Pornography and proof

Happy day - the scientific proof just keeps on coming in. (As they used to say in "The X-Files," The truth is out there.) Now will anyone listen?

Here is a great article which describes testimony before Congress yesterday about the effect of pornography on the human brain. According to Dr. Mary Ann Layden, who is co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology program at the University of Pennsylvania, it has much the same effect as addictive substances like heroin and crack cocaine.

Another witness, Professor James Weaver of Virginia Tech, was quoted as saying:

"We're so afraid to talk about sex in our society that we really give carte blanche to the people who are producing this kind of material."

Uh. Not exactly. There can be all kinds of talk about sex - as long as it is the right kind of talk - which means, of course, glorifying multiple partners, advocating promiscuity and lack of commitment, handing out condoms to adolescents, mocking abstinence and monogamy, nudge-nudge-wink-winking about infidelity and adultery, and generally refusing to make value judgments about the type and nature of sexual activity in the name of "tolerance," "diversity," "equality" or (worse yet, in the case of youth) "education." And of course - holding up the Holy Grail of abortion as the consummate fallback position.

What people are afraid to do, is to speak up against these messages about sex. To do so is to risk being labelled old-fashioned, Puritanistic, fundamentalistic, extremist, bigoted, discriminatory, judgmental, uncool and anti-intellectual.

But as I continue to maintain, if something is true, then it ought to be scientifically demonstrable. If pornography is destructive, then we should be able to get psychological and sociological data to that effect. Sounds to me like the evidence is starting to come in.

Call me "anti-intellectual," if you will; it's hard to argue with facts.