The hysterical email below is yet another reason I can’t support the AFA.
Protect our children from obscenity; sign the petition asking candidates to enforce obscenity laws
Pornographers go after our children while elected officials refuse to enforce obscenity laws
Our children need your help! It has been reported that there are as many as 10,000,000 pornographic sites on the Internet. The average age for those first exposed to Internet obscenity is 11 and the largest consumer group is 12-17 year-olds. Nine out of ten of 8-16 year-olds have viewed pornography online. Yet, in the past 15 years, under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, there has not been a single federal prosecution of a major distributor of Internet, in-room movie, cell phone or cable TV obscenity. Not one! (There were a couple of prosecutions of small, mom and pop type pornographers.)
Whose fault is it that kids are exposed to porn? Parents. When parents do not adequately monitor their children or take precautions to protect them, those kids can be exposed to porn. It is possible for a child to do research without using the internet. (And face it, research is not, by FAR, the reason kids use the internet. They’re on Facebook and MySpace, chatting with sexual predators.) There are also a multitude of tools available to block porn. The absolute best porn blocker, of course, is a parent sitting in a chair next to the child. Or at the very least, you can keep the computer in the family room, and sit where you can glance up at the computer monitor from time to time to see what your child is doing. Failing that, there are free and low-cost tools available, and if you can afford to pay for internet, you can afford to make it safe for your kids. And yes, your child may go to another child’s home and see porn there – just like thirty years ago he might have looked at his friend’s dad’s Playboy magazine. YOU are responsible for having the kind of relationship with your child where you would learn about it, and if you are any kind of responsible adult, you’ll notify the other child’s parents. If they’re non-responsive, then don’t let your kid play at that child’s house anymore, make the child come to your house instead.
The major pornographers have no fear of prosecution. Why? Because those responsible for enforcing the law fear the pornographers more than they fear the mothers and fathers of America, and they care more about the hawkers of pornography than they do our children.
I don’t know the applicable laws, but the public airwaves are federally regulated – cable, cell phones and the internet are NOT. Nor should they be. That’s why there has never been a federal prosecution for obscenity on those types of media. Child porn is illegal all the time in this country, no matter where you see it, because it involves the abuse of a child, which is illegal. But adult porn is legal on the internet, on pay-per-view and other cable channels, and cell phones. So that argument, intended to stir people up and get them thinking that the government is out-of-bounds on this issue, is ridiculous. The government simply doesn’t have the right to prosecute obscenity in those arenas.
Our children are being robbed of their childhood by greedy pornographers and cowardly officials. Please understand that I’m not referring to trashy TV. I am referring to hardcore pornography.
I’ve made my views on porn as clear as I can. It’s harmful to men, and it batters women by proxy. But the real problem described in this email is that parents care about other things more than they care about protecting their children. Our children are being robbed of their childhood by lazy parents with low standards. Please understand that I’m not referring to parents who would be considered abusive by the state. I am referring to typical American parents who come home from work and park themselves in front of the TV, who pacify their children with media so they don’t have to pay attention to them. I am referring to parents who work themselves into exhaustion to achieve a “better” lifestyle at their children’s expense. I am referring to parents who allow their children to have a television and a computer in their bedrooms. I am referring to parents who have no idea what their children spend their time on, what music they listen to, and who their friends are.
For a description of the kind of material bombarding our children, and the kind of material officials refuse to prosecute, click here. WARNING! This description is taken straight from movies being offered in hotels, on the Internet, on cell phones and on cable TV. It is graphic and extremely offensive.
It’s titillating, too, and I can’t help but wonder if that was the point. When you click “here” you see this page -
Warning! Warning! Warning!
The following material contains word descriptions only and is extremely graphic and obscene. It is being made available so that those who are not familiar with the pornography being pushed to our children can immediately see the problem.
This warning is given so you can make a decision to continue or to return to the letter.
Click return above or click here to continue
I didn’t click through, but I’ll take them at their word that they’re graphically describing porn on the AFA website. As to “those who are not familiar with pornography,” do such people even exist? But if they do, a clinical description of the types of material would have been adequate. Such as, “on MTV, on this date, this show included above the waist nudity, and sexual actions including hands on breasts and sexual intercourse where genitals were not visible” etc. The fact is that the parents for whom this email was intended have actually had sex at least once and are presumably quite familiar with the process. We don’t need it described in detail.
Please join me in signing a petition to the presidential candidates asking each candidate to sign a pledge that if elected, they will enforce federal obscenity laws. We will notify you, the public and media of each candidate’s decision. The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that obscenity isn’t protected under the First Amendment.
No, obscenity isn’t protected. And I’m not against the concept of having existing laws enforced, but what they are complaining about isn’t illegal. And if parents did their jobs, it would be a moot point.
A family organization, especially a Christian one, ought to be emphasizing personal responsibility and calling parents, especially Christian parents, to a higher standard. Not cultivating ways to impact the political scene. Oh, and the icing on this cake? There are ads in the sidebar of the email, including this one:
American Family Filter
Strong, Internet filtering software and porn blocking technology.
This email was deceptively written, and I can’t help but wonder what the main goal was -cultivating political power, or marketing an internet filter?
Added: Case in point – this is exactly the attitude I’m talking about.
If parents “desperately need a half hour to breath” then they need to find other things in their life to downsize instead of their children.
Link to Pursuing Holiness and track back your latest and greatest here!
Trackback using Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
“If parents ‘desperately need a half hour to breath’ then they need to find other things in their life to downsize instead of their children.”
Bang! Right on the money! Amazing how far down the priority chain American parents have moved their kids.
It is silly. There are tons of software packages available to block out porn on your home computer.
John, Stan,
Do either of you have children? And does porn-blocking software block all porn?
Government cannot teach morality, only parents by example can. Lazy parents are trying to avoid their responsibility by hoping someone else can take care of their children.
Excellent take on a very important topic.
Yes, Tiffany, I have children. I raised four, to be precise. I tried to get my “half hour to breathe” when they went to sleep (or visited my parents or …). (Note, also, that it doesn’t take a perfect parent to recognize a problem. A parent — or person — who has made mistakes can see them as mistakes in hindsight. The fact that they made mistakes doesn’t invalidate their judgment that it was a mistake.)
Oh, and I doubt that porn-blocking software is 100%, but I’ve seen some that is so good that it’s bothersome. One, BSafe, blocks all sorts of stuff you might not think of, like IMDB, an internet movie database.
Thanks, Bernie!