From: joemays@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Joseph F. Mays)
Newsgroups: alt.censorship
Subject: Re: [Republicans] On Pornography
Date: 8 Oct 92 14:18:54 GMT
Organization: Dept. of CS Ball State University Muncie IN

In article <1992Oct8.103139.11289@waikato.ac.nz> sma@waikato.ac.nz (Stephen Anderson) writes:
>
>In article <1992Oct7.165817.29077@news.iastate.edu>, tarjan@iastate.edu 
>(Scot 'ONE T!' Kight) writes:
>> 
>> 
>> I myself am a pacifist, I dont hurt anything (except maybe playing football..)
>> I coud never Kill anything or abuse any one, I have friends who have been
>> abused and every time I hear of it it sickens me, But I also like 'Porn'
>> values, I know my own values and will teach those to my children.

>Fine.  I (and I hope most others) do not care what your personal values are,
>provided that it does not impact on anyone else.  You are probably like many
>people for whom porn is pure entertainment and will not be lead to lower your
>opinion of women, or to rape, kill etc.  But there are a large number of men
>out there for whom pornography lowers their respect for women, thus lowering
>the standards by which women are treated, and there are a very small number
>who will be lead to violence by pornography.  I would be prepared to forego
>some minor entertainment to prevent women getting raped - how about you?

If viewing pornography will lead you to rape a woman, then by all means,
forego it.  Oh, it wouldn't do that to _you_!  There are just some other
undefined men out there that it will have that effect on.  I see.  Where?
Are any of your friends like that?  I mean...you must know _someone_
_somewhere_ who fits the class of men who will be influenced to rape 
by pornography, right?

Look.  Pornography does not lead to rape.  Period.  I don't feel like
pussyfooting around this and saying, "well you have to prove it _does_".
You do, but you can't, because it doesn't.  If you've been reading this
for the last few days you should have seen the list of studies that
have been performed on this area.  I think it has been adequately
proven that pornography and rape are unrelated.  They do show a decreased
sensitivity to _violence_ when shown films of _violence_, pornographic
or otherwise, but IF I were going to advocate censorship for this
reason damn near every cop show on TV would go long before pornography.

>> Where does anyone else get off saying 'Pornography causes violence'

>Oh, probably someone who has been looking at some evidence, rather than just
>supporting one's self-interest.

If you have this evidence you stand to become extremely rich.  Ed Meese
commissioned a panel of "experts", most of whom stated at the beginning
of the study that they believed there to be a link between pornography
and violence.  They performed their study, financed research, explored
every avenue they could find looking for proof they were certain existed,
and failed.  The result was that even though they could not find one
iota of proof, even with a heaping dose of research bias stacked in their
favor.  For most people this would have led to an admission of, "Gee,
guess I was wrong."  It's a measure of the caliber of people Meese put
on his commission that their response was to say, "Well, we still believe
it does anyway.  So there."  If you have this evidence, the republican
family values police would pay a rather large amount of money for it.

>Stephen..

Joe
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