Fighting Pornography

Those who defend this societal habit are running short on excuses. Pornography addiction is a brutal vice eating away at our culture.  But here’s the good news for those in the fight: the slow ship of legal recourse is beginning to turn around and science is playing a vital role to bolster our claim that pornography is harmful.

For years citizen efforts to drive SOBs (sexually oriented businesses) and SEM (sexually explicit material) out of our communities have hit a brick wall.  Morality is something that many courts are loathed to acknowledge.  Couple this handicap with the significant resources of the pornography industry and a level playing field nowhere to be found.

Local prosecutors face serious financial burdens as experienced porn industry defense teams swoop in with innumerable legal maneuvers.  Its no wonder that the Bush administration has failed to prosecute anything other than the most beastly pornography related crimes.  The breadth of the addiction, the scant resources at hand, and the serious legal opposition that follows is decidedly tough for any county, district, state or federal entity.

However, recent victories in Florida and elsewhere show promising signs that communities have had enough and are willing to call out obscenity and kill it dead.  It was encouraging that Justice Scalia began his majority opinion reiterating their standing position: “We have long held that obscene speech—sexually explicit material that violates fundamental notions of decency—is not protected by the First Amendment.”  The tables are turning.

Consider the following:

·        A study commissioned by the UK Ministry of Justice last fall found that extreme sexual material definitely leads to violent behavior.

·        Recent studies show that individuals who indulge in online pornography and virtual adultery are 3 times more likely to commit the act in reality.

·        Other scientific studies underway expect to find that the brains of pornography addicts are physically altered and even damaged.

It appears the analogy to drug use is more than just rhetorical.   An adaptation on the old television ad is way overdue: “This is your brain.  This is your brain on porn.”