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.

Video Game Adiction - How video games kill the soul & body

In TFP

About the author

Elizabeth Woolley founded Online Gamers Anonymous to people addicted to video games. Mrs. Woolley has been interviewed by the Catholic Herald Citizen, CBC, CBS, and the BBC. She has travelled internationally to speak at conferences on the dangers of gaming. In 2002, she started a website to warn society about the “dark” side of gaming and to provide help and counseling for those who are already addicted to video games.

Crusade: Could you please explain why you founded Online Gamers Anonymous?

Mrs. Woolley: In 2000, my son Shawn became addicted to an online video game called Everquest. Within three months he quit his job, got evicted from his home, and was up all night playing. Despite our efforts to help him get his life back together, he committed suicide only a year and a half after being introduced to the game.

Shortly after Shawn’s suicide, I did an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and that’s when I realized how many families are being broken up and suffering like us. In 2002, I founded the Online Gamers Anonymous site so these people would have a place to go and know they are not alone.

I want to warn people that these games can take control of their lives just like drugs or alcohol. Some gamers told me one can become addicted in less than 24 hours. Once a gamer has gone from social gaming to addicted gaming, he can’t go back. Games can be a drug of choice and need to be looked at that way.

Our website, www.olganon.org spreads research on how gaming affects children, stunting their mental growth and social development, and helps to warn parents. We host several meetings a week where addicted gamers can talk and support one another to turn their lives around and also have a very active forum where different topics are discussed.

Crusade: Do you have any tips for parents who have video games in the house?

Mrs. Woolley: The biggest key is to make sure that your child’s life is balanced. Children cannot be raised on just one activity otherwise they will run into difficulties. Even if the child protests. It is your job as parents to say “no” and guide him towards other activities.

Being a parent isn’t easy, but trust me, there was life before video games, and as parents we have to find or make activities to give our children besides sitting them in front of a screen. That means getting them into sports, social events, and educational activities. Alternatives need to be presented. If the child says he doesn’t want to leave the game, you have to set limits, otherwise he will develop problems.

Crusade: Who can get addicted and what are the consequences?

Mrs. Woolley: Anyone can get addicted. Colleges recognize that video games cause a huge percentage of their dropouts. Many now bring in counselors to deal with excessive gaming. Some are asking students if they play games before offering a scholarship. They know they might be wasting a scholarship on a gamer. I know several parents who lost their college funds to their gaming children this way.

Many teenagers being pulled into these games are actually geniuses. They are very intelligent and highly motivated. Proof of this is that many games require hours of tedious effort, concentration and patience. It is very sad to see how all this brilliant mind power is being wasted.

Besides considering how these games are affecting their personal lives and education, we should imagine what could be happening if these very capable people were solving the real problems of society. Instead, video games have become a big part of the dumbing-down of our society.

Fully grown, hard-working adults also get addicted. I know several who had a job and house but lost it all to the games. An extreme case is of a man in Florida who lost his job and had to start living on the street. Now he has a restaurant job and makes just enough to get himself to the gaming café, where he spends the rest of the day. When the café closes he sleeps on the street and does the same the next day.

Many fathers leave their families to spend more time gaming. They don’t care about their children, because all they feel they can do is play.

Grown women tend to play social games like Farmville, SIMS and Second Life because they like to do things with others. This often leads to problems because married women end up leaving husband and family, neglecting their real children, to be with someone in the game. There are many examples of this. An extreme case is the Korean couple who let their real child die of malnutrition because they spent all their time taking care of a virtual baby.

Crusade: Most video games give children a sense of worth and accomplishment. What’s wrong with that?

Mrs. Woolley: One of the main dangers is precisely that it is so very easy to get worth and accomplishment from a game. And if you don’t succeed or like what you did you can just restart until you get it right. Well, real life isn’t like that. Real life isn’t easy and you don’t often get do-overs. So the child grows disappointed with real life and ends up by quitting in real life. He says, “This is too hard,” and runs back to the games.

This poses a huge danger to the child’s social life. Instead of satisfying his desire for things like worth and accomplishment through social interaction, he obtains it through the game. Then he fails to get the experience he needs in real life, especially by suffering and learning how to deal with the bad as well as the good times. Real life isn’t easy for anybody, but allowing a child to use games as a drug to escape reality is not going to teach him how to cope with real life.

I could see this in my son. In the game he could easily do whatever he wanted and feel like he was accomplishing something. In the mean time, he was not spending time nurturing his real life, so there was nothing there to sustain him.  He no longer cared about the future and advancing in his real life. If most of your time is spent in games there isn’t enough time to enhance real life education, skills or friendships. Anyone who wants real accomplishment needs to get out of gaming and get working in real life.

Crusade: What would you tell parents who use video games to help entertain their children?

Mrs. Woolley: I have seen a lot of reckless behavior by parents because they want to use games as baby sitters. Unfortunately, a lot of it is because many are gamers themselves.

Firstly, giving children a game to get them out of your hair is not being a good parent. Be with your children in real life! I know of a father who taught his 3-year-old child to play World of Warcraft with him because he felt that if he could get his child addicted to it then he could interact with him through the game. I let parents know that gaming with your child is not interacting because almost no words are being exchanged; the child’s only communication with anything is through the controls.

Secondly, I recommend parents not allow any child under 16 to play games connected to the Internet, period. You never know who they are playing against, and pedophiles are figuring out ways to connect with children through these games. Somehow, because it is inside the home, parents think it is safe; but it isn’t. Giving them Internet games is like putting them in a public bar by themselves.

Also, many times parents tell me they can’t help but give what their children want and they don’t seriously look at what is in the game. These games can have sexually explicit material, cursing, drug use, senseless violence and destruction. If this stuff was in a movie, the violence alone would make it R-rated. Most of the Christian families I talk to would never hand their children an R rated movie, but they allow them to interact with violent games. This is very damaging.

Crusade: What if the games are non-violent and not online?

Mrs. Woolley: Just because it’s non-violent and not online doesn’t mean it cannot be harmful. That would be like saying it’s alright for kids to be handed non-violent drugs. Again, video games should be viewed as possible drugs and no one should be allowed to become addicted to them.

We really find that when a gamer crosses the line from having the choice of playing to being compelled to play, his mind has actually been rewired by the gaming. He is no longer playing because he wants to but because he has to. Then he starts hating the games but cannot stop. And then, as his life breaks down, he goes into a vicious circle of feeling guilty and having highs on the games, only to plunge back down and return to the game where it all starts again. And while tapping away at controls he becomes dehumanized, giving less importance to his senses, not going outside, getting exercise or sunshine eating good food; he turns into a human shell.

I also believe that more research has to be done but there is already enough information on how gaming affects especially the young, stunting their mental growth and social development. That’s one thing that startled me about my son. He stopped talking to people, including to me, his own mother.

Before getting into this game he was just like the rest of us. He had a future, plans, friends, and a job. After he became addicted it was like a light in his mind was switched off. He no longer cared about how he would spend his real life; he no longer saw a real future; and he had no more goals or principles. He just stopped thinking about reality and became depressed. His whole personality changed and he became anti-social. That’s why I always say these games can rewire the brain and a gamer can change and become a different person. My son’s friends were astounded by how much he actually changed.

Crusade: Could you give an example of how some parents intervene too late?

Mrs. Woolley: One of the boys I knew was a 15-year-old from Canada called Brandon. He was playing a game called Call of Duty and his parents were struggling with him to quit, as they knew it was causing problems. Brandon attached far too much importance to being a very powerful person in this game and wanted to stay in it because of all the fake power and attention he was getting. In 2008, his parents finally decided to put their foot down and took the game from him. Brandon ran away from home and a few weeks later some hunters found his dead body about seven miles from the house. It seems he jumped from a tree.  

Crusade: Have addicts talked to you about the gaming buzz causing emptiness in real life?

Mrs. Woolley: Yes, absolutely, and it makes perfect sense because in the games there are always more “missions” and more interesting challenges. The gamers get an adrenaline rush to be able to attain the next level and figure out what to do next. Going on quests and planning cities is all very exciting, and when you go back to real life there’s what? Parents telling you to go sweep the floor, do your homework, do the dishes, and eat at the table; talk with your sister. And then parents are surprised when their children say “life is so depressing,” “everything is boring,” “I have no friends.” It is all because they are spending all their time on games and not experiencing real life; if children had activities, their own groups and friends, real life would be interesting for them.

 Crusade: Could you share some more stories from your son’s addiction?

Mrs. Woolley: Yes. After my son became addicted to Everquest and was diagnosed with mental problems, he was admitted to a long-term support program. He was living in a group home five miles from my house. During the night I woke up and couldn’t sleep, which is very rare, so I went downstairs to check my e-mail and heard the front door opening. This was shortly past midnight. Thinking it was a burglar, I got a bat to challenge the thief. Then in walks my son, who was addicted to a game. He had walked five miles from the group home to play it. Who knows how many times he was getting up at night to play the game? Children admit it all the time on my forum that they are spending all night in front of these games without their parents knowing.

Another time my son was at his brother’s wedding, the first wedding in the family. He left during the ceremony to play and didn’t return for the rest of the day. People noticed that he wasn’t at the reception and I discovered he had left in the middle of the wedding and walked home to continue playing his game. My son would have never have done that before his addiction. He loved parties and socializing.

Confessionários vazios, spas cheios - Prof. Doutor Pedro Afonso

Recentemente um sacerdote lamentava-se de passar horas a fio no confessionário sem que ninguém aparecesse. Ora, num país que se diz maioritariamente católico, este fenómeno merece reflexão, pois se os confessionários estão vazios os “spas” são cada vez mais procurados. Por conseguinte, talvez não seja por acaso que Portugal ocupe um indecoroso 32ºlugar no Índice de Percepção da Corrupção, relativo a 2011, divulgado pela Transparência Internacional, de um total de 183 países avaliados.


Numa sociedade cada vez mais secularista, a noção entre o bem e o mal tem vindo a esbater-se. Se recusarmos assumir que o bem e o mal são realidades naturais, como é que faz sentido falar-se em justiça? Existem interesses políticos e económicos que visam extinguir da nossa sociedade uma certa consciência moral. É o principio de todas as tiranias: prometem de início o cumprimento de todos os desejos humanos, dando rédea solta a todos os instintos e apetites, mas rapidamente se apoderam da liberdade de um povo.


E foi o que aconteceu connosco. Portugal não perdeu apenas soberania com a dívida pública, antes disso, perdeu um depósito moral que urge repor. A televisão não ficou indiferente a este fenómeno, explicando-se deste modo o florescimento de programas televisivos moralmente degradantes, como “a casa dos segredos”, nos quais, em vez de se enaltecer as virtudes humanas, se idolatram os vícios privados e se promove a boçalidade. Escasseiam as pessoas que falam com a mínima convicção sobre o bem e o mal e quando alguém expressa este tipo de opinião ela é escarnecida, apontada como fundamentalista – como se fosse possível haver alguma tolerância perante o lamaçal da degradação humana.


Temos assistido a um aumento da corrupção, criando-se a percepção perigosa de que aqueles que ontem foram as vítimas, se tiverem oportunidade, convertem-se amanhã em carrascos. Impera o principio justificativo “ todos fazem assim...”. E quando alguém deixa de acreditar nos princípios é porque deixou de os ter. A corrupção não se combate apenas com leis gerais, numa planificação em grande escala. A corrupção só se combate eficazmente quando o indivíduo reconhece que o mal está dentro de si próprio. Mas como será possível alcançar este objectivo se apenas se promove o auto-endeusamento?


Esta crescente idolatria pelos centros de rejuvenescimento, relaxamento e anti-stresse é psiquicamente estéril. A fecundidade está no acto de nos questionarmos quanto ao que está certo e se, porventura, nos teremos equivocado; a fecundidade está na reflexão pessoal e no desejo de enriquecer as nossas qualidades humanas. Não é possível melhorarmos enquanto país se não melhorarmos enquanto pessoas. E este elemento de mudança não está ao alcance de nenhum governo.


Um país para ser verdadeiramente livre e próspero terá de fomentar a autocrítica e o pensamento, defender uma consciência moral, assumir que existe um bem-comum e que todos nós somos responsáveis pela sua conquista. Devido à constante correria é provável que hajam muitas pessoas que nem sequer tenham consciência disso. É preciso travar esta agitação febril para as soluções fáceis, penetrando na raiz do problema. Pior do que termos uma praga de “spas” é entronizarmos a decrepitude e entregarmo-nos submissos à época viciosa em que vivemos.

Culture of Vice - by Robert R. Reilly

by Robert R. Reilly

In CERC

In The Ethics Aristotle wrote, "men start revolutionary changes for reasons connected with their private lives." This is also true when revolutionary changes are cultural.

Bob Dole's attack on Hollywood, Bill Clinton's defense of partial-birth abortions, and Congress's deliberations on the Defense of Marriage Act all clearly indicate that the culture war is alive and well. But why is there a culture war and what is at stake in it?

In The Ethics Aristotle wrote, "men start revolutionary changes for reasons connected with their private lives." This is also true when revolutionary changes are cultural. What might these "private" reasons be, and why do they become public in the form of revolutionary changes? The answer to these questions lies in the intimate psychology of moral failure.

For any individual, moral failure is hard to live with because of the rebuke of conscience. Habitual moral failure, what used to be called vice, can be lived with only by obliterating conscience through rationalization. When we rationalize, we convince ourselves that heretofore forbidden desires are permissible. We advance the reality of the desires over the reality of the moral order to which the desires should be subordinated. In our minds we replace the reality of moral order with something more congenial to the activity we are excusing. In short, we assert that bad is good.

It is often difficult to detect rationalizations when one is living directly under their influence, and so historical examples are useful. One of the clearest was offered at the Nuremberg trials by Dr. Karl Brandt, who had been in charge of the Nazi regime's Aktion T-4 euthanasia program. He said in his defense: "...when I said 'yes' to euthanasia I did so with the deepest conviction, just as it is my conviction today, that it was right. Death can mean deliverance. Death is life."

Unlike Dr. Brandt, most people recover from their rationalizations when remorse and reality set back in. But when morally disordered acts become the defining centerpiece of one's life, vice can permanently pervert reason. Entrenched moral aberrations then impel people to rationalize vice not only to themselves but to others as well. Thus rationalizations become an engine for revolutionary change that will affect society as a whole.

The power of rationalization drives the culture war, gives it its particular revolutionary character, and makes its advocates indefatigable. It may draw its energy from desperation, but it is all the more powerful for that. Since failed rationalization means self-recrimination, it must be avoided at all cost. For this reason, the differences over which the culture war is being fought are not subject to reasoned discourse. Persons protecting themselves by rationalizing are interested not in finding the truth, but in maintaining the illusion that allows them to continue their behavior. For them to succeed in this, everyone must accede to their rationalization. This is why revolutionary change is required. The necessity for self-justification requires the complicity of the whole culture. Holdouts cannot be tolerated because they are potential rebukes. The self-hatred, anger, and guilt that a person possessed of a functioning conscience would normally feel from doing wrong are redirected by the rationalization and projected upon society as a whole (if the society is healthy), or upon those in society who do not accept the rationalization.

According to Dr. Jack Kevorkian, for example, all those reluctant to participate in his rationalization for killing people (including, it turns out, some who are not even ill) are the real problem; the judicial system is "corrupt," the medical profession is "insane," and the press is "meretricious." Of the coroner who found nothing medically wrong with several of his victims, Dr. Kevorkian said that he is a "liar and a fanatical religious nut."

The homosexual movement's rationalization is far more widely advanced in its claims. According to Jeffrey Levi, former executive director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, "We (homosexuals) are no longer seeking just a right to privacy and a right to protection from wrong. We have a right – as heterosexuals have already – to see government and society affirm our lives." Since only the act of sodomy differentiates an active homosexual from a heterosexual, homosexuals want "government and society" to affirm that sodomy is morally equivalent to the marital act. "Coming out of the closet" can only mean an assent on the level of moral principle to what would otherwise be considered morally disordered.

And so it must be. If you are going to center your public life on the private act of sodomy, you had better transform sodomy into a highly moral act. If sodomy is a moral disorder, it cannot be legitimately advanced on the legal or civil level. On the other hand, if it is a highly moral act, it should serve as the basis for marriage, family (adoption), and community. As a moral act, sodomy should be normative. If it is normative, it should be taught in our schools as a standard. In fact, homosexuality should be hieratic: active homosexuals should be ordained as priests. All of this is happening. It was predictable. The homosexual cause moved naturally from a plea for tolerance to cultural conquest. How successful that conquest has been can be seen in the poverty of the rhetoric of its opponents. In supporting the Defense of Marriage Act, the best one congressman could do was to say, "America is not yet ready for homosexual marriage," as if we simply need a decent interval to adjust ourselves to its inevitable arrival.

The homosexual rationalization is so successful that even the campaign against AIDS is part of it, with its message that "everyone is at risk." If everyone is at risk, the disease cannot be related to specific behavior. Yet homosexual acts are the single greatest risk factor in catching AIDS. This unpleasant fact invites unwelcome attention to the nature of homosexual acts, so it must be ignored.

The movement for abortion is equally expansive in its claims upon society. The internal logic of abortion requires the spread of death from the unborn to the nearly born, and then to the infirm and otherwise burdensome individuals. The very psychology of rationalization also pushes those involved with abortion to spread the application of its principles in order to multiply the sources of support for it.

If you are going to kill innocent persons you had better convince yourself and others that is "right," that you do it out of compassion. Thus, Beverly Harrison, a professor of Christian ethics at Union Theological Seminary, contends that abortion is a "positive good," and even a "loving choice." Jungian analyst Ginette Paris thinks it is even more. In her book, The Sacrament of Abortion, she calls for "new rituals as well as laws to restore to abortion its sacred dimension." Defending the right to partial-birth abortions during the recent U.S. Senate debate, Senator Barbara Boxer assure her colleagues that mothers who have aborted their children by this means "buried those babies with love." If abortion is love, then, indeed, as Dr. Brandt said, "Death is life."

Abortion is the ultimate in the larger rationalization of the sexual revolution: if sex is only a form or amusement or self-realization (as it must be when divorced from the moral order), why should the generation of a child stand in the way of it, or penalize its fulfillment? The life of the child is a physical and moral rebuke to this proposition. But the child is too weak to overcome the power of the rationalization. The virtual reality of the rationalization is stronger than the actual reality of the child. The child succumbs to the rationalization and is killed in a new "sacrament."

With over 35 million abortions performed since 1973, the investment in the denial of the evil of abortion has become tremendous. Anyone who has witnessed the eruption of grief and horror (often coming many years after the event) in a woman confronting for the first time the nature of what she has done in an abortion knows the lengths to which people must go to prevent its occurrence.

Thus the changing attitudes toward abortion can be directly traced to the growing number of people, including fathers, doctors, and nurses, with the need to justify it. As reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the number of people who think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances has declined from 21 per cent in 1975 to only 15 per cent in 1995. The proportion who support abortion in all circumstances has increased from 21 per cent to 33 per cent in the same period. This change has taken place not because pro-abortionists are winning arguments, but because of the enormous increase in the number of those with a personal, psychological need to deny what abortion is.

Controversies about life, generation, and death are decisive for the fate of any civilization. A society can withstand any number of persons who try to advance their own moral disorders as public policy. But it cannot survive once it adopts the justification for those moral disorders as its own. This is what is at stake in the culture war.

Getting Serious About Pornography

Imagine a drug so powerful it can destroy a family simply by distorting a man’s perception of his wife. Picture an addiction so lethal it has the potential to render an entire generation incapable of forming lasting marriages and so widespread that it produces more annual revenue — $97 billion worldwide in 2006 — than all of the leading technology companies combined. Consider a narcotic so insidious that it evades serious scientific study and legislative action for decades, thriving instead under the ever-expanding banner of the First Amendment.

According to an online statistics firm, an estimated 40 million people use this drug on a regular basis. It doesn’t come in pill form. It can’t be smoked, injected, or snorted. And yet neurological data suggest its effects on the brain are strikingly similar to those of synthetic drugs. Indeed, two authorities on the neurochemistry of addiction, Harvey Milkman and Stanley Sunderwirth, claim it is the ability of this drug to influence all three pleasure systems in the brain — arousal, satiation, and fantasy — that makes it “the pièce de résistance among the addictions.” Read more