Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/time-to-shut-down-the-porn-industry-for-good/article/2536439
By Patrick A. Trueman
9/26/2013
Porn industry operators are in panic mode after four porn stars tested positive for HIV in less than a month. Yet HIV is only one of many health problems common to the industry.
Others include chlamydia, gonorrhea and herpes. And though these infections often leave permanent damage, they are but a small part of the devastation pornography brings.
Harms from pornography include increased demand for sexual trafficking, increased violence against women, widespread addiction, the sexual exploitation of children and a host of other debilitating problems.
Sexual trafficking has long been linked to pornography. Dr. Donna M. Hughes, a University of Delaware professor and leading human trafficking activist, notes that because women used in the production of commercial pornography in the U.S. are often subjected to unexpected violence and coercion during filming, their experiences often meet the criteria for sex trafficking. If so, it is time the U.S. Department of Justice enforced the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act against the porn studios and its producers.
The University of Pennsylvania psychologist Dr. Mary Anne Layton has warned that frequent porn consumers are developing “permission-giving beliefs” from what they see and are thus acting out the violence so commonly depicted in porn movies. Pornography makes violence sexy.
Addiction to pornography is an overwhelming problem. On average, addicts will have encountered porn at a young age and begun regularly consuming it in their teens. By early adulthood, they will have moved to edgier, more taboo material in order to maintain excitement.
Psychiatrist Norman Doidge describes this slide to deviance in his best selling book, “The Brain that Changes Itself,” noting that pornography, by offering an endless harem of sexual objects, hyperactivates an appetite system in the brain that demands constant attention.
There is also the growing problem of child pornography that must be considered. Law enforcement officials who work child pornography cases often note that many adult porn users eventually move to child porn to satisfy a powerful desire for harder and more deviant material.
Perhaps this is a result of the brain hyperactivity described by Doidge but the adult-to-child-porn connection should not be ignored. Child pornography is an explosive problem in society.
Children are harmed in another way, too. In today’s Internet age, they have easy access to pornography and a porn industry all to willing to feed it to them. This volatile combination leads children to seek out porn at younger ages than ever before and it is affecting them negatively.
Pediatrics professor Dr. Sharon Cooper of the University of North Carolina warns of the damage to the pre-frontal cortex of the developing brains of children caused by regular porn consumption.
The pre-frontal cortex, she notes, is the home of good judgment, common sense, impulse control, and emotion. We are beginning to see those damaging effects. A recent report from the United Kingdom indicated that pornography has turned more than 4,500 British children — some of them as young as five — into sexual offenders.
Pornography is causing an untreated pandemic of harm and we have hardly begun to deal with the consequences. Yet, federal laws that could halt the harm remain dormant due to the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, who refuses to allow these laws to be used, despite demands from many in Congress and the public.
Currently, it is a violation of federal law to distribute hardcore or “obscene” pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops, through the mail, and by common carrier such as Federal Express. Imagine what a different country we would have if these laws were vigorously enforced.
