Ed Hynes, one of Morality In Media's (MIM) two regular columnists, has ventured forth once again to bash the adult entertainment industry in his latest edition of "The View From Riverside Drive" on MIM's website (www.moralityinmedia.org) – this time by finding one of the few (alleged) members of the European Parliament who opposes adult videos and prostitution.
That "member" is Marianne Eriksson, but while her profile appears on a page of the "Confederal Group of the European United Left - Nordic Green Left" (GUE/NGL), she is not listed on their members page, nor does her name appear in the list of members of the GUE/NGL's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality. It is a puzzlement.
In any case, two members who do appear on the GUE/NGL member page, Eva-Britt Svensson and Jonas Sjostedt, both from Sweden, have apparently endorsed the report – not so strange, since of all the members of the European Union, only Sweden and Ireland have made prostitution illegal. And while pimping is illegal in most, and brothels are illegal in a few, the EU's other members – Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom – all have legalized prostitution itself.
As Hynes notes, the European Parliament in fact rejected Eriksson's 2002 report, although the body recently came out against "trafficking in human beings, particularly of women and children for sexual purposes" – a stance Hynes finds (and Eriksson would agree) hypocritical, since both are of the (incorrect) opinion that most European prostitutes are unwilling, trafficked women.
Though plenty of prostitutes in Europe do come from other countries, including many from the former Eastern bloc, the vast majority traveled willingly to their new countries, and since prostitution has never had the same stigma in Europe that it has had in the U.S., that profession is one that many have legitimately chosen as a livelihood. In fact, there are several prostitutes' unions around the world, which send delegates to regular meetings of the International Conference on Prostitution (ICOP).
ICOP met at Cal State – Northridge in '96, but likely won't be meeting there again due to suspicious visa problems suffered by several delegates trying to enter the U.S., plus the fact that when one of the more conservative members of the California Assembly heard (belatedly) about the conference, he ordered an audit of the funding for the Institute for Sex Research, the university department that had hosted the conference. (The audit, of course, found no irregularities.)
But Hynes' main problem with all this is that while the Swedes and the Irish were quick to condemn the rampant prostitution taking place at the World Cup Soccer tournament in Germany – there were even small "performance boxes" installed near the games specifically to accommodate sexual liaisons on the fly – they never mentioned anything about the scourge of pornography. Perhaps that's because porn is legal in every EU country except Ireland.
Hynes' column also claims that "Scientists have found that pornography triggers an addicting chemical response in the brain similar to the effect caused by tobacco and certain other substances, such as heroin and cocaine," and that anyone who claims that these "erototoxins" are a crock of shit (which they are, except in the sense that all pleasurable experiences generate natural endorphins in the brain) are "tied to the porn industry, in the same way that apologists for tobacco were tied to the tobacco industry during their doomed struggle to deny the evidence against tobacco and to deal with the slow build-up of popular awareness and anti-tobacco attitudes."
FYI, Ed, there are just a couple of differences between porn and tobacco: 1) porn isn't addictive, no matter how much MIM wishes it were, and no matter how many "cure centers" have opened up to detox "addicts"; and 2) while tobacco products, which do contain addictive substances, are subject to some regulation by Congress as well as the Food and Drug Administration, sexually explicit material is completely legal under the First Amendment unless any particular example is found to be obscene by a jury. (Such a finding would be unconstitutional, of course, but we've written about that aspect elsewhere.)
Hynes attempts to take attorney Paul Cambria – who, Hynes notes, "is not known to be qualified in any of the physical sciences" – to task for his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in early April, where Cambria noted (correctly) that, "There are individuals who are going to react abnormally to normal material, but it's not a problem for the average person. Some people lie about it. It's their way of excusing personally unacceptable conduct – 'It wasn't me, it was porn.'"
And who does Hynes cite to "rebut" Cambria's point? Dr. Judith Reisman, who also "is not known to be qualified in any of the physical sciences" – her doctorate is in communications – and Dr. Mary Anne Layden, a psychiatrist – also "not known to be qualified in any of the physical sciences"!
Reisman is the inventor of the "erotoxin" concept, which she expounded upon at a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing in 2004, while Layden testified at that same hearing that "belief" in pornography leads to beliefs that, for example, "Sex is not about intimacy, procreation or marriage. Sex is about predatory self-gratification, casual recreation, body parts, violence, feces, strangers, children, animals and using women as entertainment."
Feces? Animals? Children? What porn has she been watching?
"There is one notable point of difference between the tobacco wars and the pornography wars," Hynes claims. "The sale of tobacco is legal for adults. Persons who distribute hardcore pornography, on the other hand - despite what the porn defenders would have you believe - can be prosecuted under federal and state obscenity laws. That is true not just of pornography depicting children but also of pornography showing adults - even "consenting adults" - engaged in hardcore sex acts."
Actually, nobody in the adult industry has claimed that "[p]ersons who distribute hardcore pornography" can't be prosecuted, as recent actions by state and federal governments have shown. What they generally can't be is convicted, since most adults now recognize that sexually explicit material is of no harm to them or their communities. Perhaps that's why Hynes, in recounting what it takes for a work to be found obscene – "must depict hardcore sexual conduct in a patently offensive manner and, when taken as a whole, must appeal to the prurient interest in sex and lack serious literary, artistic, scientific or political value" – left out the part about offending community standards.
"Hardcore pornography is readily available in our culture today," Hynes states, but screws up when he continues with, "This is so not because obscene 'adult pornography' is legal - it is not - but because federal and state obscenity laws have not been enforced as they should be."
Perhaps Hynes should read some Supreme Court decisions that have recognized that the vast majority of sexually explicit materials are legal.
And what would an anti-porn polemic be without reference to child porn?
"Attorney General Gonzalez [sic] said recently, 'It is not an exaggeration to say that we are in the midst of an epidemic in the production and trafficking of movies and images depicting the sexual abuse of children.' That is happening in part because it is no longer just 'classic pedophiles' who are preying on children. In their addiction to pornography, 'normal' adults are progressing from so-called 'mainstream' hardcore pornography to more deviant forms of hardcore pornography, including that which depicts minors. It's what porn addicts do."
That's so cute! Notice that he doesn't say that "'normal' adults are progressing from so-called 'mainstream' hardcore pornography to more deviant forms of hardcore pornography, including that which includes minors"; what he's talking about are videos that feature young-looking adults.
But no, Hynes blusters on about various child porn busts, and how Hollywood seems infatuated with the concept of "pimping," even giving an Oscar to "It's Hard For a Pimp."
"Is it possible Hollywood, too, just doesn't get it?" Hynes asks.
Well, somebody doesn't get it. Wonder who that could be?
