children accessing porn; adults turning off filterware

[Byron C. Mayes]

On Wed, 9 Jul 1997, brian stone wrote:

> Dianne,
> 
> You make some good points. This problem is primarily a guy thing.
> Perhaps that is why you understate it. This is not just an issue of
> young boys driving their parents crazy. If we allow all children access
> to pornography, some will not be damaged, but others will. How many kids
> should be sacrifice to this problem?  Should we make heroin legal
> because only a small percentage of the population will abuse it? It may
> be small, but it will be larger than it is now. You may think that this
> is not a valid comparison but both pornography and heroine can lead to
> addictions that can ruin peoples lives.

It's not a valid comparison, but it has nothing to do with the potential for
damage. Tobacco, alcohol, gambling, airplane glue (yes, it's still
available), and a host of over-the-counter "remedies" are legal and can lead
to addictions that can ruin lives as well (not that it's the Fed's place to
be telling any adult that he or she can't make a conscious choice to ruin
his or her own life -- or more accurately, take a conscious risk of doing so
-- but that's another argument for an entirely different list). 

The difference is that heroin and other "illicit" drugs are denied to the
population as a whole, without regard to age or intellectual/emotional
capacity. Porno is only denied to children (on a large scale) and even then
there are often loopholes tied to parenthood (the Supreme Court practically
said in Reno v. ACLU that a parent could allow access to porno for his/her
child if he/she wanted).

Personally, I think I had the best "filter" available when I was growing up
and it hasn't been beaten by technology yet. It was called "mommy & daddy"
and it worked on the television and radio and in the record stores and book
shops as well as in the home. If something deemed inappropriate for *ME*
(and only me) by *MY PARENTS* (and only my parents) came up on TV, the
channel was switched or the TV turned off. I knew where to get "dirty"
magazines, but I didn't dare becaues I knew in no uncertain terms what would
happen if they were found. I'm sure if we'd had Netscape or
MSIE back then, the cmd-Q for Quit would have been pressed just as quickly
if I stumbled on something by accident. And it better have been by accident.

Mr. Stone writes:

[snip]
> If the kids are damaged, it is our fault.

To which I say, "Hear, hear!" I only wonder why, with all the hype
surrounding Internet porn (and presumably violence and revisionist history
and hate mongering as well, but somehow these don't seem to raise anyone's
ire nearly as much as the idea of two people having fun or <gasp!>
expressing love with their bodies ... Not *that's* social commentary for
ya!), why are there *any* kids surfing the 'net unsupervised?

Is that someone else's job?

Byron

 Byron C. Mayes                            **         Generic Haiku...
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