Thank You for Protecting Me from Pornography!
Forget the terrorists. Forget the people who have been killed in 9/11, the London subway bombings, and in the other terrorist attacks occuring daily around the world. Forget the efforts of people like my husband and my coworkers, who go out every day and risk their lives to stop crime and terrorism.
Because what we need is protection from pornography.
The following article appeared in The Washington Post on 21 September 2005:
Recruits Sought for Porn Squad
By Barton Gellman
The FBI is joining the Bush administration's War on Porn. And it's looking for a few good agents.
Early last month, the bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing the initiative as "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and, by extension, of "the Director." That would be FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.
Mischievous commentary began propagating around the water coolers at 601 Fourth St. NW and its satellites, where the FBI's second-largest field office concentrates on national security, high-technology crimes and public corruption.
The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography -- not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.
"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."
Among friends and trusted colleagues, an experienced national security analyst said, "it's a running joke for us."
A few of the printable samples:
"Things I Don't Want On My Resume, Volume Four."
"I already gave at home."
"Honestly, most of the guys would have to recuse themselves."
Federal obscenity prosecutions, which have been out of style since Attorney General Edwin Meese III in the Reagan administration made pornography a signature issue in the 1980s, do "encounter many legal issues, including First Amendment claims," the FBI headquarters memo noted.
Applicants for the porn squad should therefore have a stomach for the kind of material that tends to be most offensive to local juries. Community standards -- along with a prurient purpose and absence of artistic merit -- define criminal obscenity under current Supreme Court doctrine.
"Based on a review of past successful cases in a variety of jurisdictions," the memo said, the best odds of conviction come with pornography that "includes bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior." No word on the universe of other kinks that helps make porn a multibillion-dollar industry.
Popular acceptance of hard-core pornography has come a long way, with some of its stars becoming mainstream celebrities and their products -- once confined to seedy shops and theaters -- being "purveyed" by upscale hotels and most home cable and satellite television systems. Explicit sexual entertainment is a profit center for companies including General Motors Corp. and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (the two major owners of DirecTV), Time Warner Inc. and the Sheraton, Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt hotel chains.
But Gonzales endorses the rationale of predecessor Meese: that adult pornography is a threat to families and children. Christian conservatives, long skeptical of Gonzales, greeted the pornography initiative with what the Family Research Council called "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general."
Congress began funding the obscenity initiative in fiscal 2005 and specified that the FBI must devote 10 agents to adult pornography. The bureau decided to create a dedicated squad only in the Washington Field Office. "All other field offices may investigate obscenity cases pursuant to this initiative if resources are available," the directive from headquarters said. "Field offices should not, however, divert resources from higher priority matters, such as public corruption."
Public corruption, officially, is fourth on the FBI's priority list, after protecting the United States from terrorist attack, foreign espionage and cyber-based attacks. Just below those priorities are civil rights, organized crime, white-collar crime and "significant violent crime." The guidance from headquarters does not mention where pornography fits in.
"The Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's top priority remains fighting the war on terrorism," said Justice Department press secretary Brian Roehrkasse. "However, it is not our sole priority. In fact, Congress has directed the department to focus on other priorities, such as obscenity."
At the FBI's field office, spokeswoman Debra Weierman expressed disappointment that some of her colleagues find grist for humor in the new campaign. "The adult obscenity squad . . . stems from an attorney general mandate, funded by Congress," she said. "The personnel assigned to this initiative take the responsibility of this assignment very seriously and are dedicated to the success of this program."
My Thoughts on This
Every day, my husband takes public tranportation into the heart of Washington, DC. He can see the White House from his office window. Every day, I worry. Will today be the day? Will today be the day that brings the next 9/11?
Because what I fear is a reality for too many people: People who wake up every day without someone they love, someone lost to terrorism. Few--and lucky!--are those of us who do not know someone--or know someone who knows someone--who was lost to terrorism. It has become the brutal reality of life in the modern world. Every day could be the day.
On 9/11, I left my Psychometrics class into a beautiful summer morning, walked through the quad, and thought, Wow, there are a lot of people on their cell phones today! I walked into the Pub and bought an orange soda and watched on television as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
If something so awful could happen on such a beautiful day, it could happen anytime.
When 9/11 passed, we all waved flags and joined in unity and repeated our mantras: United we stand. One nation, indivisible. We will not forget.
How quickly we've forgotten.
Only four years after 9/11--and bare months after the London attacks--my country is making pornography a priority. Not child pornography. Not that which hurts people, but the stuff that willing adults choose to make and willing adults choose to watch. To me, this is a slap in the face of those brave people who go to work every day in the law enforcement community. And it is to spit on the graves of those who have died in terrorist attacks.
Because, if their deaths and sacrifices were for anything, it was that 9/11 would never happen again. It was that the country woke up to what the academics had been screaming for years: Terrorism is a threat. We need to take this seriously. My husband wrote papers on the threat of terrorism before 9/11 even occured; he was on his way to a class on terrorism when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. At last, the world was forced to wake up. This is a threat. It was bad enough that people had to die, when the information and the intelligence was right there (for those of us who can pause our perpetual vacations long enough to read it). Now, we know. And we are allowing it to happen again?
My husband and I discussed this tonight, on our way to my skating class. "Those eight agents being assigned to this 'task force,'" he said, "should be out on the streets, interviewing people, gathering intelligence, to stop terrorism."
But they are not. They are policing the Internet for pornography.
I have never even seen a "porn." Or have I? I have read plenty of erotic stories, some of them called "PWP"--porn without plot or purpose, depending on how you choose to call them. I have even written stories with erotic content. I have seen movies with sex in them or with sex as a central theme. Kidding around with my dad--for I have a very open, liberal family--we have surfed the web for soft porn, stopping when the screen pops up and asks for your credit card number. I have seen all kinds of crazy images of funky naked people doing funky naked things. To me, sexuality is a healthy, normal thing for a human being. It fascinates us; few can pass the day (and I'm not asking for admissions here, but just think about it) without thinking about sex.
Of course, we all have our squicks. We all have things that we would rather see, and for some repressed people, that might be anything that includes sexuality, even the Major Cineplex Variety™ where the woman lies in bed afterwards with the sheet wrapped neatly around her breasts (while it only reaches to the waist, on the man's side) and if you see a penis, half the people in the audience gasp and the other half go "Eeewww...." (And Dawn Felagund goes "Yes!" and earns weird looks from the people around her and an eye-roll from her very tolerant husband.)
I respect people's right to avoid what bothers them. It happens that I am very bothered by blood. That doesn't stop me from watching gory movies, but I like to know ahead of time if I will have to do the funky-eye-squint move where I attempt to watch the movie through my eyelashes, allowing me to see most of the action, just not in as livid of color. But, in the US, anyway, everything these days is pasted with ratings: movies, television programs, video games, manga, music CDs. It used to be sufficient to put an "R" or an "M" on something, but now they even break it down for you. My sister lent me a movie where one of the justifications for its PG-13 rating (Parent Guidance Strongly Suggested) was "pregnancy." Because there is just something very offensive about the way that we all arrived in this world.
I don't have any problem with ratings. If they want to make the ratings more extensive than they are now, fine by me! If it means that I can enjoy my horror movies and my funky foreign films with their more liberal views on sexuality, then I don't care what they put on the box. It makes it easier for me to pick out the good ones! My husband and I have actually stood in line at the theater, picking a movie to see, and wrinkled our noses and said, "But it's only PG." That is our taste. Some people are different, and I respect that.
Bobby and I love Bill Maher, and his stand-up program "I'm Swiss" is priceless. If you can get it in your area, watch it. I laughed so hard at parts and felt fired up at others...the man in an inspiration. But he had one particularly wonderful line that Bobby and I have repeated often since watching the program (twice, I admit).
Don't legislate taste.
And that's what this is, isn't it? Someone in a position of power saying, "You like this and I don't." It happens that I think that Christian music is stupid. That doesn't mean that, were I President, I would attempt to make it illegal. I think the world could do without so many gagging, cloying, plotless, annoying "family comedies." So I avoid them at Hollywood Video and leave them for my dad. (Who, despite surfing the 'net with his daughter for porn, has a dismaying taste in movies. It's probably best that we never made it past the stage where they ask for your credit card number.)
Don't legislate taste.
From what I've heard of porn--never actually having watched a "porno" movie--much of it is disgusting to me. My friends and I, bored one night, took an outing to a porn store and browsed around. Much of what I saw was gross to me: hairy women, big women, women who like to take it up the @!!, women who like it splattered in their faces. But none of those women were forced to perform in those movies and no one is being forced to watch them. So what's the problem?
Christian conservatives, long skeptical of Gonzales, greeted the pornography initiative with what the Family Research Council called "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general."
Oh, yes, that! It is against the Bible! ::face!palm:: How stupid of me to forget!
There is only one problem with that: There is freedom of religion in this country. The Bible is no more a legal document than the Koran or Mein Kampf or The Silmarillion, for that matter.
And it just so happens that my "religion"--which is to not acknowledge a religion at all--has no problem with pornography.
Christians may well be the majority in this country, but that does not make their doctrines subject to law. Why do Christians feel that, if their faith prescribes (or proscribes) a certain behavior, then they must see it made into law? What is it about the strength of their personal faith or the power of their church that is not enough for them? Don't they realize that, in another era, a group of people had the same attitudes that they had--that those who believe differently believe wrongly--and Christians were fed to lions as a result?
Why is it not enough for their churches to take stands against pornography? For clergy leaders to enlighten their congregations about the dangers that it poses to their faith? For families to take a strong stance and not allow it in their homes, to regulate their child's use of television and Internet (and for dad to keep his jerk-off magazines for the bathroom at work)?
Why must they legislate taste?
But Gonzales endorses the rationale of predecessor Meese: that adult
pornography is a threat to families and children.
Oh, yes! That!
As to whether pornography or violent video games or rap music harm children, I will not engage in that debate at this time. I studied it extensively in school and am willing to discuss the research and my thoughts on it (email me privately if you'd like--dawnfelagund@comcast.net), but that is not the issue here, so we are going to give the right-wing the proverbial benefit of the doubt and assume that pornography does hurt children and families.
I am going to be blunt: Why should I give a shit if it does?
My family consists of two people: my husband and me. We are both twenty-four years old--well past the majority in any country. We have no children and don't want any children.
The idea that because "if children see something it will harm them and that would be bad" is all too prevalent in this country--in the sense that, the moment we identify such a culprit, we make a move to illegalize it or make its access difficult for legal consumers. Why? When did this move beyond something within the control of a family into something that must be endured by the nation at large?
Frankly, I don't care if your children will be upset/damaged/whatever by porn. Then don't let them see it. That is not difficult! Growing up, my parents supervised what I watched on TV and what I did on the computer. I didn't have a television or a computer in my room. (Granted, this was the day before Internet became as affordable and accessible as it is now, so a computer in my room would have only meant more chances to hunt-and-peck without typing properly, which was a sin to my non-religious father.) But because you can't take responsibility for your children, don't be expecting that I will be eager to give up my rights as an adult and a consumer to save you the trouble of learning to activate parental controls or researching video game ratings or going to see a movie before you allow your child and all his friends to go.
Children are a responsibility. Take the responsibility.
I don't want the responsibility. That is why I have chosen not to have children. I don't want the responsibility of making sure your child doesn't skewer itself on my cutlery, running around a restaurant, and I don't want the responsibility of making sure that all movies/games/music/whatever are suitable for your child's oh-so-innocent virgin eyes.
Personally, I don't understand why "families" (meaning people with children) have such a special status. What makes them so superior? Because they have children? Big whoop. Barring a medical condition, anyone can have children. It doesn't take much effort; if it did, there wouldn't be six billion people cluttering the earth. It takes more effort not to have children, truth be told. Having children is biologically natural. So is farting. I don't expect special status because I am proud to fart in public. (I'm not, by the way.) So if you happen to have had the misfortune of popping out one of the little buggers, good for you. But you're not special. Even rats and dung beetles can reproduce.
Now being a parent--meaning a good parent--is special. And that's where the shortfall lies, I think, that people don't want to make the effort in this world of effusive technology to monitor what their child does. In my house, were I growing up in the new millenium, access to pornography wouldn't be an issue. If you believe that this country needs laws to protect your child against accessing pornography on the Internet, then you need to be a better parent.
Because when you brought that life into this world, its safety didn't become a matter of convenience. If you have to miss the next episode of "Desperate Housewives" to sit in the computer room while your child does her homework, please don't expect me to feel sorry for you. If you have to take a firm stance and tell your eight-year-old that he cannot have a PC and a television in his room, then muster up some gumption and be a parent, for Eru's sake.
No one said it would be easy. And frankly, giving up my freedoms to make your life easier is not on the top of my list of priorities.
And judging by the rigors that my friends with uber-Christian parents had to endure, access wasn't even an issue.
If you believe that this is about children, please, stop kidding yourself. It is because fundamentalists--and no, Moslems are not the only fundamentalists in this world--don't want anyone to access it. Because it interferes with their fundamentalist beliefs.
My husband said something profound tonight: "When Bush stands up in front of the nation and decries 'fundamentalists,' he needs to look in the mirror."
Because if you are living in a nation where people are dying because of terrorism and hurricanes and you choose to support banning pornography, then you are a fundamentalist. Pornography does not kill people.
The same goes for if you voted for Bush because he was "against gay marriage," neglecting to note the fact that he lied to start a war that has killed close to two thousand Americans.
Last I checked, both lying and killing people is against the Christian faith. Granted, I'm agnostic and no expert, but "Thou shall not kill" seems pretty clear to me.
Like most fundamentalists, Bush is a shitty Christian and, were I am member of that faith, I would be as embarrassed to have him representing my beliefs as I am to have him representing my country.
Some may ask, "But, Dawn, you claim to not watch pornography. So why should you care?"
Because I care whenever something harmless being done by someone is fingered as a "great evil" because it interferes with another person's "morals." Because after the pornography is off the Internet, maybe naked!Feanor will be their next target. Because I care that the concerns of fundamentalists are trumping the real issues in this country. Because it might be me or someone I love killed in the next terrorist attack, and I believe that the bulk of our country's resources need to go to fighting to prevent that possibility.
Because pornography hurts "children and families" but terrorism hurts everyone.
Because I have not forgotten.
Because what we need is protection from pornography.
The following article appeared in The Washington Post on 21 September 2005:
Recruits Sought for Porn Squad
By Barton Gellman
The FBI is joining the Bush administration's War on Porn. And it's looking for a few good agents.
Early last month, the bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing the initiative as "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and, by extension, of "the Director." That would be FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.
Mischievous commentary began propagating around the water coolers at 601 Fourth St. NW and its satellites, where the FBI's second-largest field office concentrates on national security, high-technology crimes and public corruption.
The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography -- not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.
"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."
Among friends and trusted colleagues, an experienced national security analyst said, "it's a running joke for us."
A few of the printable samples:
"Things I Don't Want On My Resume, Volume Four."
"I already gave at home."
"Honestly, most of the guys would have to recuse themselves."
Federal obscenity prosecutions, which have been out of style since Attorney General Edwin Meese III in the Reagan administration made pornography a signature issue in the 1980s, do "encounter many legal issues, including First Amendment claims," the FBI headquarters memo noted.
Applicants for the porn squad should therefore have a stomach for the kind of material that tends to be most offensive to local juries. Community standards -- along with a prurient purpose and absence of artistic merit -- define criminal obscenity under current Supreme Court doctrine.
"Based on a review of past successful cases in a variety of jurisdictions," the memo said, the best odds of conviction come with pornography that "includes bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior." No word on the universe of other kinks that helps make porn a multibillion-dollar industry.
Popular acceptance of hard-core pornography has come a long way, with some of its stars becoming mainstream celebrities and their products -- once confined to seedy shops and theaters -- being "purveyed" by upscale hotels and most home cable and satellite television systems. Explicit sexual entertainment is a profit center for companies including General Motors Corp. and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (the two major owners of DirecTV), Time Warner Inc. and the Sheraton, Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt hotel chains.
But Gonzales endorses the rationale of predecessor Meese: that adult pornography is a threat to families and children. Christian conservatives, long skeptical of Gonzales, greeted the pornography initiative with what the Family Research Council called "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general."
Congress began funding the obscenity initiative in fiscal 2005 and specified that the FBI must devote 10 agents to adult pornography. The bureau decided to create a dedicated squad only in the Washington Field Office. "All other field offices may investigate obscenity cases pursuant to this initiative if resources are available," the directive from headquarters said. "Field offices should not, however, divert resources from higher priority matters, such as public corruption."
Public corruption, officially, is fourth on the FBI's priority list, after protecting the United States from terrorist attack, foreign espionage and cyber-based attacks. Just below those priorities are civil rights, organized crime, white-collar crime and "significant violent crime." The guidance from headquarters does not mention where pornography fits in.
"The Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's top priority remains fighting the war on terrorism," said Justice Department press secretary Brian Roehrkasse. "However, it is not our sole priority. In fact, Congress has directed the department to focus on other priorities, such as obscenity."
At the FBI's field office, spokeswoman Debra Weierman expressed disappointment that some of her colleagues find grist for humor in the new campaign. "The adult obscenity squad . . . stems from an attorney general mandate, funded by Congress," she said. "The personnel assigned to this initiative take the responsibility of this assignment very seriously and are dedicated to the success of this program."
My Thoughts on This
Every day, my husband takes public tranportation into the heart of Washington, DC. He can see the White House from his office window. Every day, I worry. Will today be the day? Will today be the day that brings the next 9/11?
Because what I fear is a reality for too many people: People who wake up every day without someone they love, someone lost to terrorism. Few--and lucky!--are those of us who do not know someone--or know someone who knows someone--who was lost to terrorism. It has become the brutal reality of life in the modern world. Every day could be the day.
On 9/11, I left my Psychometrics class into a beautiful summer morning, walked through the quad, and thought, Wow, there are a lot of people on their cell phones today! I walked into the Pub and bought an orange soda and watched on television as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
If something so awful could happen on such a beautiful day, it could happen anytime.
When 9/11 passed, we all waved flags and joined in unity and repeated our mantras: United we stand. One nation, indivisible. We will not forget.
How quickly we've forgotten.
Only four years after 9/11--and bare months after the London attacks--my country is making pornography a priority. Not child pornography. Not that which hurts people, but the stuff that willing adults choose to make and willing adults choose to watch. To me, this is a slap in the face of those brave people who go to work every day in the law enforcement community. And it is to spit on the graves of those who have died in terrorist attacks.
Because, if their deaths and sacrifices were for anything, it was that 9/11 would never happen again. It was that the country woke up to what the academics had been screaming for years: Terrorism is a threat. We need to take this seriously. My husband wrote papers on the threat of terrorism before 9/11 even occured; he was on his way to a class on terrorism when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. At last, the world was forced to wake up. This is a threat. It was bad enough that people had to die, when the information and the intelligence was right there (for those of us who can pause our perpetual vacations long enough to read it). Now, we know. And we are allowing it to happen again?
My husband and I discussed this tonight, on our way to my skating class. "Those eight agents being assigned to this 'task force,'" he said, "should be out on the streets, interviewing people, gathering intelligence, to stop terrorism."
But they are not. They are policing the Internet for pornography.
I have never even seen a "porn." Or have I? I have read plenty of erotic stories, some of them called "PWP"--porn without plot or purpose, depending on how you choose to call them. I have even written stories with erotic content. I have seen movies with sex in them or with sex as a central theme. Kidding around with my dad--for I have a very open, liberal family--we have surfed the web for soft porn, stopping when the screen pops up and asks for your credit card number. I have seen all kinds of crazy images of funky naked people doing funky naked things. To me, sexuality is a healthy, normal thing for a human being. It fascinates us; few can pass the day (and I'm not asking for admissions here, but just think about it) without thinking about sex.
Of course, we all have our squicks. We all have things that we would rather see, and for some repressed people, that might be anything that includes sexuality, even the Major Cineplex Variety™ where the woman lies in bed afterwards with the sheet wrapped neatly around her breasts (while it only reaches to the waist, on the man's side) and if you see a penis, half the people in the audience gasp and the other half go "Eeewww...." (And Dawn Felagund goes "Yes!" and earns weird looks from the people around her and an eye-roll from her very tolerant husband.)
I respect people's right to avoid what bothers them. It happens that I am very bothered by blood. That doesn't stop me from watching gory movies, but I like to know ahead of time if I will have to do the funky-eye-squint move where I attempt to watch the movie through my eyelashes, allowing me to see most of the action, just not in as livid of color. But, in the US, anyway, everything these days is pasted with ratings: movies, television programs, video games, manga, music CDs. It used to be sufficient to put an "R" or an "M" on something, but now they even break it down for you. My sister lent me a movie where one of the justifications for its PG-13 rating (Parent Guidance Strongly Suggested) was "pregnancy." Because there is just something very offensive about the way that we all arrived in this world.
I don't have any problem with ratings. If they want to make the ratings more extensive than they are now, fine by me! If it means that I can enjoy my horror movies and my funky foreign films with their more liberal views on sexuality, then I don't care what they put on the box. It makes it easier for me to pick out the good ones! My husband and I have actually stood in line at the theater, picking a movie to see, and wrinkled our noses and said, "But it's only PG." That is our taste. Some people are different, and I respect that.
Bobby and I love Bill Maher, and his stand-up program "I'm Swiss" is priceless. If you can get it in your area, watch it. I laughed so hard at parts and felt fired up at others...the man in an inspiration. But he had one particularly wonderful line that Bobby and I have repeated often since watching the program (twice, I admit).
Don't legislate taste.
And that's what this is, isn't it? Someone in a position of power saying, "You like this and I don't." It happens that I think that Christian music is stupid. That doesn't mean that, were I President, I would attempt to make it illegal. I think the world could do without so many gagging, cloying, plotless, annoying "family comedies." So I avoid them at Hollywood Video and leave them for my dad. (Who, despite surfing the 'net with his daughter for porn, has a dismaying taste in movies. It's probably best that we never made it past the stage where they ask for your credit card number.)
Don't legislate taste.
From what I've heard of porn--never actually having watched a "porno" movie--much of it is disgusting to me. My friends and I, bored one night, took an outing to a porn store and browsed around. Much of what I saw was gross to me: hairy women, big women, women who like to take it up the @!!, women who like it splattered in their faces. But none of those women were forced to perform in those movies and no one is being forced to watch them. So what's the problem?
Christian conservatives, long skeptical of Gonzales, greeted the pornography initiative with what the Family Research Council called "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general."
Oh, yes, that! It is against the Bible! ::face!palm:: How stupid of me to forget!
There is only one problem with that: There is freedom of religion in this country. The Bible is no more a legal document than the Koran or Mein Kampf or The Silmarillion, for that matter.
And it just so happens that my "religion"--which is to not acknowledge a religion at all--has no problem with pornography.
Christians may well be the majority in this country, but that does not make their doctrines subject to law. Why do Christians feel that, if their faith prescribes (or proscribes) a certain behavior, then they must see it made into law? What is it about the strength of their personal faith or the power of their church that is not enough for them? Don't they realize that, in another era, a group of people had the same attitudes that they had--that those who believe differently believe wrongly--and Christians were fed to lions as a result?
Why is it not enough for their churches to take stands against pornography? For clergy leaders to enlighten their congregations about the dangers that it poses to their faith? For families to take a strong stance and not allow it in their homes, to regulate their child's use of television and Internet (and for dad to keep his jerk-off magazines for the bathroom at work)?
Why must they legislate taste?
But Gonzales endorses the rationale of predecessor Meese: that adult
pornography is a threat to families and children.
Oh, yes! That!
As to whether pornography or violent video games or rap music harm children, I will not engage in that debate at this time. I studied it extensively in school and am willing to discuss the research and my thoughts on it (email me privately if you'd like--dawnfelagund@comcast.net), but that is not the issue here, so we are going to give the right-wing the proverbial benefit of the doubt and assume that pornography does hurt children and families.
I am going to be blunt: Why should I give a shit if it does?
My family consists of two people: my husband and me. We are both twenty-four years old--well past the majority in any country. We have no children and don't want any children.
The idea that because "if children see something it will harm them and that would be bad" is all too prevalent in this country--in the sense that, the moment we identify such a culprit, we make a move to illegalize it or make its access difficult for legal consumers. Why? When did this move beyond something within the control of a family into something that must be endured by the nation at large?
Frankly, I don't care if your children will be upset/damaged/whatever by porn. Then don't let them see it. That is not difficult! Growing up, my parents supervised what I watched on TV and what I did on the computer. I didn't have a television or a computer in my room. (Granted, this was the day before Internet became as affordable and accessible as it is now, so a computer in my room would have only meant more chances to hunt-and-peck without typing properly, which was a sin to my non-religious father.) But because you can't take responsibility for your children, don't be expecting that I will be eager to give up my rights as an adult and a consumer to save you the trouble of learning to activate parental controls or researching video game ratings or going to see a movie before you allow your child and all his friends to go.
Children are a responsibility. Take the responsibility.
I don't want the responsibility. That is why I have chosen not to have children. I don't want the responsibility of making sure your child doesn't skewer itself on my cutlery, running around a restaurant, and I don't want the responsibility of making sure that all movies/games/music/whatever are suitable for your child's oh-so-innocent virgin eyes.
Personally, I don't understand why "families" (meaning people with children) have such a special status. What makes them so superior? Because they have children? Big whoop. Barring a medical condition, anyone can have children. It doesn't take much effort; if it did, there wouldn't be six billion people cluttering the earth. It takes more effort not to have children, truth be told. Having children is biologically natural. So is farting. I don't expect special status because I am proud to fart in public. (I'm not, by the way.) So if you happen to have had the misfortune of popping out one of the little buggers, good for you. But you're not special. Even rats and dung beetles can reproduce.
Now being a parent--meaning a good parent--is special. And that's where the shortfall lies, I think, that people don't want to make the effort in this world of effusive technology to monitor what their child does. In my house, were I growing up in the new millenium, access to pornography wouldn't be an issue. If you believe that this country needs laws to protect your child against accessing pornography on the Internet, then you need to be a better parent.
Because when you brought that life into this world, its safety didn't become a matter of convenience. If you have to miss the next episode of "Desperate Housewives" to sit in the computer room while your child does her homework, please don't expect me to feel sorry for you. If you have to take a firm stance and tell your eight-year-old that he cannot have a PC and a television in his room, then muster up some gumption and be a parent, for Eru's sake.
No one said it would be easy. And frankly, giving up my freedoms to make your life easier is not on the top of my list of priorities.
And judging by the rigors that my friends with uber-Christian parents had to endure, access wasn't even an issue.
If you believe that this is about children, please, stop kidding yourself. It is because fundamentalists--and no, Moslems are not the only fundamentalists in this world--don't want anyone to access it. Because it interferes with their fundamentalist beliefs.
My husband said something profound tonight: "When Bush stands up in front of the nation and decries 'fundamentalists,' he needs to look in the mirror."
Because if you are living in a nation where people are dying because of terrorism and hurricanes and you choose to support banning pornography, then you are a fundamentalist. Pornography does not kill people.
The same goes for if you voted for Bush because he was "against gay marriage," neglecting to note the fact that he lied to start a war that has killed close to two thousand Americans.
Last I checked, both lying and killing people is against the Christian faith. Granted, I'm agnostic and no expert, but "Thou shall not kill" seems pretty clear to me.
Like most fundamentalists, Bush is a shitty Christian and, were I am member of that faith, I would be as embarrassed to have him representing my beliefs as I am to have him representing my country.
Some may ask, "But, Dawn, you claim to not watch pornography. So why should you care?"
Because I care whenever something harmless being done by someone is fingered as a "great evil" because it interferes with another person's "morals." Because after the pornography is off the Internet, maybe naked!Feanor will be their next target. Because I care that the concerns of fundamentalists are trumping the real issues in this country. Because it might be me or someone I love killed in the next terrorist attack, and I believe that the bulk of our country's resources need to go to fighting to prevent that possibility.
Because pornography hurts "children and families" but terrorism hurts everyone.
Because I have not forgotten.