Pornography

Pornography is as old as civilisation, but yet civilisation still exists.
Power structures may grow and weaken, collapse and converge, but once civillisation has infected an area, it typicly sticks around in some form or another.

Originally posted by Northman Adult pornography has been legalised here for the past 40 years

not much to this subject.....if you offended don't look.....protest till the cows come and rant from the pulpits till your blue .....but dont attack freedom of speech or expression......because down that road lies something worse then porn..........tyranny.

Big OUCH

Pornography has always existed. Even the abovementioned Romans allowed it, the Parthian general Surenas noted the extensive amount of pornographic items in the baggage train of the Romans after he defeated them.

You could try banning pornography, but of course such a move would be unenforcable. So pornography should be regulated to be allowed within the confines of our social values, which typically means restricting it to those over a certain age and also to not producing pornography showing inappropriate themes or participants. In the end it is about letting people make their own private choice on the matter, while weeding out the types of pornography which is socially unacceptable.

Originally posted by Svantoretro The worst societal cancers are those where the subtle devastion wreaked by it goes undetected, or ignored, until the ongoing damage is horrific, and the beast, unstoppable. I believe that in any reasonable person's heart of hearts, even amongst those who participate in the production, promotion, and/or distribution of porn, he or she KNOWS that somehow, pornography is the cancerous quicksand of humanity.  They sense that something is not quite right, yet they stumble blindly forward, the proverbial ox led to the slaughter...only they drag so many along with them.  An internal defence mechanism we all possess, which helps to insure the mental/physical/emotional/spiritual health of a given population of human beings, is blatantly ignored though it raises the alarm, to EVERYONE'S VAST DETRIMENT. The very fact that any individual gives in to their dark, carnal nature so as to delve into porn confirms that it is a sinister element best left alone. As a cancer, it refuses to be contained within the bedroom of consenting adults.  Like any devasting disease, it refuses to be contained. I read a newspaper account once, of how two young boys had discovered the porn cache of their "consenting adult" parents.  Among the magazines, videos, etc., they found a porn movie containing a scene where a young girl was being raped with a broom handle.  They were curious, so they forcibly raped the 10 year old girl next door in the same fashion. Listen to Ted Bundy, the lawyer who was executed for killing so many innocent women!  AFTER he was sentenced to die, knowing that his sentence was irreversible, inescapable, he simply said: "It was the pornography."  LISTEN, PEOPLE!  LISTEN! "When you dance with the devil, the devil don't change...the devil changes YOU! Yes, you can say that it is natural to have sexual urges...that we are just highly specialized animals, "just doin' what animals do".  It seems far more likely, however, that we are put here on earth to rise far above and beyond our animal natures, not succumb to them.

How is it cancerous? I would like to know precisely how an adult looking at legal pornography in the privacy of their own home is somehow destroying themselves and society. Or is this just moralistic rhetoric, making sweeping and bold generalisations without proof as usual?

Poor parenting is to blame for the actions of those boys, not pornography itself. Shall we ban all movie scenes in which a person is killed because poorly raised children such as these are impressionable enough to imitate such behaviour? No, instead the real problem of poor parenting must be dealt with. Blaming the actions of those boys on pornography is the easy way out.
And it wasn't the pornography that killed those women. Anyone with half a brain can see the man did it himself and chose the coward's way out by blaming his own crimes on some abstract concept such a pornography.

...you make some excellent if not personaly empassioned points and site a couple of good examples........lest I get carried away however....the significant point you make imo ...is reference PARENTING....hence poor parenting allows imo ....for such examples u site....however this in no way detracts from my earlier position that....abolition of fundamental rights: of free speech and expression... can't be bartered away because of religious fervor and or fanaticim........

Now, how many broom-handle rapes, or any sexual abuse cases for that matter, go unreported?

Actually, murderers and rapists are typically a group who have in common abusive childhoods, mental disorders, neglectful or financially disenfranchised childhoods etc. I believe it is causes like these which drive a person to commit such terrible crimes, having experienced extensive isolation and abuse they are able to inflict pain on others without their emotions restraining them.

Ok, so some people who have been exposed to porn have killed people. So what? Some murderers like ice cream, some murderers like watching Friends, some murderers like football. Simply because a person who commits crimes is exposed to these things, does not mean these things are a trigger for their behaviour. Like it or not a majority of people in developed countries have easy access to pornography and a majority make use of it. If pornography caused the behaviours you cited, why is it a vast majority of pornography viewers remain contributing and law abiding citizens? Obviously the cause of criminal behaviour lies elsewhere.

Has the number of murders and child abuse increased since magazines like Playboy came into print? No, they have not. Pornography is simply one of a vast number of things out there which objectifies human beings, to make the claim that it is responsible for crime you need to provide an empirical link between pornography exposure and crime. As you have failed to do that, you are only giving us a baseless theory which lacks any persuasive evidence.


Edited by Constantine XI - 06-Jun-2006 at 09:42

By calling my account of this story manipulative, are you revealing that it did, indeed, strike a chord within you?  Alarming, isn't it?

 -I would think that any such action as the one you wrote about should instill some emotion in the receiver. However, that is not to say that you in any way have persuaded me because events like that one don't happen every day.

These murderers saw their victims only as OBJECTS.  How do you suppose their appreciation of life managed to sink to such a low level?  It was eroded through activities such as viewing porn.

 -What Constantine said.

someone is likely watching some PORN MOVIE on their portable DVD player, or cell phone, etc., and LOOK OUT!  They're only driving with one hand!  Now, it is my rights that are being infringed upon!

 -Well, that's an interesting scenario you drew up there. What if the person was holding a phone? Or to go to the same extreme as you did; what if the person was holding a baby that had been seriously injured and he had to get the child to a hospital as soon as possible? Oh my, it appears that your rights have been infringed upon! Such scenarios cannot be used as they are just about non-existant(At least I haven't heard of somone crashing their car due to watching porn). This is what I mean with manipulation, every religious zealot uses some far-fetched scenario and presents it as if it happens daily.

 -The simple truth is that the humanity is least violent at this time than ever before and violence has declined every year since we started moving away from religion(Or reforming it). The reason why violence is so in front in the news is because it's so sparse. If it was common then it wouldn't be news worthy but as it doesn't happen as often as it has in the past it's more news worthy and so everyone thinks that the world is violent and degraded.


Edited by Roadkill - 06-Jun-2006 at 10:01