US bishops to address 'pervasive' challenges of pornography

 Baltimore, Md., Nov 12, 2013 / 04:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. bishops have overwhelmingly approved the creation of a statement on pornography to address the “serious pastoral challenges” and consequences that it poses on a spiritual, social and personal level.

 

“Pornography comes in many forms but leaves its effects on all those exploited by or exposed to it. It is a great temptation that ravages men, women and children,” Bishop Richard J. Malone, chairman-elect of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, told the bishops’ fall assembly Nov. 12.

“The number of men, women and children who have been harmed by pornography use is not negligible, and we have an opportunity to offer healing and hope to those who have been wounded.”

The growing awareness of pornography’s “grave” impact means the bishops have “an opportunity to educate and to shine light on the mercy and freedom found in Christ,” he said.

Bishop Malone, who heads the Buffalo diocese, noted that the U.S. bishops have not issued a statement explicitly addressing pornography. He asked the assembled bishops to approve his committee’s request to write a statement on the issue to encourage more pastoral attention to it.

The U.S. bishops approved his request by a vote of 226 to 5.

Bishop Malone said that pornography poses “serious pastoral challenges” for clergy and the faithful. Pornography is widespread and “more accessible than in the past,” affecting people of younger and younger ages. Fewer people disapprove of it, and its use is increasing among both men and women.

Pointing to statistics that pornography is “a significant factor” in nearly 60 percent of divorces, the bishop cautioned that it is “highly addictive” and capable of altering brain chemistry and causing harmful social consequences.

The average age of first exposure to pornography is 10-11 years old, an alarming fact, he said.

“Love resonates in the human heart, because we were made for it,” Bishop Malone explained. “But we also know that there are many obstacles to true, lasting love. There are many counterfeit versions of love that promise much but deliver little.”

“There are many ways in which the body, created in the image of God as male and female, becomes a place of exploitation and ‘use’ instead of a place of communion and love.”

Bishop Malone’s proposal drew strong support and suggestions from the floor of the assembly.

In the question period, Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay, Wis., spoke “very much in favor” of the proposal.

“There are great advantages to the advances in social media. This is the dark side of all of that,” he said.

He warned that pornography “captures younger and younger people” and is “destroying marriages and families at a very rapid rate.”

He praised his diocese’s anti-pornography addiction initiative Reclaiming Sexual Health, noting that there are many new resources and ministries on the topic.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City said that his diocese’s Catholic Charities affiliate reports that over 50 percent of family counseling clients had pornography use as a problem that impaired their marriages and family life. He suggested that awareness of this issue should be raised at Sunday Mass, if it can be done through lay witness.

Bishop David Foley, retired head of the Diocese of Birmingham, Ala., praised the Sacrament of Reconciliation for combating pornography.

“I have found the power of the Sacrament of Penance in overcoming pornography is tremendous,” he said.

“It’s true confessors are hearing of this sin more often, but they are working with their penitents. The regular practice of confession is an answer, a strong answer, to this problem.”

Archbishop George Niederauer called attention to the Cincinnati-based Religious Alliance against Pornography, a 30-year-old organization co-founded by Cardinals Joseph Bernardin and John O’Connor.

In addition, Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Neb., recommended the Covenant Eyes anti-pornography filtering and accountability computer program.

“I think it is the best out there,” he said.

Salt Lake City Bishop John Wester noted that the bishops’ Committee on Communications has been working on anti-pornography legislation. Bishop Curtis Guillory of Beaumont, Texas, said his diocese recently held a workshop on the issue for priests. Many of his priests said that they previously lacked information on pornography.

Another speaker, Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, asked that the statement highlight social aspects of pornography, including exploitation of women and children in the U.S. and abroad.

Bishop Malone said that possible statement topics include chastity and sexuality; basic information about pornography, its use and its effects on users and users’ families; the negative effects of pornography on society; an “authentic vision” of the human person; and “the mercy, grace of conversion and freedom Christ offers through his Church, especially through the sacraments and prayer.”

He said the statement could also recommend “proven practical resources” for pornography users, their loved ones, and clergy.

Now that the proposal for the statement has been approved, it must be drafted by bishops working in committee and then presented to the bishops at a future meeting.

Internet Pornography & the First Amendment -by Morgan Bennett

In TPD 

Introduction

In yesterday’s article, I gave an overview of new brain research that has exposed internet pornography as a powerfully addictive narcotic. I also mentioned that, from a legal and constitutional standpoint, the First Amendment is the ultimate hurdle to clear in order to regulate or prosecute internet pornography.

But why should the government get involved at all? Isn’t consuming internet pornography a private decision that doesn’t hurt anyone?

The claim that internet pornography “doesn’t hurt anyone” is patently disproved by years of multidisciplinary studies in the hard sciences and the social sciences. These studies have exposed internet pornography as a massive, paradigm-shifting social harm that undermines the family unit and causes abuse, life-long addictions, infidelity, and unhealthy perceptions and expectations among men, women, and children.

Likewise, the “no harm” argument also fails to consider the production of internet pornography, which is produced by way of real human beings who are almost always engaged in illegal and dehumanizing acts such as prostitution, rape, sex trafficking, assault, and even murder.

Though sexuality is considered “private” in our society, the social effects of collective sexual behaviors and norms, including the effects of internet pornography, cannot be kept “private.” Because pornography is sexual, it is inherently relational and thus inherently social. How people relate to each other in society is important, but how people relate sexually is crucial to the sustenance of a society because it either incentivizes or de-incentivizes the very foundation of society: the family unit.

How then, one might ask, can such a vice be “protected” under the United States Constitution?

While many assume that the First Amendment protects internet pornography as “artistic expression,” that is largely not the case under current statutory and constitutional law. Still, current First 

Amendment jurisprudence, at least as it relates to sexually explicit material, fails to properly discern and apply the First Amendment’s purposes. An examination of prior and even current precedent reveals that speech or acts of a sexual nature are a historically unique category and thus require a unique analysis. By considering the duties of good government and the intended purposes of the First Amendment, we can develop a just and principled interpretation of the First Amendment as it relates to internet pornography.

The Founders’ Views on Free Speech

The scope and contours of the First Amendment’s speech clause are difficult to decipher by way of “original intent” due to the scarcity of information in the historical records. While the freedom of the press was discussed, the free speech clause was perhaps too obvious or fundamental to require debate. Still, the general principles underpinning the First Amendment are accessible by examining the Founders’ general understanding of liberty (“rights”).

Though the Founders had a broad view of liberty, they also recognized the distinction between liberty and license. In other words, liberty does not include the abuse of rights.

What sort of speech would qualify as an abuse of the “right” to speak freely? Thomas G. West, Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College, explains that there were four commonly-recognized categories of injurious speech in the Founders’ era: personal libel, government libel, speech that injures public health or the moral foundations of society, and speech used in the course of, or that promotes, other injurious conduct.

Internet pornography, with its epidemic social harm, certainly qualifies as speech injurious to society’s health and moral foundations; it could also qualify as “speech used in the course of injurious conduct” due to its use of prostituted and even trafficked people in its production as well as its power to addict and harm those who see it.

It was uncontested in the Founders’ era and far beyond that speech or conduct tending to injure the public morals was subject to government control. Profanity, obscenity, indecency, and pornography were treated the same as public nudity or public intoxication. Consider the following quotation from an 1824 Pennsylvania Supreme Court case: “Licentiousness endangering the public peace, when tending to corrupt society, is considered as a breach of the peace, and punishable by indictment. Every immoral act is not indictable, but when it is destructive of morality generally, it is, because it weakens the bonds by which society is held together.”

Professor West aptly notes that the Founders did not distinguish between speech (obscene novels or drawings) and acts (operating a whorehouse), but rather asked if either tended to “undermine the moral basis of the community, especially of the family and the moral formation of the young.” If so, such activity—whether speech or act—was subject to legal limitation.

Obscenity

Obscenity doctrine in the United States can be traced to the common law doctrine of obscene libel in England. US courts began to cite the common law prohibition of obscenity by the 1810s, emphasizing the “opposition between liberty and license.” Government regulations of publicly-shown films were upheld by the Supreme Court until the 1950s and were considered a legitimate exercise of a state’s police power because such regulations prohibited only films determined to be injurious to public morals or order.

In 1915, the Supreme Court reasoned that film was less like speech and more akin to live theater performances, whose content was widely regulated by state and local governments. At the time, film’s powerful unconscious effect on the viewer was contrasted with the conscious analysis required when reading a book:

Unlike reading, looking at images—particularly moving images—require[s] no active cognition; the message [i]s thrust upon viewers. “When we read, there is time for thought, reasoning, and the formation of judgment; but motion pictures progress so swiftly as to permit almost no cerebral action . . . .” . . . The written word “cannot lead the [viewer] further than his limited imagination will allow, but the motion picture forces upon his view things that are new[;] [it] give[s] firsthand experience. . . .”

But in 1952, the Supreme Court struck down a film censorship statute on First Amendment grounds and announced that motion pictures were “expressions” and therefore protected as “speech.” Even so, the Court still noted that “it does not follow that the Constitution requires absolute freedom to exhibit every motion picture of every kind at all times and all places.” In fact, it is still good precedent that “prior restraints on expression” are not automatically unconstitutional in all circumstances, as the Supreme Court has rejected the notion that “constitutional protection includes complete and absolute freedom to exhibit, at least once, any and every kind of motion picture . . . even if this film contains the basest type of pornography, or incitement to riot, or forceful overthrow of orderly government.”

Current State of the Law

Under current First Amendment jurisprudence, any sexually explicit “expression” (including images and videos) is protected under the First Amendment unless it is obscene or “real” (non-virtual) child pornography. The constitutional meaning of “obscenity” has been through a few definitional tug-of-wars since the erosion of “license versus liberty” in First Amendment jurisprudence. The current definition—the three-prong “Miller standard”—has been stable since 1973, but it has been (and still is) heavily criticized:

(1) Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;

(2) Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and

(3) Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Despite criticism, the Miller standard was extremely effective for prosecutors under the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. The Clinton administration, under Janet Reno, refused to enforce federal obscenity law, and though a handful of egregious obscenity cases were prosecuted under President George W. Bush, President Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, has now shut down the DOJ’s Obscenity Prosecution Task Force.

Analysis

Though most criticize Miller for its “community standards” requirement, Miller’s most glaring defect is actually the third prong of the test. Assuming that “prurient, patently offensive depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct” can ever have a “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” is unprincipled and absurd. Furthermore, it is ludicrous to suggest that First Amendment protection depends upon a court’s assessment of such value.

The other problem with the Miller obscenity standard is that it requires real people, whether juries or judges, to actually view the obscene material, exposing them to the possibility of addiction or the trauma of what can effectively be the viewing of a live rape. Hardcore pornography is often “performed” as a reenactment of rape, commonly causing internal bleeding from anal or vaginal tears. Thus, the judge or jury is unjustly exposed to a profoundly traumatic and evil act on a real human being.

In light of Miller’s faulty obscenity standard, perhaps a more reasonable, precise, and workable definition for obscenity would be the following: an explicit image, including video, of a sex act, where the image/video is created (1) primarily for, or (2) with the primary effect of, sexually arousing the viewer, and where the image/video was created by actual sex acts (with “explicit” meaning clearly showing, even for a moment, the penetration of/by genital organ(s) and with “actual sex acts” meaning the actual touching of/by genital organs). (My thanks to Patrick A. Trueman and Alan Sears for being instrumental in the formation of this definition.)

Putting aside the obscenity exception for a moment, it is absolutely baffling that the underlying acts required to make internet pornography are not prosecuted by way of prostitution laws. Pornography is “prostitution with a camera” and is almost always created by an act of prostitution (paying a human being to perform a sex act). So why is pornography production not prosecuted under prostitution laws? At least in California, where the majority of the US pornography industry is located, it is precedent that the First Amendment somehow protects prostitution when “actors” are hired to perform sex acts in “the production of a non-obscene motion picture.” This California Supreme Court precedent has discouraged state and local law enforcement from prosecuting pornographers and “performers” using prostitution laws.

Next Steps

Constructing and implementing solutions to the internet pornography epidemic in America is inherently difficult due not only to current First Amendment precedent, but also to our cultural situation: current pornography use is around 87 percent for young adult males and 31 percent for young adult females, and roughly 50–60 percent of both genders find pornography use “acceptable.”

The most realistic first steps we can take in the fight against internet pornography are prosecution and cultural engagement.

First, local, state, and federal governments should enforce the current obscenity-related laws already on the books. Nearly every state has anti-obscenity laws. The enforcement of those laws would send a message that the production and distribution of obscene material is unacceptable in a civilized society. Second, local and national groups should run billboard, TV, and internet advertising campaigns to expose the harms of internet pornography to the public.

Looking beyond those “first steps,” I would argue for the eventual enactment of new laws that would censor obscene internet pornography.

A statutory system of narrowly-tailored, criteria-based censorship would use accurate and effective censorship technology similar to content-control software. According to Freedman v. Maryland, prior restraint is not necessarily unconstitutional, especially when restraining “base pornography” (i.e., hardcore pornography), as long as the statute provides sufficient procedural safeguards to ensure that protected speech will not be restrained. Creating such a system with sufficient procedural safeguards will be the ultimate riddle.

Censoring hardcore pornography on the internet would not affect the private viewing of pornographic material by way of a DVD or a downloaded file (current obscenity statutes may apply to the production of distribution of such material), but it would strip two important elements from internet pornography: its affordability and its accessibility. Censoring would also help state and federal prosecutors focus their obscenity prosecutions on the sale and distribution of obscene material by way of mail, downloads, and porn shops. Currently, it feels futile to prosecute obscenity in the face of seemingly endless amounts of free online hardcore pornography, with more added every day.

Conclusion

Internet pornography is not only a public harm but also one of the greatest evils of our time. It destroys human beings: two-year-olds raped for entertainment; women drugged and then videoed while being raped by a dog; young women, often runaways or adolescent victims of prior sexual abuse or neglect, lured into the pornography industry where they are filmed being gang-raped until their internal organs rip.

Pornography undermines civilized society: it erodes the relationship between men and women; it undermines marriage, the family unit, and the well-being and social standing of women and children; it causes sexual addictions that debilitate a person’s productivity, discernment, and ability to form healthy relationships.

And yet, a cultural and legal “knot” has been tied in this country that cleverly protects the “license” of producing and consuming internet pornography.

But the First Amendment was not ratified to protect the prostitution and exploitation of human beings for entertainment; it was not ratified to restrict government prosecution of “speech” that causes grave harm to both individuals and to society as a whole. This concept of the First Amendment would have been unthinkable to the Framers, who lauded virtue as the indispensable ingredient of sustainable freedom.

Surely our current jurisprudence, which protects depictions of prostituted—and therefore criminal—sex acts, cannot be the proper interpretation of the First Amendment. Freedom of speech is certainly a precious liberty, but that liberty does not include its abuse: the freedom of speech is not a license. Nor is it the fundamental social value that should trump all others.

Internet pornography is a “monstrous injustice,” and the time for its abolition has come.

Hotels and the Pornography Plague: An Example of Moral Responsibility from Scandinavia - by Robert P. George and Hamza Yusuf

In TPD

A bit more than a year ago, we made public here on Public Discourse a letter we had sent to the chief executive officers of our nation’s largest hotel chains, respectfully asking them to stop offering pornography in their hotel rooms. We said:

We are, respectively, a Christian and a Muslim, but we appeal to you not on the basis of truths revealed in our scriptures but on the basis of a commitment that should be shared by all people of reason and goodwill: a commitment to human dignity and the common good. As teachers and as parents, we seek a society in which young people are encouraged to respect others and themselves—treating no one as an impersonal object or thing. We hope that you share our desire to build such a society.

Pornography is degrading, dehumanizing, and corrupting. It undermines self-respect and respect for others. It reduces persons—creatures bearing profound, inherent, and equal dignity—to the status of objects. It robs a central aspect of our humanity—our sexuality—of its dignity and beauty. It ensnares some in addiction. It deprives others of their sense of self-worth. It teaches our young people to settle for the cheap satisfactions of lust, rather than to do the hard, yet ultimately liberating and fulfilling, work of love.

One hotel chain, Marriott, informed us that they were “phasing out” offerings of pornography in their hotel rooms. Another, Hilton, defended its participation in the pornography business by appealing, dubiously in our view, to libertarian principles. Others, so far as we can tell, have ignored our plea.

We wish to reiterate that plea here, however, by holding up to the American hotel executives the highly laudable actions of Petter Stordalen, owner of Nordic Hotels, one of Scandinavia’s largest chains. Mr. Stordalen, after becoming involved in international efforts to fight the horrific practice of trafficking women and girls into sexual slavery, announced that pornography would no longer be offered to his customers. In a public statement explaining his decision, he said:

The porn industry contributes to trafficking, so I see it as a natural part of having a social responsibility to send out a clear signal that Nordic Hotels doesn't support or condone this.

He’s right. The pornography industry is corrupt through and through—inherently so. It should come as no surprise that it is connected to something as exploitative, degrading, and dehumanizing as human trafficking. Bravo to Petter Stordalen for refusing to continue profiting from peddling the industry’s wares.

Of course, even if trafficking were not part of the reality of the industry, good people should be opposed to pornography and unwilling to profit from it. As we said in our letter to hotel executives:

We beg you to consider the young woman who is depicted as a sexual object in these movies, as nothing but a bundle of raw animal appetites whose sex organs are displayed to the voyeurs of the world and whose body is used in loveless and utterly depersonalized sex acts. Surely we should regard that young woman as we would regard a sister, daughter, or mother. She is a precious member of the human family. You may say that she freely chooses to compromise her dignity in this way, and in some cases that would be true, but that gives you no right to avail yourself of her self-degradation for the sake of financial gain. Would you be willing to profit from her self-degradation if she were your sister? Would you be willing to profit from her self-degradation if she were your own beloved daughter?

The reality is, however, just as Mr. Stordalen depicts it. Human trafficking is part of the reality. And it is time for his fellow hotel executives to face up to that fact.

Indeed, it is time for Mr. Stordalen’s American counterparts to follow his commendable example. If Nordic Hotels can demonstrate this kind of moral and social responsibility, then there is no reason that Hilton Hotels and the other large chains cannot. Let them stop trying to deceive the public—and perhaps even themselves—with rhetoric about respecting or even protecting their customers’ liberty. Pornography is a social plague with horrific real-life consequences for real live people—addicts, spouses, children, communities, girls and women trafficked into sexual servitude.

At this late season of our nation’s experience with the social costs of pornography there is no longer any excuse for supposing that porn is merely a form of harmless naughtiness. Even the socially very liberal nation of Iceland is moving to ban or severely restrict it by law. Whatever one thinks of legal prohibitions or restrictions, everyone should recognize that pornography is a moral and social evil that no decent person would want to profit from or have anything to do with.

Personalized pornography: the explosive growth of ‘sexting’ among teens - by Jonathon van Maren

August 27, 2013 (Unmasking Choice) - The embarrassing political troubles of the unfortunately but aptly named former Congressman Anthony Weiner has catapulted the term “sexting” into cultural consciousness once again, prompting a sudden discussion on what, exactly, “sexting” is—and whether we should be worried about it. Dr. Keith Ablow, FOX News’ psychiatry expert, weighed in with a column entitled “What Weiner’s sexting scandal tells us about young women today,” concluding that it tells us that too many women are not having Private Part Pinups texted to them against their will. Rather, Ablow writes, “I can tell you that the average young woman no longer balks at sexting, watching pornography, or being the aggressor sexually in a relationship.” Slate.com noted that while the rates of boys and girls sexting—specifically, sending nude pictures of themselves—are pretty much the same, boys are far more likely to send these pictures on to their peers, resulting in often savage bullying that has culminated in tragedies like the recent suicides of several young girls. While Monsieur Weiner’s recurring predicaments have prompted a lot of snickering from the media, the “sexting” problem in general has become decidedly unfunny.

Some time ago, two of my colleagues and I were meeting with a group of high school students who had expressed interest in getting involved spreading the pro-life message inside their high schools. One of them mentioned, almost off-handedly, that the pressure on girls to send explicit pictures was constant—“they keep asking until you give in,” she told us. Wondering just how pervasive this phenomenon was, I sent a series of emails around asking various students whether or not that was true—and what sort of impact that had on the high school culture. What makes their responses even more shocking, I think, is the fact that all of these students attend either Catholic schools or private Protestant schools.

“I find that those who sext because of peer pressure or because they are trying to keep someone interested are most often young girls,” one girl responded. “I’m not saying boys don’t receive the same pressure from friends, but I find that it is most often the girl’s job to keep the boys interested, and what better way than to show them exactly what they want to see? In those cases of peer pressure or those of keeping someone interested, the people who had sexted most often tried to hide it. What always seems to happen, though, is that the people who receive the initial picture show it to all of their friends. Eventually rumors spread, and friendships are ruined and people are hurt in the process. It’s things like this that cause teenagers to hurt themselves or commit suicide.”

Dr. Arthur Cassidy, a social psychologist commenting on the “sexting” phenomenon in The Guardian, agrees: “I think it’s most dominant in young girls. Many more girls buy glossy magazines than boys, and there are more female sexually explicit icons. Statistically you also get more attention [on online social networking sites] if you put up a photo of yourself and the more explicit the photo, the more responses you get…Females have more sexual pressure on them now than ever before, so rather than focus on the inner person, it’s about looking at the body as a sexual image.”

That, of course, is the root of the problem: “It’s about looking at the body as a sexual image.” A thing, not a person. An object to be desired, not a friend to be made. Another high school student wrote that a huge number of boys in her classes were viewing pornography every night. When they arrive at school, of course, many boys are no longer satisfied with forming intellectual friendships with their female peers—they want to objectify them in the same way they objectify the faceless parade of porn stars they viewed the evening before. They want personalized pornography, a brand new sexual high. High school girls are pressured into thinking that in order to keep and maintain male attention, they have to provide the very tools the boys will use to objectify them and render them faceless.

“To be honest I was kind of happy he texted,” ‘Cassie’ wrote, “At least someone was thinking about me. We talked about everything from dogs to push-ups. He asked me to send him a picture. I’m not stupid and I know what he meant, but I asked him what he wanted a picture of. This is where I should have drawn the line or perhaps even earlier. I know that now and did then too but didn’t particularly care. He slowed my phone down by sending me hundreds of mega-bytes worth of pictures taken of his bare stomach and groin. I laughed. I don’t know why. He asked for a picture again. I sent him one of my face. His next comment was a long exaggerated ‘noooooooooo not that’ and then ‘you made a little mistake’ (another smiley) ‘I’ll give you another chance.’ Apparently finding it funny, that I were his student he was trying to teach. I then walked up a flight of stairs, went inside the bathroom, angrily took my clothes off, snapped two pictures exactly, and sent them.”

Sent, and irretrievable. Everything about this interaction shows what is actually at play in much of the gender dynamics surrounding sexting. He asked for a picture—she was “not stupid, and knew what he was asking for.” She sent one of her face—and, revealingly, that was precisely what this boy did not want. He didn’t want to see her; he wanted to see her body. The eyes may be the window to the soul, but that’s not the type of connection he was after. Rather, he was seeking something much more carnivorous—one-sided pleasure at her expense. And—thinking that “at least someone was thinking about me”—she complied. (The subtle social coercion in the underlying threat of “I’ll give you another chance” is unmistakable.) It does not take a social scientist to see that while there are two guilty parties involved in this transaction, exploiting the insecurities of females in a hyper-sexualized culture for sexual gratification is, at best, predatory. And while girls are most certainly part of the problem, it is the girls, most often (just as in so-called “recreational” sex), that pay the highest price.

And that reality impacts the high school culture even subliminally. “It’s hard to walk into school every day knowing that people there had seen something they never should have, knowing that it would be almost impossible to live it down, forget it and move on,” ‘Lindsay’ wrote, “You’d always get smirks and snide comments, shouts in the middle of class or in the cafeteria, even in the hallways walking from place to place. You’d see it all over Facebook, comments you know couldn’t be about anyone else. You wouldn’t be able to just leave your problems at school because they would follow you home. It’s terrible what one little mistake can do to your life. And it’s worse that there are even demands for pictures still, after all that has happened to other teens because of it. I don’t think these teenagers realize how much this can affect their lives and the lives of the other people involved.”

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Searching for self-esteem and whatever they define as “love” (unfortunately fulfilling the old maxim that boys use love to get sex, and girls use sex to get love), girls are increasingly collaborating with our culture’s attempt to reduce them to sex objects in the vain hope that it will bring them what they’re looking for. If “sexting” brings them the attention they crave, many mistakenly think that it’s the type of attention that will be fulfilling—as ‘Richelle’ wrote, “When they are asked to participate in that, they don’t think twice because someone is finally ‘valuing’ them and showing interest in them. They use it as a Band-Aid solution to what they are dealing with because reaching out to others seems to have failed.” From music videos to “teen” magazines to Hollywood films to TV shows targeted towards their age groups, girls are being conditioned to think that their physical appearance is what gives them value as people. Probably (I hope) without even realizing it, the boys are taking advantage of this cultural conditioning by requesting—and in many, many cases receiving—the personalized pornography that they seek. (In many cases, it bears mentioning, these pictures constitute child pornography.)

The problem of sexting seems to be a hard one to address, in spite of the fact that several high-profile bullying cases resulting in suicide have highlighted the problem and oh-so-briefly outraged the public. Teenage sub-culture is hard for adults to penetrate, especially since teens are now connected to each other without any adult oversight. One girl warned me that, “If you’re trying to change the minds of teenagers with this article, it probably won’t work.” And there’s probably a lot of truth to that. Especially when requests for explicit pictures stem from pornography addictions, it’s going to take a lot to convince teenagers in high schools that this behavior is self-destructive, demeaning, and an attack on the dignity (self-inflicted as it often may be) of the girls sending the photos as well as the boys receiving them.

But there are a few things I can say that I hope will at least resonate with a few teenagers. Girls: If a guy asks you for explicit pictures, he’s implicitly told you what he wants from you. The answer is it’s not you. He wants your body, and in this scenario he doesn’t even want you physically present. By sending him these pictures you’re voluntarily reducing yourself to a one-dimensional sex object, without a personality, without aspirations or intellect or even a voice. You are a person with a body, not a body with a person. If the boy you’re talking to doesn’t recognize that, then drop him hard, and wait for someone who does. There will be guys who want to spend time with you, not just your body.

Guys: If you’re asking for these pictures, think for a minute about what you’re saying about girls and women in general. You’re revealing something about yourself that’s pretty distasteful: Namely, that the relationship you want is one defined by your particular sexual wants rather than the presence of another person who demands—or should demand—mutual respect and understanding. If you’re asking for these pictures, you’re not acting the way a man should, by respecting (and in some cases protecting) the women in your life. You are acting like a predator, and a cannibalistic one to boot. And if the pictures are sent to you unsolicited, you should delete them and tell her she’s worth more than that.

The genders were created to live in harmony with each other. As long as boys and girls choose to treat each other as sexual objects for sexual gratification as opposed to potential friends or spouses for mutual self-sacrifice, our culture will continue to become even more twisted than it already is. But if instead boys and girls start seeing each other as potential friends or spouses for mutual self-sacrifice, we can instead begin the work of making our culture a much better place to live.

Attacking the Roots of Abortion - By Don Murray

In HPR

What is really required … is to address the thought processes and motivations that prompt people to seek abortion as a solution to a personal problem that should not have occurred in the first place

Catholics, and our counterparts in other religions, are making headway in the struggle against abortion.  Women coming to clinics seeking abortion have often been convinced to turn around and plan to give birth to the baby.  Legislatures in many states have thrown up roadblocks by introducing requirements such as time delays, requiring parental consent, or requiring a woman to view a sonogram of the developing baby before going ahead with a planned abortion.  Court action has often been taken in cases of underage girls being coached on how to falsify their story and in cases where girls have been transported across state lines to locations where abortion was legal.  A few states have even denied funding to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.  And, through C-FAM, we have been fighting the abortion agenda in the halls of the United Nations.

The publicity front in the abortion war has also been moving ahead, with a concentration on young women and on ethnic groups that have statistically higher rates of abortion.  Pro-life inserts are placed in college newspapers, presentations of photos showing the true nature of abortion are given on college campuses, a film has been produced referring to abortion as black genocide, and a campaign is under way to introduce pro-life literature into barber shops in minority neighborhoods.

The success of the overall effort can be realized from the fact that the numbers of abortion clinics and abortion providers have been sharply reduced, especially in rural areas.

But the effort thus far has been aimed at preventing the act of abortion itself or reducing the numbers of abortions performed.  What is really required, however, is to address the thought processes and motivations that prompt people to seek abortion as a solution to a personal problem that should not have occurred in the first place.

The first of these attitudes and motivations is the widespread acceptance, and widespread practice, of contraception, even among Catholics.  When the Obama administration targeted Catholics and used a mandate to force many Catholic institutions to fund contraception for all their employees, the Catholic bishops responded on the freedom of religion aspect of the issue, but contraception is itself a major moral problem to which the Church has not been giving proper attention for several decades.

People develop a mistaken idea that contraception prevents pregnancy 100 percent of the time, and when an unforeseen pregnancy does occur, they are tempted to resort to abortion.  The Guttmacher Institute reported in 2009 that 54 percent of abortions were performed on women who had used contraceptives in the month before they became pregnant.  The United States Supreme Court in 1992 (Casey v. Planned Parenthood), based a judgment against allowing obstacles to abortion on the very fact that people rely on abortion when contraception fails.

There is an abundance of evidence as to why contraception is morally wrong, beginning with God’s striking Onan dead for using it (Gen 38:9-10), continuing through the earliest Church tradition (the Didache), and the writings of numerous Church Fathers and Popes, right up to Vatican Council II (Gaudium et Spes 48, 50).

In addition to the moral arguments are the harmful natural effects – the increase in adultery due to the lessening of the fear of pregnancy; the resulting increase in divorce, leading to an increase in the number of women forced to be single mothers living in poverty; and, associated problems of their children receiving poorer education, making them vulnerable to incentives toward delinquency and crime; the decline in men’s respect for women; and the tendency of governments to institute population control measures, including forced abortions.  Besides these sociological effects, there are still others – the fact that contraceptives do not prevent the transmission of venereal disease, the damage to reproductive systems from water supplies that contain runoff from the urine of women using the pill, and the damage to Social Security and Medicare because fewer young people are entering the work force, resulting in the fact that contributions are insufficient to match the outlays to retirees.

But the objective of the Catholic Church goes beyond preventing a host of worldly problems.  The reason for the Church’s existence is to help people to gain heaven, but contraception prevents children from even existing. Couples who seek the pleasure of sex, without its natural consequences, are acting in a way that’s directly opposed to their achieving salvation.

The most direct result of using contraception is the fact that it violates the very purpose of sexuality.  When one wants to find the purpose of anything, it is necessary to consider what it does that nothing else does.  In the case of sexuality, it’s procreation.  Nothing else in nature accomplishes that.  Using this God-given faculty in a way that deliberately frustrates its God-intended result is a direct offense against the Creator, who wishes the couple to accept this new human being, and to raise this child in a way that will lead all three of them to life with God.  So, life-long monogamous marriage is the proper and necessary environment for the exercise of sexuality.

Natural Family Planning (NFP) is not the universal solution. In the very encyclical in which he proclaimed that contraception is immoral, Pope Paul VI also declared that NFP is allowable only under certain conditions – medical, psychological or financial – that make it permissible for a married couple to restrict their marital acts to times when procreation is not likely to occur (Humanae Vitae 16 and 10).  While today’s financial environment could mean that more couples qualify now than forty years ago, Pope Paul made it very clear that NFP is not a universal solution for everyone.

But while procreation is the very purpose of sexuality, then the concept of recreational sex, so widely accepted today, is a fundamental component of the attitudes and beliefs that lead to abortion.  When a person is open to the idea that sex is primarily recreational, they seek to explore it, at first vicariously, by means of pornography, and then with actual, contracepting partners, either in one-night stands, or in an ongoing arrangement of cohabitation.  Very often, it leads to abortion.

Contraception, with its underlying concept of recreational sex, has also led to the movement on the part of homosexual people to have their lifestyle, and their relationships accepted, and even considered to be marriage. After all, if heterosexual people can enjoy the pleasure of sex while preventing the birth of children, then it’s difficult to justify the belief that people who cannot have children should be forbidden to have sex.  But our willingness to accept people with same-sex attraction as human beings, and as God’s children, does not mean that one should condone actions that God himself punished with fire and brimstone at Sodom and Gomorrah.

So, we see that abortion, horrible as it is, is just the tip of the iceberg that consists of a series of evils, threatening the salvation of everyone in today’s world.  The notion of recreational sex is a major part of the problem.  So, how must we conduct this part of the fight?

Obviously, we have to publicize arguments regarding the purpose of sexuality, plus the nature and the purpose of marriage.  We must add to this the reasons why contraception is wrong, both the harmful natural effects that apply to everyone, including secularists, and also the evidence from Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition that applies to Catholics and to other Christians.  Parishes need to insure that these are dealt with properly in pre-Cana meetings, in adult education, in training for parents of children and of teen-agers, and in RCIA classes. Instructors in Catholic schools, and in CCD classes, must be properly trained. Catholic high schools and colleges must also ensure proper proclamation of the message.

These must be accompanied by strong opposition to pornography, insisting on proper enforcement of laws that are in effect, plus seeking more restrictions on the distribution of prurient material through the Internet, on television, in magazines, and other media outlets.

But dissemination of the message is the easy part.  It will be more difficult to gain acceptance of the message, given that people have become accustomed to a lifestyle built around the concept of recreational sex. The Church has been silent too long regarding the expression of that lifestyle through contraception.

Just as there were a series of issues underlying abortion, there is another series of issues involved in convincing people what they need to do, for their own salvation, and to overcome the evils throughout society.

The first obstacle that needs to be addressed is the loss of respect for the authority of the Church.  Catholics need to be reminded that Christ’s words to Peter included:  “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19).  This authority given to Peter and his successors involves morality as well as doctrine.

Many baptized Catholics intellectually accept the Church’s right to promulgate the moral law but do not act according to what they have been taught.  They rationalize it, finding ways to justify acting as they want, rather than as they ought.  Rationalization involves a misuse of conscience. These people must, therefore, be led to a proper understanding of conscience as a matter of discerning through the intellect, and not a matter of deciding for themselves through the will, influenced by feelings.

But for other baptized Catholics, who do not accept Church authority, the obstacle is a failure of faith, as people question the right of God himself to direct their activity, having been led by a secular world to think of themselves as subject to no one, with an unlimited right to do as they want.  They need to be brought to realize their own limitations, that they did not bring themselves into this world, and that their existence and their well-being depend on others.  They need also to recognize Christ as divine, possessing the nature and authority of God, who came into our world to redeem it, and to point out for us the way to eternal life with him by leading an earthy life based on his teachings.

Apologetics, giving the reasons for the truths the Church teaches, is a necessary first step. It is necessary for presenting the evidence for Christ’s divinity, and it is necessary also for showing that the Catholic Church is the instrument for proclaiming his message, thus showing people the reasonableness of faith.  From there, one can go on to show that the Catholic Church is the one founded by Christ; that the moral law is essentially the road map to salvation; and how to make the proper use of conscience.  All Catholics, but especially parents and teachers, should be trained in the essentials of apologetics.  But apologetics, necessary as it is, must be accompanied by prayer, and a spirit of sacrifice, on the part of those who already believe, all for the sake of conversion of others, that they may be led to realize these truths.

It’s a campaign that needs to be waged on many fronts simultaneously.  The essential theme that needs to permeate the entire effort is love that includes forgiveness.  Christ came into our world out of love for us, precisely to redeem every member of the human race by means of the sacrificial offering of himself on Calvary.  His action there included a prayer that his persecutors might be forgiven, and his promise of Paradise for the repentant thief.  Then, at his first meeting with the eleven remaining apostles, he even gave them the authority to forgive sins against him.

Besides making our salvation possible by his suffering and death, Christ also told us how to achieve salvation, telling us that we must live out the Ten Commandments internally, as well as externally. He gave us the Beatitudes, and the instruction of more than a score of parables.  Christ went even further, by giving us the means of gaining salvation, through the sacraments.  Three of these are especially relevant in combating abortion.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation re-unites the repentant sinner with Christ and his Church.  For one who is truly sorry for offending God, resolved to avoid further sinful acts, thoughts and words, and willing to make restitution for damage done to others, the sincere and complete confession of the sins can bring total forgiveness for multiple abortions, for decades of contraceptive acts, and indulgence in pornography, as well as for other sins they have committed.  A loving Christ is, thus, applying to an individual the fruits of his sacrifice on Calvary.

But sexual abuses, especially pornography and contraception, frequently become addictions, difficult to overcome, so a person needs special help to fight their way back to a moral way of life.  The Sacrament of Holy Eucharist provides that help.  A loving Christ comes personally to the individual, and he himself is the special food that builds up spiritual strength for the struggle against the temptations that inevitably will return.  Frequent reception of Holy Eucharist, even daily if possible, together with quick returns to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, if lapses should occur, can help the person to overcome eventually their long-standing inclinations and weakness.

But there is yet another sacrament that is especially relevant to the struggle against abortion, and that is the Sacrament of Matrimony.  One of the promises the couple makes at the marriage ceremony is to accept all the children God may send them.  A person normally receives this sacrament only once, in contrast to Reconciliation and Holy Eucharist which should be received frequently. But the effects of marriage are constantly renewed throughout life in order to assist the couple in the day-to-day effort to live out their vocation to love each other, and to love the children God sends them, in a way that will bring all of them to be with him.  Given the realities of human nature, and the fact that we frequently offend others, the act of forgiveness—which we often need to request, as well as to extend—is a necessary feature of a healthy married life.

We began this discussion by trying to find the means to attack abortion at its roots, and what we have arrived at is a Catholic way of life, and the day-by-day effort of married persons to live that life.  And that’s exactly the point.  When one is truly convinced that sex is not for pleasure, but for children; and that marriage is a vocation for bringing up children, one is much better able to resist the lures of pornography and of contraception. Those who do not practice contraception, are far less likely to seek abortion.  Even if chemical abortions are increasing to fill the gap left by the decline in surgical abortions, the same arguments apply.

The Catholic concept of marriage—involving the commitment of one’s very life to serve God in the small community of husband and wife, pledging their mutual love exclusively until death, and sharing their love with the children their love brings about—is an ideal way of life that others do not possess, but which they would really want to have if they can be brought to recognize its value.  It must be presented to them in a way that leads them to that recognition.  This way of life is based on faith in God and his Son, Jesus Christ. It is recognizing the love he has shown to us. It is appreciating the Church he has given us. It is thankful obedience to the rules pointed out by his Church. And, it is the willingness to direct one’s life according to his will for us, so that we may eventually experience the eternal happiness he holds out for us.

It is a matter of carrying out the fundamentals of Catholic life in a humble, prayerful way, driven by a lively faith that expresses itself in love, and then evangelizing others from that point of view.

Educazione sessuale? Dietro c'è la lobby dei pedofili - di Josip Horvaticek

In NBQ 

I programmi di educazione sessuale per i bambini recentemente imposti in Croazia, ma già attuati in molti paesi secondo il metodo Kinsey, sono stati redatti da pedofili. E’ quanto sostiene la studiosa americana Judith Reisman che, invitata recentemente in Croazia per una serie di incontri e conferenze legate alla recente introduzione di (sconvolgenti) corsi di educazione sessuale, ha anche dimostrato i legami di questa lobby con la Fondazione Soros.

Judith Reisman, in passato consulente dell’FBI nonché del Parlamento e di diversi ministeri statunitensi, è uno dei maggiori esperti mondiali sul malfamato Kinsey Institute e il suo fondatore, Alfred Kinsey. La dottoressa Reisman ha dolorosamente vissuto in prima persona gli effetti della diffusione delle teorie di Kinsey: una figlia di dieci anni è stata stuprata da un violentatore seriale tredicenne, accanito lettore di Playboy. Dopo avere constatato come molte persone giustificassero questo atto affermando che forse la figlia era stata consenziente poiché i bambini sarebbero esseri sessuali, cioè desidererebbero il sesso, fin dalla nascita - una delle teorie di Kinsey -, la Reisman ha iniziato a studiare gli effetti di queste teorie, constatando come esse abbiano provocato nel secondo dopoguerra una diffusione esponenziale della pornografia e della pedofilia.

Considerate queste premesse, non sorprende che, una volta appreso dell’arrivo di Judith Reisman, i media croati di sinistra e laicisti, che appoggiano il governo nel suo programma di educazione sessuale, abbiano allestito una vera e propria propaganda di guerra nei confronti della scienziata americana, fatta di menzogne, insulti personali e diffamazioni, tra le quali quella di essere una «negatrice dell’Olocausto», il che, detto di un’ebrea americana che ha perso la maggior parte del ramo europeo della sua famiglia nei campi di concentramento nazisti, ha rappresentato un segno di inciviltà e arretratezza culturale veramente deprecabili.

I toni non sono scesi neppure durante la sua permanenza in Croazia. Al termine della lezione tenuta presso la Facoltà di Scienze Politiche, la dottoressa Reisman è stata aggredita verbalmente dal preside della medesima Facoltà, Nenad Zakošek. Alcune forze politiche di governo hanno cercato di impedire una conferenza della studiosa americana nel Parlamento croato, mentre il previsto dibattito alla Facoltà di Filosofia tra la dottoressa Reisman e il prof. Aleksandar Štulhofer, discepolo di Kinsey e ideatore del programma di educazione sessuale adottato dal Ministero croato per l'istruzione, è stato sospeso per ‘motivi di ordine pubblico’ a causa della ressa, creata ad arte dai gruppi appartenenti alla galassia omosessuale, che si è creata nell'aula dove il dibattito si sarebbe dovuto tenere.

Un improvviso ‘problema tecnico’ ha interrotto subito dopo l’inizio la proiezione del documentario su Kinsey del giornalista britannico Timothy Tate, collaboratore della dottoressa Reisman, in uno dei più grandi e moderni cinema di Zagabria alla presenza dell’autore e di circa 800 persone (tale problema non si era presentato nella proiezione di prova del DVD né a un successivo tentativo a porte chiuse compiuto in un altro locale).  Un altro guasto, questa volta al sistema di amplificazione, ha poi impedito alla dottoressa Reisman e a Tate di tenere un’improvvisata conferenza dal palco del cinema che sostituisse la proiezione del film.

Questi avvenimenti hanno peraltro provocato la durissima reazione della sezione croata del Comitato di Helsinki.
 

In ogni caso la Reisman ha avuto modo di stupire i suoi ascoltatori non solo illuminando la figura di Alfred Kinsey (in Parlamento, davanti agli attoniti parlamenmtari del centro-destra che l’avevano invitata, lo ha definito il «pedofilo che ha cambiato il mondo» e uno «psicopatico sessuale che ha contaminato le nostre famiglie, la nostra cultura, le nostre leggi»), ma soprattutto ricostruendo l’origine dei programmi di educazione sessuale imposti alla Croazia. La studiosa americana ha rivelato come il professor Štulhofer abbia scritto un libro con lo studioso olandese pedofilo Theo Sandford, attualmente professore presso la Columbia University. Va notato che Sandford non è un esimio professore universitario con inconfessabili vizi privati, bensì un pedofilo dichiarato, co-fondatore e redattore della rivista olandese in lingua inglese di pedofili dichiarati Paidika, nonché autore di uno studio che si può trovare anche in rete dal titolo Boys on their contacts with men: a study of sexually expressed friendships (I ragazzi maschi nei contatti con gli uomini adulti: uno studio di amicizie espresse sessualmente), che non si limita a compiere un’indagine sulla pedofilia, ma esprime sulla stessa una chiara valutazione positiva.

In una successiva conferenza stampa, il giornalista inglese Timothy Tate ha poi affermato come Štulhofer abbia avuto non solamente uno, bensì tre collaboratori pedofili dichiarati e propagandisti della liceità della pedofilia, e cioè - oltre a Sandford - il sessuologo americano Vern Bullough, scomparso nel 2006,  e il sessuologo tedesco Erwin J. Haeberle.

Bullough è stato, come Sandford, cofondatore e redattore di Paidika. Nella dichiarazione di intenti relativa a questa pubblicazione, egli afferma: «Il punto di partenza di Paidika è necessariamente la coscienza del nostro essere pedofili. Consideriamo la pedofilia come un rapporto sessuale consenziente tra persone di generazioni diverse».

In un’intervista concessa nel 1978 alla rivista pornografica americana Hustler, Haeberle ha invece affermato che è del tutto normale avere rapporti sessuali con bambini, i quali dovrebbero avere libero accesso ai libri per adulti – cioè pornografici – ed essere liberi di scegliere i propri partner sessuali, ivi inclusi gli adulti. Questo pedofilo dichiarato è stato membro dal 1977 al 1988 dell'Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, che ha redatto la maggior parte dei programmi di educazione sessuale nel mondo, corredato di fotografie pornografiche anche di bambini in seguito vendute a Hustler.

Una prova della stretta collaborazione tra Štulhofer e questi colleghi sessuologi pedofili è l’avere fatto parte tutti e quattro del comitato organizzatore di un convegno internazionale di sessuologi tenutosi a Dubrovnik, in Croazia, nel 2001 e finanziato dalla fondazione Soros.

Della stessa tendenza è un altro collaboratore di Štulhofer, il sessuologo tedesco Gunther Schmidt, il quale ha scritto la prefazione al libro di Sandford Male Intergenerational Intimacy (trad.: Intimità intergenerazionale tra maschi), affermando tra l’altro: «La minaccia che tutti gli atti di pedofilia vengano puniti dalla legge molto difficilmente potrebbe essere considerata un’azione degna di una società civile … Ciò rappresenta una discriminazione e la persecuzione di una minoranza, e quindi tali disposizioni di legge andrebbero abrogate».

Judith Reisman ha quindi provato che il programma di educazione sessuale imposto in Croazia, preparato secondo il metodo Kinsey dal prof. Štulhofer, è simile, quanto ai suoi tre scopi principali, a quasi tutti i programmi di educazione sessuale adottati a livello mondiale. Si tratta cioè del tentativo di sessualizzare i bambini e fornire 'carne fresca' per le voglie malsane di adulti perversi, di sdoganare l’omosessualità e altri gravi disordini della personalità come normali manifestazioni della sessualità umana, nonché di rendere i giovani dipendenti dal sesso a tutto vantaggio dell’industria della pornografia e dei preservativi, e ciò con il pretesto della lotta alle malattie trasmissibili sessualmente.

La presenza della dottoressa Reisman in Croazia ha provocato un terremoto che ha fatto vacillare i palazzi della politica, e ha indotto il governo a muoversi anche per vie diplomatiche. Secondo quanto rivelano fonti della Curia romana, l’ambasciatore croato presso la Santa Sede, Filip Vucak, avrebbe avuto un incontro con il segretario per i rapporti con gli Stati, mons. Dominique Mamberti, allo scopo di ammorbidire la posizione della Chiesa sulla questione, ricevendo un netto rifiuto da parte del suo interlocutore vaticano.

In un Paese democratico, la presentazione delle prove inconfutabili degli stretti legami di collaborazione tra l'ideatore di questo programma e i circoli pedofili, oltre a conseguenze di natura penale per l’interessato, avrebbe portato alle immediate dimissioni di Štulhofer e di tutti i funzionari del Ministero dell’Istruzione coinvolti nell'elaborazione del programma, ivi incluso lo stesso ministro. Non così nella Croazia di oggi che si appresta a entrare nell’Unione Europea. Anzi, passato il “terremoto” Reisman, i media di regime hanno fatto calare il silenzio sulla vicenda, e Štulhofer viene spesso chiamato in televisione a pontificare su questioni di sessualità, specialmente infantile (!) e giovanile, mentre nelle scuole elementari vengono proposti ai bambini di dieci anni temi di ‘lingua croata’ in cui si rappresentano situazioni esplicitamente sessuali.