(Prolifer)ations 8-10-10
by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN
- Catherine Palmer at Ethika Politika discusses the pervasiveness of pornography and its relationship to a host of other social ills, stating, “dehumanization anywhere is a peril to human dignity everywhere.”
- ProWomanProLife reacts to the news that Marie Stopes International now offers its employees and their families free abortions as part of their health benefits package. How generous.
- At Coming Home, Gerard Nadal discusses the “false virtue” of the rhetoric of tolerance.
- Pro Life With Christ congratulates the producers of Facing Life Head On, a Life Issues Institute pro-life television show, for being honored with an Emmy.
- Wesley J. Smith points out the hypocrisy in the recent arrest of a Dutch woman for infanticide – while Netherlands doctors who commit the same deed write “learned articles about their infanticide practice in medical journals.”
- American Papist notes Planned Parenthood’s partisanship in endorsement of candidates for public office.
Aug.10, 2010 3:30 pm |
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Conservatives delude themselves into thinking that banning pornography,or even tasteful erotica,will make people more virtuous are moral. But censorship has never done this and never will.
And who is to say what should be banned? Who gets appointed the supreme arbiter of what we may read or view in public or in private? Who is to say what is”indecent” or offensive”?
What’s indecent and offensive to one person is not necessarily the same to others.
Judging what is indecent and offensive is a totally arbitrary and subjective matter.
Pornography has been in existence since the Greco-roman era. I’ts not going to go away.
Playboy or Penthouse magazines are not responsble for any decline in morality in America or anywhere else. Men don’t rape women because of the availability of erotic photos of beautiful young women. If a man or teenage boy doesn’t already have it in him to rape a woman,no amount of viewing men’s magazines is going to make him commit rape or maltreat women in any way. And if a man is mentally ill and has sick urges to rape women,he will commit these heinous crimes whether he has access to erotic pictures of women or not.
Robert,
Your diatribe against “subjectivism” is firmly rooted your own subjective opinions. Do you have studies pointing to the “fact” that “men don’t rape women because of the availability” of porn? Or is that just your conjecture?
What is offensive and lude is not merely a matter of subjective opinion, it’s a matter of principle. What’s being highlighted: the goodness and dignity of the person (as in classical nude art), or the utility of a young body for personal, lustful gain? Decide that, and you’ve decided whether or not something is obscene or tasteful.
Of course, that lusting goes against one’s best interest is another matter. But again, it’s an argument that must be based on principle and not mere subjective conjecture. Otherwise, the circle becomes vicious.
Robert,
So much of modern liberalism is caught up in declarations of freedom where freedom does not exist. Women are said to be making “free” choices in having abortions, when the reality is that most are being compelled by family, friends, and boyfriends/husbands to do so-much against their own will and desire. We never hear of the issue surrounding women being compelled and coerced.
The same holds true for women and men in pornography and the rest of the sex industry. The greatest professor/priest/mentor I ever knew was Father Luke MCCann who always said,
“We become what we think we are.”
In my seven years of working with adolescent girls and boys at Covenant House in NYC’s Times Square in the 1980’s, I found that pearl of wisdom validated on a daily basis. I never met a happy, healthy, well-adjusted person who went to work in the sex industry.They were all physically, sexually, mentally abused for years. Prostitution and Porn are anything but victimless crimes. The suck the souls out of those who make their money in these nefarious trades. And there’s a reason for that.
Sex is a human good when engaged in the supportive context of a radical commitment (lifetime) to one another. This is a transcultural, transracial phenomenon. It is a function of our objective human nature. That’s why virtually every culture in the world has reserved sex as one of the goods of marriage. It is why an entire system of penalties has always surrounded its illicit use . It’s why we have had vice laws regarding prostitution and pornography. The effects of porn on marriages has been devastating. It is highly addictive and extremely corrosive.
As to your arguments, they simply miss the mark by a mile. The Meese Commission Report of the 1980’s established a strong link between rape and porn. That said, the issue here is that porn objectifies men and women. It bears no resemblance at all to spousal love. It denigrates the one of the highest and most sublime expressions of spousal union–a good reserved hitherto to married couples. It tears apart the firewalls built over millennia to protect that expression. It makes of the other a mere plaything to be enjoyed without any subsequent responsibility. All of which leads to a coarsening of how we regard the opposite sex.
This all in turn leads to unrealistic expectations surrounding sex, leads to isolation and alienation, which breed resentment, anger, and rage as the alienation and isolation deepen. They breed greater and greater unrealistic expectations and lead finally to explosive lashing out in the form of rape. The one reinforces the other.
Bitches and Ho’s as the rappers like to describe young women in their soft-porn videos.
That doesn’t come from nowhere.
Yo, mr. berger,
How about some empirical data to back up your assertions.
Pornography aside, the ones who decide what is legal and what is not in America is us, all of us, through our elected representatives. [judicial acitvism aside]
But whatever is decided eventually has to withstand constitutional challenge as determined by SCOTUS.
In the area of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, not to be confused with ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’, the culture of a society or community makes those determinations.
Like it or not the USA is at least a post chrsitian culture. Most of our laws reflect that world view. Someones world view will always prevail. There is no detente. There is a constant tension as one worldview competes with another for dominance.
Wherever and wheneve your relativistic and humanistic world view has prevailed it has produced more death and destruction than all the religious wars combined even if you do not take the hundreds of millions of pre-natal humans who have been deliberately killed. Humanism has resulted in more more bondage, misery and tyrany than all the monarchies combined.
When humannist reject the notion of ‘god’ and substitute their own ‘wisdom’, then they unwittingly and unavoidably make government their ‘god’ and grant their ‘god’ all the power and authority of the GOD of religious peoples.
If you are so shortsighted as to believe that ‘government’ confers upon humans their rights, then you have, by default or by design, given ‘government’ the authority and the power to relieve you of those rights when it becomes expedient to do so.
If you are so unfortunate as to inherit the brave new world you so desperately desire I pray that you find the grace to enjoy/endure it.
I agree with Gerard. I have had occaision to know many young women (and some older) in what is called “the sex industry.” The fact that ‘actresses’ themselves use this phrase, “the sex industry,” should clue you in right there. Each and every one whom I got to know well eventually revealed some past trauma or abuse, a sense of already being ‘damaged goods’ and very low self esteem. When women start getting older, they find themselves with no job skills, no future, and more often than not a chronic disease that affects all other aspects of their lives.
In theory, “erotica” may not be damaging, but come on, the porn industry is a chew-em-up-and-spit-them-out business. The effect its having on our culture is devastating. Men who frequently use pornography have trouble establishing and maintaining relationships with real women. This is the reality of the business. Libertines want what they want when they want it. But that does not help create a better social environment.
Actually, I read that countries where pornography is widespread and accepted, like Denmark, have lower rates of rape than nations where it’s frowned upon (just playing devil’s advocate here).
I’m all for freedom of expression, and I don’t think it should be illegal, but I do think that pornography dehumanizes men and women. I wonder if all the people defending the sex industry would mind if their daughters, wives, sisters, and other women they care about became sex workers?
The Meese commisssion’s findings were totally biased and have long been discredited.
And yes,banning pornography or even tasteful erotica will do absolutely nothing to
stop rape or other sexual offenses, and Phillyumiss is right. Rape is not caused by male lust.
It is caused by mental illness in a small number of men which has absolutely nothing to do with sexual desire. The vast majority of men do not rape women,even if they use pornography.
The problem with people like you on this website is that you have extremely unhealthy attitudes toward sex and totally unrealistic goals and expectation about marriage and the family. You are sexually repressed and appallingly puritanical and prudish. Not that I advocate the opposite,being licentious and debauched. But there has to be a healthy and happy medium between these two extremes.
The problem is that you want an America and a world in which there is no sex before or outside of marriage,even for adults who have never been married,no divorce, no homosexuality,no use of contraceptives, no abortion, no sex education other than abstinence only, and for every child to be brought up in a stable,heterosexual marriage.
And you want every one to have big,contented families,go to church on Sundays,vote republican, watch only G-rated television and films, and live happily ever after.
What a pretty fairy tale ! But there is absolutely no way to create a society like this.
None has ever existed or ever will. And for our government to try to force America into this totally unrealistic mole would be absolutely catastrophic and turn it into a theocratic police state.
And by the way,I’m not a “moral relativist”. There’s no such thing as moral realtivism.
It’s nothing but a straw man invented by conservatives as an excuse to label those who don’t agree with them as wicked,atheistic,immoral,licentious and just plain no good.
There are some things which are obviously wrong morally, but other things are not so black and white. There are many shades of gray. I an dother ”wicked liberals don’t think that any kind of behavior is acceptable and that there is no such thing as right and wrong.
We just realize that not every one agrees on every issue in ethics and morality.
Phillymiss didn’t say rape wasn’t caused by male lust or can’t you read? She said that she read that places like Denmark has lower rape statistics.
No one is saying to ban anything. I wish the Leave it to Beaver world had really existed. I don’t think perfection is going to happen in human society tomorrow, but it can certainly be made better, more humane. Just because people don’t agree on everything is no reason to keep stooping to the lowest common denominator. Sex is a multibillion dollar industry and our space program is way behind where it should be. Coincidence? No. Humans have literally screwed themselves out of a better way of life. Why aren’t there hotels on the moon yet? Because people would rather sit home alone watching porn than work hard for genuine progress. Why haven’t we cured the common cold? Because more money is poured into the abortion industry that could be used to improve our lot. Connect the dots.
“The problem is that you want an America and a world in which there is no sex before or outside of marriage,even for adults who have never been married,no divorce, no homosexuality,no use of contraceptives, no abortion, no sex education other than abstinence only, and for every child to be brought up in a stable,heterosexual marriage.
“And you want every one to have big,contented families,go to church on Sundays,vote republican, watch only G-rated television and films, and live happily ever after.
That’s not a problem Robert. With the exception of voting Republican, that’s a perfect distillation of God’s plan for humanity.
As for the Meese Commission, it wasn’t biased, but thank you for the NY Times spin. The quarter of a century since, the social scientific literature has validated, many times over, the conclusions drawn in that report. As for your disgusting ad hominems about my sex life, unless you’ve actually slept with an individual, you sound like a child who resorts to such prattle when they lose an argument. Typical of liberals. You make up for in ad hominems what you lack in substance.
Yes it is a problem,Gerard. A society like this is absolutely impossible to achieve,and if the government tries to force society into this totally unrealistic mold,it will only create a repressive theocracy.
I wasn’t making any ad hominem comments on you r private life.Your private life is your business and I not only don’t know anything about it but am not interested in it.
But what I do object to is self-righteous people like yourself who want the government in our bedrooms and to tell Americans what they may or may not read or view in public or in private.
And yes, the Meese commission’s findings were extremely biased and skewed,and have been thoroughly discredited.
I don’t know anything about your sex life and am not interested in it.
Robert, I am glad you think that all images and speech deserve protection. I hope someone puts up a billboard across from your house with a picture of a dismembered unborn child that says “Abortion is murder.”
“The problem with people like you on this website is that you have extremely unhealthy attitudes toward sex and totally unrealistic goals and expectation about marriage and the family. You are sexually repressed and appallingly puritanical and prudish.”
No, this is very incorrect. I have a very healthy attitude toward sex. I think it’s wonderful fun, and bonding, and that part of its purpose is procreation, and that it should exist only in marriage. Guess what? I practice that. My husband and I have an extremely fulfilling sex life and abstained until we were married. Now I can have sex every other day or more if I want (not always as much as I want, or whenever I want, but who gets that?). I have a husband who loves me and values me and wants to fulfill my sexual and emotional needs, and I want to fulfill his. We are in no way repressed–we openly discuss what we want together when we are alone, and if we have the opportunity, we fulfill each other’s needs and desires.
Just saying this to say how NOT REPRESSED I am as a married Christian woman… (nor is my husband repressed). It may not always be easy, but I do always know that there’s someone who loves me and finds me attractive and isn’t just after my body; that he cares about me and protects and provides for our children and me. While we were not perfect before marriage, we were both virgins when we married, and we have never wanted to do other than delight in each other–neither of us feel restrained or constricted by our exclusive commitment to each other.
I respect and admire my husband. I think he is handsome and I love his body and he is all I ever want.
Either you have no idea what a Christian marriage is like–in which case I hope I have educated you–or you are just jealous. Feeling that incredible connection to your partner, being one flesh in heart, mind, and body, having assurance of love and devotion and affection and respect and a mutual desire unmuted by time or fashion–Robert, you got no clue what you’re missing.