porn, Brazilian porn, German porn, for example, are frequently WAY more extreme than American porn). So more obscenity prosecutions of Americans will do NOTHING to lessen the amount of porn produced.
You know this--everyone does. Your crusade to put porn producers in jail is therefore revealed for what it REALLY is: An expression of your desire to make this country more conservative, and because you get off on believing yourself to be morally superior.
The American people will NOT let you infantilize them. We will be free to make choices for ourselves.
Aren't these the same jackasses that demand the government stays out of our lives? ( unless of course it gets in the way of their Christian conservative values!)
Lets say you're right. Lets say that porn causes lots of harms, and that if we could ban it entirely, those harms would vanish or at least diminish significantly.
Would more obscenity prosecutions in the U.S. actually bring about that result?
Obviously not. There are thousands of pornographers in Los Angeles alone--are we really going to glut our prisons with all of those people?
And even if we did--what then? Lets say we put so many pornographers in jail that people really become scared of making porn in this country.
Would that have ANY effect on the amount of pornography actually consumed in the U.S.?
Obviously not. Tons of pornography would still be flooding into the U.S. from other countries via the internet and the mails. And even MORE pornography would continue to be illegally traded on file sharing sites.
So NONE of the benefits you seek, Manforchange, would come about by increased obscenity prosecutions. None.
Would any harms arise from such prosecutions? YES, tons.
First, a horrible precedent would be set: as the category of obscenity expands, First Amendment freedoms would be necessarily be threatened. The speech of artists that work with sexually explicit materials, the speech of sex therapists and theorists, and indeed the speech of anyone that does any work with sexuality would be chilled. Movie producers would be afraid to make movies that are too "steamy". Novelists might be afraid of writing sex scenes that are too graphic. And so on.
Plus, although Manforchange probably would never dream of this, a lot of the people that work in porn are nice, hard working people. Putting them all in jail, forcing them to find a new industry, new jobs...it would ruin lives, strain the economy, and tax our overburdened prison system.
And this might seem a silly reason, but it might very well be the most important one, given our economic crisis. Right now, billions of dollars are spent on porn every year. If you were to eliminate the porn industry in this country, then all those dollars would go rushing to porn companies in OTHER COUNTRIES. More American dollars gushing to foreign banks, foreign interests, etc. Yep, just what we need.
So: by increasing obscenity prosecutions, you actually get NO benefits. But there are LOTS of costs. Serious, harmful costs.
Everyone knows this already. Which is why, when people campaign against porn, you know that it's not about helping people, it's not about saving families or marriages.
It's about their own need to feel morally righteous. And their desire to make this country ever more conservative.
Don't let them get away with this travesty.
That doesn't mean the government should step in and start regulating how much time people are allowed to use the internet. Or worse, put people in jail for posting You Tube videos.
It's just not the government's job. They have better, more important things to do.
It's exactly the same with porn.
Stop trying to destroy our freedoms because you have a need to push your conservative moral ideology.
PEOPLE MUST BE FREE TO MAKE BAD CHOICES.
If you're not free to make bad choices, then you're not free to make good ones.
Compiled by
Mary Anne Layden, Ph D
Director
Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program
Center for Cognitive Therapy
University of Pennsylvania
layden@mail.med.upenn.edu
Effects of massive exposure to pornography
Exposure to "massive pornography" (4 hours and 48 minute) leads to changes in beliefs and attitudes. For example, reduced support for the women's liberation movement, reduced belief that pornography needs to be restricted for minors, reduced recommended jail sentences for rapists, increased callousness toward woman, and beliefs of increased frequency of pathological sex (such as sex with animals, and sex with violence).
Zillmann, D & J. Bryant. (1984). Effects of massive exposure to pornography. In Malamuth, N and Donnerstein, E. (Eds), Pornography and sexual aggression. San Diego, Academic Press.
PUHLEASE!
I use porn plenty, and I for one am an active feminist, I think that parents should NOT let their children access porn, I think rapists should go to jail for life, I am generally unimpressed by men and women equally, and I think sex with animals is a crime akin to rape.
I would LOVE to know the *rigorous* procedure that these people used to reach these hilarious conclusions.