Are you really cool with BIG MASTURBATION introducing themselves to your 5 year old?

Porn epidemic?
By Douglas Brown
Denver Post Staff Writer

Watch enough pornography, critics say, and ideas about sex and sexuality, and even relationships, will mirror pornography's sinister carnival, on display on television and computer screens everywhere.

Blunt, tough public-service messages are required, some say.

"We need to do with pornography what we did with smoking and drunk driving," says James Weaver, a professor at George Mason University in Virginia who conducted some landmark research on pornography and its effects in the 1980s.

"We had the courage as a society to talk about smoking and about responsible drinking, but we haven't been able to get past our inhibitions about talking about pornography. It's a distortion. And while they may find it entertaining, give them the tools to understand why it's not real.
"It's a public-health crisis. There's no way this is the right path for our culture to take."

Most of the evidence for the public-health contention is anecdotal - sex counselors say clients are suffering from compulsive pornography viewing, ministers are dealing with members of their congregations twisted by pornography and scholars are piecing together data that point toward troubling trends.

However, there is strong evidence for the idea that media viewing affects behavior, says Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology program at the University of Pennsylvania.

And today, she says, kids see more pornography than ever before, and what they encounter is much more raunchy and violent than previous generations, when they likely encountered tamer images, like a Playboy centerfold. The average age of a first glimpse at pornography now is 5, she says.

"We are getting to the point where every 5-year-old has seen an image of rape," she says. "What happens to society when we do that? A child's first sexual image is group sex, rape, sadomasochism. ... That's a dramatic turnaround (from previous generations). It says something dramatic about our society."

The idea of pornography as a public-health hazard has captured the imagination of many who oppose adult entertainment. The idea: Pornography distorts sex into something grotesque and violent.

And sex on the Internet, says Layden, girds a lot of pornography's corrosive powers.

On the Internet, pornography is largely free; it's highly accessible; and people can watch it in anonymity.

"Is there a way to inundate society with toxic sexual messages in such a way that we could damage society at every level?" she asks. "We couldn't have come up with a better way."

The psychiatry professor's argument revolves around her own and her colleagues' clinical observations and studies on pornography's effects.

Pornographers and the genre's many fans, on the other hand, say pornography is healthy and fun. Oppressive forces for too long bottled up everyone's natural urge to explore sexuality, including through the media. The times have shifted, they say, and it's for the better.

"I think it's understandable that it's becoming more and more mainstream in our society," says Ken Boenish, president of New Frontier Media in Boulder. "It's kind of curious that in our society violence is so acceptable," but sex isn't.

Ah, the pornographer as Philosopher-King. How cute!

Have you noticed how the minions of Big Masturbation always start talking about how violence in our media is much worse than sex?

New Frontier, a publicly traded pornography leviathan, is the epicenter for much of the pornography broadcast on cable, satellite and hotel networks around the nation.

The success of corporations like New Frontier has contributed to the contention that "what used to be very kinky is now just a little kinky, and what used to be a little kinky is now incorporated into everyday life," says Elaine Leass, the publisher of the Oyster, a sex magazine that has been distributed in Colorado since 1976. Ads for escorts, erotic massages and other services fill its pages.

"Sex is so important in your life. People who pooh-pooh sex are kidding themselves," she says, picking at fruit salad during lunch at a Boulder diner. "In everyday life, people can be so depressed if they aren't having a good sex life. So we get rid of depression. We want people to feel good."

How fortunate for this lady! The most important thing in the world just happens to be the thing that pays her bills! Some folks are just lucky, I guess.

But feel-good sex and pornography need to be separated, say critics. The growth of Internet pornography, as well as other forms of commercial sex, was behind the creation of "The Defenders," a group organized by Shared Hope International, a Vancouver, Wash., organization that helps to stop human trafficking.

The Defenders launched anti- pornography television and radio public-service advertisements around Father's Day last month encouraging men to pledge they will work against commercialized sex.

"I am a man who is invested in the children of America and the protection of their futures from the commercial sex industry," reads the beginning of the pledge. "I am taking a stand, declaring that the sexual exploitation of children, using pornography and buying sex is not something real men will tolerate. I believe real men guard themselves and protect children with dignity."

It then lists various things Defenders will do, including refusing "to be a victim of the commercial sex industry. I acknowledge that pornography, prostitution and sexual addiction have no place in my life and (they are) not only harmful to the women and children involved, but also to myself and those around me."

The Defenders has a strong Christian component. It's the churches that have been fighting pornography most aggressively.

The leaders of Flatirons Community Church in Lafayette feel so strongly about the topic that they held a weekend-long anti-pornography event in May, with a conference on Saturday, and Sunday's services dedicated to the topic of pornography and sex. It was the first of its kind in Colorado.

"This is such a perfect storm for real erosion in our society," says Curt Cavnar, communications director for the church. "It's shameful, it's creepy, people don't want to talk about it, it's completely anonymous."

Hooray for the schismatics!

Some people left the church's 4,000-member congregation out of disgust with the topic. But it's too important to ignore, says John Zisch, one of the pastors.

"It's a problem that affects everybody in the church," he says. "There's a high shame level, like booze and cocaine in the 1980s. We've talked about this stuff a lot, people even wear badges of honor - 'I'm recovering' - but with pornography it's still behind the black curtain."

What's so bad about the world behind the curtain?

Anti-porn activists say it's addiction to pornography. Challenged relationships. Distorted expectations. And for young people who grow up in the porno-surround, ideas about the very nature of sex that are warped, stunted and toxic.

Yes, but one can have all that without pornography, says Big Masturbation.

Uh...uh...well, um...say the anti-porn protestant activists.

Well, what did you expect from people suffering from bad theology and no philosophy? (Do you detect a bit of a theme here today, kiddies?)

Here's the bottom line on porn: It is all about masturbation. Masturbation is a mortal sin . And mortal sins will screw you up in ways unimaginable.

That's it, kiddies. Reality is often quite simple.


Nonsense, says Paul Cambria, general counsel to the Adult Freedom Foundation, a pornography industry trade organization.

"We have solid scientific data that you can become intoxicated with alcohol, and it impairs your physical and mental ability, the same with drugs, but we don't have that for adult entertainment," says "There are addicts for everything," he says. "Video game addicts, gambling addicts. All sorts of people out there. You don't outlaw underwear because there are people who have underwear fetishes."

What about claims that pornography undermines relationships?

"I know marriages that broke up over money," he says. "Well, we don't ban money."

The widening spread of pornography doesn't illustrate a metastasizing cancer, Cambria says. Instead, it speaks to a healthy adult desire that always has been there, but held back by powerful scolds.

Increased access to pornography, he contends, has eroded stigmas about adult entertainment. People increasingly feel "less intimidated to express their honest feelings" about the genre, which has led to an ever-expanding embrace by mainstream culture of the industry's surging line of products.
It's a self-reinforcing loop, he says: More pornography and better access leads to greater acceptance, which leads to more pornography and better access.

If Cambria's formula is correct, then expect pornography's range to expand even more.

I would not be surprised.