I came across a series of articles at examiner.com that attempts to explain the evils of pornography. While the author doesn’t actively argue for a ban on the material, her viewpoint unmistakeably points the reader in that direction essentially painting pornography as worse than crack cocaine (the standard by which all evil is now measured).
This kind of advocacy journalism is always quite transparent in that there is no doubt it is a conclusion in search of a facts.
First, it ties a sociological effect to brain chemistry. In other words, it defines a social problem in the context of a particular value system and then tries to dress it up to look like science by tying it to a chemical explanation.
Next comes the argument from the religious perspective which ranks right up there with astrology in terms of objective strength. It’s always interesting to see someone make a moral argument even as they acknowledge that morality is probably one of the least concrete reference points in all of humanity. The morality of letting people decide what they do in their own bedrooms is decidedly absent from most religious thinking. Instead, religion almost always adopts the attitude that people are too stupid to make decisions that suit their own lives and must therefore depend on guidance on a self-serving and politically motivated religious authority even more ignorant.
Finally, there’s the most abused of all arguments. The invocation of statistics. And where does the statistical proof that pornography is bad come from? From divorce lawyers, of course. In looking at whether pornography is harmful to a “healthy relationship”, only unsuccessful marriages are considered. That would be about the same as concluding the world is a crappy place to live after looking only at Somalia.
I could go on all day about this, but the arguments will not disappear and the crusaders will not abate. The common denominator is that anti-sex crusaders are not out to make anyone’s life better. They are not out to bring freedom to people. They are about one thing: shoehorning everyone into the same cultural straight-jacket. They are a group of people who are bound together simply because they want to impose their will on others. It is the absolute antithesis of freedom.
As one final remark, it should be pointed out that divorce may often be a more mature and rational resolution to a marriage than staying with someone who is fundamentally incompatible. Divorce increases as people become more capable of independence. If the marriage was a mistake, there is no virtue in perpetuating that mistake for your entire life. The fact that porn is more widely available at the same time that divorce is on the rise is a correlation, not a cause-and-effect relationship.
