Apostrophes: Learn to use them!
It was revealed last week that, in addition to provisions limiting the rights of LGBT individuals and forcing the victims of rape to carry to term the children of their rapists, the 2012 Republican Party platform includes language promising the vigorous enforcement of current anti-pornography laws.
There are laws in place in the United States which make pornography illegal. I’m not talking about relatively tame scenes involving a man and a woman having sex; while there are those who would love nothing better than to eradicate even the nearly-wholesome output of studios like Vivid Video, its mainstream appeal makes cracking down on vanilla porn (for lack of a better descriptor) a hard sell. But I’m not talking solely about child pornography, either. Since the presidency of George W. Bush, the adult industry has seen strict measures put in place to make their product more difficult to produce and distribute.
In 2001, fear of criminal prosecution led to the creation of the Cambria List, a collection of sex acts considered at the time to be obscene in the eyes of the U.S. Justice Department; it was strongly recommended that these acts not be included in pornographic films. Today the items on the list seem arbitrary, nonsensical even, from such porn standards as facials, simulated rape, and degradation; to much less controversial elements such as food play and blindfolding.
Subsequently in 2005, an Obscenity Prosecution Task Force was founded by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales which was “dedicated to the investigation and prosecution of the distributors of hard-core pornography that meets the test for obscenity, as defined by the United States Supreme Court.”
Let me repeat that. The purpose of this entity is to persecute – sorry, prosecute – the makers of any porn deemed obscene by the United States Supreme Court. Its purpose is not necessarily to lock up those who exploit minors, exhibit pornography in public places, or otherwise circumvent consent. Its purpose is, essentially, to flout the First Amendment which guarantees the right of any individual with a video camera to film two or more consenting adults engaging in sex (or for that matter a single such individual masturbating) without worrying about the government locking him or her up.
I may think he’s a pig, but as long as his movies feature consenting adults being urinated on, he’s in the clear.
“Wait a minute, Jack”, you may be saying. “The Founding Fathers didn’t have Three-in-the-Butt Sluts Volume 4 in mind when they drafted the Bill of Rights. They were talking about the right of the individual to speak his or her mind, question the government, and protest peacefully.” Hey, you know what? You may be right. But if we start nit-picking details and questioning the evolution of each amendment of the United States Constitution, i.e. what the authors had in mind versus the way it’s interpreted today, we couldn’t in good conscience bypass the fact that the Founding Fathers probably didn’t envision automatic weapons when they wrote the Second Amendment.
They didn’t envision them in her hands, anyway.
Beyond the obvious violation of our right to free speech, my problem with outlawing pornography based on such grounds is that there is no tangible societal standard of exactly what constitutes obscenity. Barring the sort of lunacy that has Child Protective Services investigate parents who take photos of their babies naked on bear skin rugs, child pornography is almost universally understood to be the production of sexually-explicit materials featuring individuals younger than the local age of consent. Provided that the age of consent doesn’t change, the definition of child pornography won’t either.
But obscenity? That depends who you ask. Like just about anything else, it’s a matter of perspective. One person’s hardcore scat fetish video is another person’s obscenity. However, one person’s trashy romance novel is another person’s obscenity. One person’s hip-hop video is another person’s obscenity. One person’s lingerie catalog is another person’s obscenity. However, I opine that allowing some hand-wringing fringe group like
One Million Moms to determine what is obscene and attempt to influence Americans to agree is different than allowing the government to decide.
While there may be laws in place against hardcore pornography, they are seldom enforced. How could they be? Such statutes are clearly unconstitutional. But most if not all Republican politicians support them. When Rick Santorum was campaigning for the Republican nomination earlier this year, he drew much derision for his position on pornography. Calling it “a pandemic of harm”, Santorum claimed that pornography is toxic to marriages, and “contributes to misogyny and violence against women”.
And we all know that Republicans take misogyny very seriously.
I’m guessing that most of the right-leaning voters who regularly indulge in pornography were relieved when Santorum closed up shop. They likely plan to vote for Mitt Romney, who may still plan to enforce anti-pornography laws but isn’t half as outspoken about it as was Santorum.
In an interview with
Huffington Post, Patrick Trueman, president of Morality in Media, stated that use of pornography among males in their twenties leads to sexual dysfunction. According to Trueman, because young men spend so much time watching pornography they essentially become broken. Said Trueman, “Normal sex is not something that gets them excited.” And you know something? I’m almost inclined to agree.
Before you unsubscribe from this blog in anger, hear me out: An overreliance on pornography is probably not unlike an overreliance on anything, whether it be a trusty vibrator, your alarm clock, or your mother’s home cooking. Once an individual becomes accustomed to something, it can be very difficult to get by without it. If your dog greets you at the front door every day when you come home from work, something will feel amiss that one afternoon when Sparky misses your arrival because he’s out back burying a bone.
We’ve written about
Death Grip Syndrome, the phenomenon that affects young men who’ve spent their entire post-pubescent lives masturbating with a tight grasp. When they eventually have sexual intercourse, they find that their partner’s vagina and other orifices are nowhere near as tight as the grip they’ve been using. As Trueman would say, the brain maps of these men have been altered. At this point, re-training themselves may be the only way to correct years of irresponsible masturbation.
However, I don’t hear any faith-based non-profit groups advocating that some sort of proper masturbation curriculum be adopted in our public schools. But why not? It’s the exact same principle. According to its opponents, pornography leads to sexual dysfunction. By their standards, so too does death grip-style masturbation. So why are they in favor of banning pornography but against teaching young men how to masturbate properly? It’s a rhetorical question; obviously the answer is because while masturbation is something that virtually everyone does, it isn’t something that can be talked about or advocated for. Hell, even liberal-ass Bill Clinton dismissed Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders for daring to suggest that masturbation be taught in school.
While I understand Trueman’s belief that overexposure to pornography may have negative consequences, I will never support any school of thought that suggests that human beings need to be protected from themselves. I don’t care whether the issue is cities banning the sale of soft drinks – a currently-trending cause championed by the left – or the federal government banning more adult vices including alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and, yes, pornography. Enforced deprivation has been proven insufficient to prevent demand; it’s also been responsible for dramatic spikes in organized crime.
The fact is that while filmmakers like Max Hardcore have been accused of “testing the limits of acceptability” and deviating from the boundaries of taste, that shouldn’t have anything to do with the legality of their work. No one should be using words like “acceptability” when talking about porn that involves consenting adults. If some fundamentalist claims that Max Hardcore’s films are borderline unacceptable, are they then suggesting that the rest of the porn spectrum – that involving acts of arguably better taste – is acceptable? I’d suggest that those who don’t like watching porn simply not watch it and stop trying to inflict their will upon the rest of us.
When any politician – a Republican especially – seems to be looking out for the best interests of the common man and woman, be very suspicious. They aren’t against pornography because they want young men and women to live happy, monogamous, heterosexual lives together. I’m pretty sure most Republican don’t give half a fuck about the common man and woman. They are against pornography because they seek to legislate (and regulate) our very sexuality. If they could, they would criminalize all non-procreative sexual behavior. Especially yours.
-Jack
*We get political sometimes. It happens. It is our belief that one can’t run a sex blog in America without occasionally thinking – if not blogging – about politics. It is not our intention to offend, but rather to drag the issue into the spotlight and, in doing so, to force our fellow American voters to take action. If you don’t, you shouldn’t complain when you wake up one morning and discover that your rights have been taken away.
As a political moderate, who was Left of Bush, and is Right of Obama, it’s been a very long time since I’ve been enamored by any presidential candidate. My favorite president in recent years has been Bill Clinton, when after the 94 Congressional elections, had to work with Republicans.
Politicians working together… what a concept.
Politicians not working together… both parties wear that quite well.
I’m not threatened by the porn industry and their product…
I’m not threatened by firearm owners…
I can think of as many reasons to not vote Democrat as I can to not vote Republican.
~shoes~
Well said, Shoes. Despite our unabashed liberalism on some issues, notably those involving less than equal rights or protection for women, LGBT individuals, etc., we consider ourselves politically moderate. I’ll identify as Libertarian before I will as Democrat. I love the concept of a president – or any politician, for that matter – working with the opposition, but I hate the fact that such inclusion invariably leads to his supporters calling him a traitor. I recall this happening to Obama during the first year of his term.
I love you so much right now.
Stay SINful
Mr. AP
Well, Mr. AP took the words right out of my mouth. I was thinking the EXACT same thing when I was reading this post. You are spot on with all of the issues you bring up here.
The nature of my work leads me to be publicly somewhat quiet on partisan political matters – but you repeatedly manage to say things that I’m thinking but can’t say. Thanks!
I love this and so agree with this. What we fear we try to regulate…