Free Porn Nation

As Touchstone’s Mere Comments blog links are currently inactive, I’ve taken the liberty of posting one of their issues here …

On the way to work today I saw another one of those billboards that have been bothering me of late. This one merely showed the buttocks of a woman, slightly, ever so slightly covered with the barest of a bikini bottom, backside facing the viewer. I have no idea what they were selling. Maybe a radio station or low mortgage rates.

I am not sure I understand why, other than the money motive, it is acceptable to treat women’s bodies as objects in public, why it’s ok to reinforce this degrading message to 13 and 14-year old boys as they speed down the highway sitting in their parents’ cars.

Through these public displays and through the movie rating system now in place, our society is telling teenage (and younger) boys that women are essentially sex objects and that’s not only ok, but it’s how we want them to think of women. Just look at the billboards and the sexual content of so-called “PG-13” movies.

How did we come to this mainstreaming of what used to be pornography? And, we may as well throw in the mainstreaming of what is even nowadays considered pornography. I don’t think I have been in any hotel in the past decade that doesn’t provide “adult” movies for pay, and these are (otherwise) respectable hotels.

Of course most of it comes down to money that can be made by catering to “mature” clientele (a misnomer if ever there was one). The money can be made by CEOs and their companies from a distance, and that’s what is all the more appealing. They can sell trash, indeed, toxins, without having to look at what they’re doing.

Think of it this way: how comfortable would any of these hotel CEOs be selling Hustler in the lobbies of their hotels? Let them stand behind the registration desk and say, “Would you like Debbie Does Dallas” or a copy of Hustler to take with you, sir?” It’s not only the modern porn user have the comfort of anonymity while surfing porn sites on his computer at home or watching a porn movie in a hotel room, but also the executives of these same hotels can stand behind the scenes and not be personally involved in the porn sales, but later can still count the money in the bank.

Then consider what is censored: Christmas religious messages in public schools (we now have “Jingle Elf parades” and “Winter Funfest Concerts.”) So I have to ask, what kind of country removes Nativity scenes from public parks but allows for freedom of porn such that any 13-year-old riding in a car with his parents has to either close his eyes or look at deliberately provocative billboards that tell him that essentially women are sex objects and that sex is not exclusively for marriage? Our kids dare not be exposed to the “Babe Lying in a Manger” in a public place, but naked babes must be viewed by kids wherever and whenever some man seeking to enlarge his bank account wants them to?

—James Kushiner

As I said on the eve of the election … we just keep rollin & rollin.