The Cathoholic

Missouri Victory Against Adult Entertainment

Last week Missouri's Governor Jay Nixon signed legislation sharply restricting adult clubs in the state. Today, the National Catholic Register posted my story outlining the strategy of the bill's supporters. The key point is that the bill's author, Sen. Bartle, who is about to retire from politics, has worked hard to include language that deals with First Amendment concerns, while restricting activities at the clubs.

The Social Costs of Pornography: A Wife's Story

This spring, the Witherspoon Institute issued a summary of research data on The Social Costs of Pornography. Yesterday, a friend forwarded a harrowing story, posted on National Review Online, of a  wife's struggle to address her husband's pornography addiction. The unsigned commentary begins with some chilling facts that rarely surface in our media:

"Imagine a drug so powerful it can destroy a family simply by distorting a man’s perception of his wife. Picture an addiction so lethal it has the potential to render an entire generation incapable of forming lasting marriages and so widespread that it produces more annual revenue — $97 billion worldwide in 2006 — than all of the leading technology companies combined. Consider a narcotic so insidious that it evades serious scientific study and legislative action for decades, thriving instead under the ever-expanding banner of the First Amendment.

According to an online statistics firm, an estimated 40 million people use this drug on a regular basis. It doesn’t come in pill form. It can’t be smoked, injected, or snorted. And yet neurological data suggest its effects on the brain are strikingly similar to those of synthetic drugs. Indeed, two authorities on the neurochemistry ofaddiction , Harvey Milkman and Stanley Sunderwirth, claim it is the ability of this drug to influence all three pleasure systems in the brain — arousal, satiation, and fantasy — that makes it “the pièce de résistance among the addictions.”"

Today, the New York Times Sunday Magazine published "Playing at Sexy," an article by contributor Peggy Orenstein about the impact of our hyper-sexualized media culture on young girls' experience with sex. In passing, Orenstein uses the word, "pornified," but she is too busy lamenting the sad collapse of the 1970s feminist dream of women "taking charge" of their sexuality to devote even a paragraph to pornography's corrosive advance.  Orenstein is saddened by the fact that girls care more about how they "look" during sex play than how they "feel." Her article exposes the way feminists' moral confusion has complicated the effort to effectively address pornography's inroads throughout our society.

Here's another excellent piece in First Things by Mary Eberstadt, the co-author of The Social Costs of Pornography.

Steve Jobs: Freedom from Porn

Steve Jobs actually celebrates a transformed world of the future where there will be "freedom from porn."

This is way cool! If you want to know some reasons why Jobs' decision should be applauded, check out The Socials Costs of Pornography.  This week, I also read an interesting article by Mary Eberstadt regarding the public health consequences of Americans' rising addiction to pornography: The Weight of Smut.

UPDATE: Here's a  perceptive reaction to Jobs' stance on porn, from  Wall Street Journal blogger, Eric Felten  "Steven Jobs in the Garden of Good and Evil," notes Jobs' riposte to libertarian techies who embrace porn as one more element of human freedom:

"[Y]ou might care more about porn when you have kids..."

To which Mr. Tate replies; "It's you imposing your morality, about porn."

The bloger, Eric Felten weighs in:

"My, how the definition of imposing one's morality has changed over the years. Once it meant enforcing criminal sanctions on smut-peddlers. Now, a businessman who prefers to opt out of the trade is accused of impinging on everyone else's free speech.

But what is Mr. Jobs trying to impose? It's a mistake to think that morality is his main motivation for unfriending the world of porn. Mr. Jobs wrote, "We're just doing what we can to try and make (and preserve) the user experience we envision."

This suggests that at least some of the arbiters of modern cool have finally cooled to the sweaty cultural ascendance of "adult entertainment." Could it be that the tide has begun to turn against pornography, and not because of any moral awakening, but just as a matter of taste and style?

About a half-century ago, the courts started ruling that the traditional prohibitions against stag films, girlie shows and naughty magazines were constitutionally passé. But as the law of obscenity was transformed, the bench did give its okay to some vestigial restrictions on the time and places such entertainments could be provided.

Some cities tried to concentrate the skin trade in pornographic ghettos. Others, notably New York, used zoning to limit peep-show density. The basic idea was less a moral one than a question of taste, and property values. Times Square became far more desirable real estate when it sloughed off the seedy trench-coat aesthetic of the '70s and '80s.

Of course, time and place restrictions no longer apply in any real way to the world of pornography, because it isn't much of a brick-and-mortar business anymore. Now, every house with an Internet connection has its own 24/7 peep show just waiting to open for business. Are computers being tainted as hopelessly seedy?

Mr. Jobs has built Apple on equal parts of transformative technology and high design. The company's products are desirable not only for what they do, but how they look and feel. And how does Apple's glossy elegance fit with the smarmy carny-barker vibe of purveying porn? How elegant would the Chanel runway look with Joslyn James modeling?

Mr. Jobs seems to be betting that the attractiveness of his products is like the attractiveness of a glitzy neighborhood: as much a function of what is not on display as of what is. I suspect he is also well aware of just how weary parents have grown trying to police what their children see and hear.

Who wants to buy their kids yet another device that's just a few keystrokes from content that once would have made a Tijuana pander blush? Apple seems to realize that it can do far more box office in its App Store if parents are confident they can let their children make purchases there without strict scrutiny.

Gawker's Mr. Tate says that the very notion of "freedom from porn" is "absurdly Orwellian," and that Mr. Jobs's statement is so unwise it "will haunt him." Maybe so.

More likely, Mr. Jobs is just promising more than he can deliver: As long as one of the Apple Apps is an Internet browser, the bawdy side of web will still be accessible on iPhones and iPads. Still, just because Mr. Jobs won't be able to purge his devices of blue content, that doesn't mean he's obliged to distribute it himself..

What a peculiar—and peculiarly modern—controversy. Is it really such an affront to the rights of those who would buy and sell pornography that someone might want the right to choose not to?"

UPDATE: Here's a National Catholic Register story dealing with this issue published today.

The Social Costs of Pornography

American society in general hasn't caught up with the pornography tsunami washing over our world. Meanwhile, news stories and anecdotes stir parental worries about porn infiltrating our homes, destroying marriages and poisoning our children's first exposure to sex.

Here's my article in the National Catholic Register on  the latest initiatives to stem the rising tide of porn. The story also introduces an important new report,  The Social Costs of Pornography, just released by the Princeton-based Witherspoon Institute. The report summarizes numerous findings from social science research regarding the impact of pornography use on Americans of all ages.

What I learned from my research was that Americans may be concerned about stopping child porn because the very creation of this genre involves a crime--the sexual exploitation of minors. But even our  legislators don't understand that adult porn can also lead to the sexual abuse of children. According to the latest research, a steady diet of pornography can suppress users' inhibitions, encouraging them to perceive their fellow human beings--especially the vulnerable--as "fair game." If the user is a minor, they might take advantage of a peer, or even a younger sibling.

The academics, who have signed the Witherspoon report, want law enforcement authorities to penalize the most "acceptable" form of pornography that involves adult subjects. Thus, the public will begin to understand that all of this stuff is toxic and must be removed -- root and branch -- from our culture.

My story in the National Catholic Register also features the impressive anti-porn activities sponsored by the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas and the Diocese of Kansas City--St.Joseph. Both Archbishop Joseph Naumann and Bishop Robert Finn have emerged as leaders in the Church on this issue, confronting the pornography juggernaut with an effective program of public education, catechesis, pastoral outreach for pornography users and their spouses, theology of the body curricula in Catholic schools, and engagement with local city councils and state legislators. The church sponsors a number of programs that should be reviewed by dioceses throughout the country. Here's a video produced by the Diocese of Kansas City--St.Joseph that sums up the issues at stake.

By the way, Bishop LaVerde of the Diocese of Arlington also has issued a compelling pastoral letter,  "Bought with a Price: Pornography and the Attack on the Living Temple of God," which is well worth reading.

UPDATE: So excited to read in Inside Catholic  that Steve Jobs decided not to include a "porn application" on the iPhone! As many Catholics already know, the Mac provides excellent filtering options for families concerned about Internet porn. This stance is unusual in Silicon Valley, where libertarian values predominate. This Wired article presents a predictable critique.

Porn: "The New Tobacco?"

What do our present attitudes about pornography have to do with our past tolerance of smoking? A lot, writes Mary Eberstadt, who takes note of a growing trend that no concerned parent can afford to ignore: "Pornography is the single most searched-for item on the internet and also the most profitable." 

Once feminists joined with Christian activists to criticize porn as exploitive and anti-woman. Now, as the mainstreaming of porn leads many Americans to give up the fight altogether, Eberstadt provides some much-needed perspective:

'Today’s prevailing social consensus about pornography is practically identical to the social consensus about tobacco in 1963: i.e., it is characterized by widespread tolerance, tinged with resignation about the notion that things could ever be otherwise. After all, many people reason, pornography’s not going to go away any time soon. Serious people, including experts, either endorse its use or deny its harms or both. Also, it is widely seen as cool, especially among younger people, and this coveted social status further reduces the already low incentive for making a public issue of it. In addition, many people also say that consumers have a “right” to pornography — possibly even a constitutional right. No wonder so many are laissez-faire about this substance. Given the social and political circumstances arrayed in its favor, what would be the point of objecting?

"Such is the apparent consensus of the times, and apart from a minority of opponents it appears very nearly bulletproof — every bit as bulletproof, in fact, as the prevailing laissez-faire public view of smoking did in 1963. In fact, just substitute the word “smoking” for that of “pornography” in the paragraph above, and the result works just as well.

"And that is exactly the point of our opening thought experiment. Many people today share the notion that today’s unprecedented levels of pornography consumption are somehow fixed, immutable, a natural expression of (largely but not entirely male) human nature. Even people who deplore pornography seem resigned to its exponentially expanded presence in the culture. This is one genie, most people agree, that is out of the bottle for good.¹

"But this widely held belief, while understandable, overlooks a critical and perhaps potent fact. The example of tobacco shows that one can indeed take a substance to which many people are powerfully drawn and sharply reduce its consumption via a successful revival of social stigma. What might this transformation imply for today’s unprecedented rates of pornography consumption? Perhaps a great deal. For in one realm after another — as a habit, as an industry, as a battleground for competing ideas of the public good — internet pornography today resembles nothing so much as tobacco circa a half-century ago. Let us begin to count the ways."

Eberstadt compares the turnaround of social views on pornography and tobacco. Once the majority of Americans doubted that tobacco use could cause significant harm. Now, that public health battle has been won. Instead, many repudiate the judgment of their churches and question whether porn poses any significant harm -- despite growing evidence to the contrary. Eberstadt identifies some of the issues:

"This harm-minimizing synergy between producer and consumer is one more factor suggesting that internet pornography may stand in the same situation today as tobacco in the decades before the surgeon general’s report. That is to say, producers in the pornography industry have a vested interest in denying that their product causes harm, and they are aided in this effort, however unwittingly, by consumers who have reasons of their own for wanting this to be true.

"Despite that synergy, however, there is evidence that pornography does cause harm to at least some people. Consider, for example, its apparent widespread interference in the workplace. According to a 2007 survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Journal, 65 percent of corporations now use pornography-detecting software, up from 40 percent in 2001. According to that same study, fully 84 percent of the 30 percent of bosses who said they fired someone for internet misuse cited pornography as the reason why. These facts alone strongly suggests that pornography consumption is both compromising at least some office work on a large scale, and also becoming a risk factor for at least some employees in job loss.

"Indirect evidence from other sources, such as divorce cases and reports by clergy and therapists, also suggest that pornography can cause harm. Consider the increasing role played by internet pornography in divorce proceedings. According to a meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, for example, 62 percent of the 350attendees said that the internet had been a significant factor in cases handled that year — and that was in 2002, well behind today’s levels of pornography consumption. Numerous pastors and priests and ministers and therapists have reported that pornography use is now the leading cause of marital trouble and breakup they encounter as counselors.³  If we accept that marital breakup itself causes distress to both parties as well as to any children involved, then pornography’s potential cast of victims appears to widen significantly by virtue of that fact alone."

Postscript:

There's another force that also drives this shifting view of porn, and that's the mainstream media's problem with traditional sexual morality. Here is Francis Beckwith's post on the recent death of porn star, Marilyn Chambers, and the celebratory obits generated by her passing.