The Problem of Pornography
PORNOGRAPHY is the portrayal of behavior designed to cause sexual excitement. The word comes from the Greek pornográphos, which literally means ‘harlot writing’ or ‘the writing of prostitutes.’ So books, magazines, pictures or films that pander to base sexual appetites are considered pornographic.
Some argue that pornography should be outlawed, since it is associated with immorality. Others maintain that pornography is not obscene or immoral in their own minds, and so consider any restrictions an infringement of personal freedom.
In the United States, as elsewhere, there has been much confusion over the matter. Earl Warren, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, once said: “In all my years of service on the Supreme Court, the subject of obscenity and how to deal with it has given me the most difficulty.”
Recent Trend
How widespread has the tide of pornography become? In the United States, Cincinnati lawyer Charles Keating, Jr., stated: “The spread of pornography has reached epidemic proportions in our country.”
Writing in McCall’s magazine, Myra Mannes declared: “We have, in short, now reached a state in our society when anything goes, where all is permitted, and where no limits are placed on the appetites of the individual, on the gratification of his desires and fantasies.”
Not only has there been a great increase in the number of pornographic publications available at bookstores and elsewhere, but a flood of such material has been sent through the mail. As an example, an eleven-year-old received an unsolicited advertisement in the mail displaying twenty-six detailed pornographic poses.
There has also been a huge increase in pornographic films, plays and ‘peep shows.’ These feature nudity, suggested or actual fornication, lesbianism, homosexuality and masochism.
Even films and plays for general audiences are becoming more open in their display of nudity and suggested sexual acts. For example, the following comments are from movie advertisements in the relatively conservative New York Times on just one day taken at random, October 16, 1970:
“Preoccupied by the way nude bodies and sexual acts look when photographed sideways, in zoomy long shots, in roving close-ups.”
“Body to body is the name of the game.”
“Erotica—exotica—psychotica.”
“Co-ed orgy baths! . . . The ‘with-it’ sex highs!”
“Straight sex, boisterous carnality.”
“Icy sexuality, perversity in full bloom.”
In the same day’s paper were advertisements for stage plays with suggestive comments, four of them featuring pictures of partially and, to the reader, totally nude men and women.
Court Decisions
In 1957 the United States Supreme Court ruled against obscene literature, defining it in this way: “Obscene material deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest.” The word “prurient” means to long for, or to be characterized by lascivious thought.
In the following few years, there were several convictions in prominent cases. But then in 1967 the Supreme Court reversed obscenity convictions in twenty-two cases in thirteen states. The reversal was based on the idea that the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution protected such material.
In 1968 the Supreme Court considered a New York law valid when it prohibited the sale of obscene materials to persons under seventeen years of age. However, this was taken as an open invitation by publishers of pornographic material to concentrate on the adult market. Hence the many slogans: “FOR ADULTS ONLY.”
A landmark case was decided late in 1968. It concerned a Swedish film that abounded in scenes of nudity and sexual intercourse. A New York federal court jury declared the film obscene, and barred its importation. But a United States Court of Appeals overruled the jury decision, and the film was widely shown throughout the country.
This ruling was based on the 1957 definition of what was considered “prurient.” Part of that 1957 decision included the thought that pornography was not protected under the Constitution because it lacked “redeeming social importance.” But the appeals court considered the Swedish film to have some “redeeming social importance.” So now publishers of pornographic material often make it a point to claim that their material has some “redeeming social importance.”
In Denmark all prohibitions against written pornography were repealed by law in June of 1967. Prohibitions against pornographic pictures disappeared in July of 1969. About the only restrictions left apply to barring the sale of such material to children under sixteen and forbidding offensive window displays.
A similar legalizing has been proposed in the United States by a commission created by Congress and appointed by the former president. In its report issued at the end of September 1970, a majority of the commission recommended eliminating all legal restrictions on pornography for adults.
Many condemned the report. But it did demonstrate a trend. Senator Robert C. Byrd stated: “This outrageously permissive commission shows how far this nation has traveled down the road of moral decadence.”
What Effect?
Some who favor the distribution of pornography claim that this will have no harmful effect on public morals. The President’s Commission on pornography also contended that there was no evidence that pornography is harmful. Yet, its report admitted the following:
“This is not to say that exposure to explicit sexual materials has no effect upon human behavior. A prominent effect of exposure to sexual materials is that persons tend to talk more about sex as a result of seeing such materials. In addition, many persons become temporarily sexually aroused upon viewing explicit sexual materials and the frequency of their sexual activity may, in consequence, increase for short periods.”
But what about the continued bombardment of all forms of pornography over a period of time? The consequences are far more damaging than the above report suggests. Commenting on this, Dr. Natalie Shainess, member of a New York psychiatric institute, said:
“In advertisements, films and books, pornography washes over us like a great wave of sewage. It corrupts the body, and numbs the mind and senses. So overwhelming is this tide that nobody—not myself, a practicing psychoanalyst—can remain untouched by it.
“From my own professional practice, I know that the more we are exposed to things that are degrading, the more we are degraded. . . .
“With this lowering of self-control, in and out of marriage, the weaker or anti-social individual who cannot get sex when and where he needs it will take it when and where he pleases—by any means. In this sense, pornography is likely to lead to increased sex crimes.”
Law enforcement officials strongly agree with that analysis. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s J. Edgar Hoover blamed the spread of pornography for much of the alarming increase in crimes of sex violence. He said: “Such filth in the hands of young people and curious adolescents does untold damage and leads to disastrous consequences.”
Detroit police inspector Herbert Case stated: “There has not been a sex murder in the history of our department in which the killer was not an avid reader of lewd magazines.” Chicago police superintendent O. W. Wilson said: “Sexual arousals from obscene literature have been responsible for criminal behavior from vicious assaults to homicide.” And Postmaster General Winton M. Blount called its spread the “commercial degradation of the human spirit,” and said that “pornography is a threat to the best interests of our children.”
In England’s famous ‘Moors Trial,’ a husband and wife were convicted of torturing, sexually abusing and murdering three young children and burying the bodies on the moors. They were both ardent readers of the Marquis de Sade’s perverted literature and owned much pornographic material. One reporter doubted that these murders would have been committed if the couple had not had free access to such literature.
Also, pornography encourages permissive sexual behavior that leads to venereal disease. Dr. Murray Elkins of New York’s Queens County Medical Society declared: “I think it’s time the doctors should face up to the health aspect of pornography and smut and do something about it. Pornography stimulates promiscuity which, in turn, is an important factor in the increase of the venereal disease rate.” And venereal disease is spreading rapidly nearly everywhere in the world, including Denmark.
Harmful Attitudes
The reading of pornography leads to unhealthy, damaging attitudes on sex and marriage, since it is separated from moral teaching. In England’s Guardian Weekly of September 19, 1970, child psychiatrist Louise W. Eickhoff stated:
“Sex indoctrination, far from leading to greater stability in marriage has led to increased sexual dissatisfaction, interchange of marital partners, and sexual excesses.
“Sex education, apart from parents, in school is dangerous, for it destroys the inbuilt natural safety devices of personal, private, intimate, love connection that protect the individual from society, from evil and harm.”
While these comments were particularly directed at sex education in school, they are even more valid in connection with learning about sex from pornographic material.
Also, Dana L. Farnsworth, Harvard University’s director of health services, observed:
“Most college psychiatrists have come to the conclusion that the students who ignore sexual standards are not more happy or effective than students who observe those standards; they are, in fact, the ones most afflicted with depression, anxiety, a tendency toward acting-out behavior, and loss of self-esteem. Although sexual restrictions can and do produce emotional disorders, complete sexual freedom produces even more disabling conflicts.”
Thus when sex is taken out of its proper place, mental, moral and even physical degradation result. This is so because true happiness in the use of sex organs can result only within the bounds that their Creator, Jehovah God, purposed. That boundary is in marriage, and marriage alone. Sexual relations should be between husband and wife only, and man’s Creator considers that union sacred.—Heb. 13:4.
Pornography treats something sacred in a loveless and degrading way. It stresses personal gratification, not the unselfish love needed for happy marriage. In this regard California District Attorney Cecil Hicks said: “I’m afraid that by having these shows and books and films, even without letting kids see them, you give young people the idea that sex of any kind is available anywhere at anytime with anyone. Do that and you eventually destroy the family unit as we know it—and the family unit is the basic unit of our civilization.”
Historians agree with Arnold Toynbee’s analysis that the spread of obscenity is an unfailing symptom of a civilization’s breakdown. That breakdown is proceeding world wide. It becomes more obvious each year as a growing wave of mental pollution flows across stage, screen and literature.
Protect Loved Ones
One way to protect your loved ones from this polluting flood is by taking pains to see that they get the least exposure possible to such literature, films or plays. Explain to your children its harmful effects, and at the same time teach them to have a healthy respect for marriage and its privileges.
Even more important is the regular taking into the mind of that which is truly upbuilding. It is only by fortifying the mind with what is wholesome and right that one can withstand the assaults of this world’s filth. That is why Jehovah’s witnesses spend so much time with their families studying the highest standards of morality, those of the Creator of man, found in his Word the Bible. “All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness.” (2 Tim. 3:16) Never was there more of a need for this discipline.
Without such guidance on the family level, young ones especially will be exposed to the hurricane-force winds of corruption blowing today. So protect yourself and your loved ones from the rising tide of pornography, for it is degrading and God-dishonoring, perverting what He has created sacred.