Anti-porn activists claimed that pornography was both harmful and addictive during a Senate subcommittee hearing yesterday that was designed to establish a basis for Congressional financing for the research of “porn addiction.”
The testimony presented to the Senate’s Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee was from a panel of four mental health professionals. The panel argued that images affect behavior – in other words, consumers of Adult entertainment allow their behavior to be shaped by the videos that they have seen.
The experts didn't limit their disdain of adult entertainment to porn: testimony was presented warning of the dangers presented by a diverse range of adult enterainment ranging from Playboy to strippers to porn that depicts rape.
“It is toxic mis-education about sex and relationships,” Dr. Mary Ann Layden, a co-director of a sexual trauma program at the University of Pennsylvania, said of pornography during the hearing.“It is more toxic the more you consume, the ‘harder’ the variety you consume and the younger and more vulnerable the consumer.”
Dr. Judith Reisman, Ph.D, a longtime critic of sexology pioneer Alfred Kinsey and his field of study, offered her standard argument against pornography – simply put, she suggests that because the brain processes pictures in a different way than it does speech, “free speech” isn’t an issue.
“Thanks to the latest advances in neuroscience, we now know that pornographic visual images imprint and alter the brain, triggering an instant, involuntary, but lasting, biochemical memory trail, arguably, subverting the First Amendment by overriding the cognitive speech process,” Reisman argued.
Reisman, who produced an FBI training film on obscenity in the 80s, argued porn triggers, “myriad kinds of internal, natural drugs that mimic the ‘high’ from a street drug. Addiction to pornography is addiction to what I dub erototoxins – mind-altering drugs produced by the viewer’s own brain.”
Senator Sam Brownback, R-Kan., chairman of the Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee, is credited with calling the hearing, hoping that scientific evidence that adult entertainment is damaging might be a way around the First Amendment protections provided the Adult industry by the constitution.
Brownback is an outspoken right-wing Christian who has encouraged the FCC’s crackdown on indecency this year and backs a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriages.
The four “experts” invited to present testimony to the subcommittee are all frequent speakers at conservative events, with ties to organizations such as Morality in Media, the American Family Association, Focus on Family, and other anti-porn organizations.
No figures were given for the quantity of porn addicts in America, nor was there any suggestion that adult entertainment in any form was acceptable. No evidence contrary to the theme that pornography was a social was presented.
Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist who testified at the hearing, acknowledged that, “research directly assessing the impact of pornography addiction on families and communities is limited.”
Yet Satinover argued that it seems, “reasonable to expect – especially in this age of ‘cybersex’ – that the compulsive and/or obsessive use of pornography could precipitate economic and social repercussions for individual consumers, their families and coworkers, and the broader community.”
Layden attempted to skirt around the fact that there is no scientific proof that pornography was damaging to society by suggesting that likewise, there was no proof that pornography was beneficial.
“If there were a benefit, then pornography users, pornography performers, their spouses and their children would show the most benefit. Just the opposite is true,” Layden stated. “The [sic] society is awash in pornography and so in fact the data is in. If pornography made us healthy, we would be healthy by now.”
Dr. James B. Weaver III, a social psychologist who is a Communications professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, as well as a long-time anti-porn activist, also testified yesterday’s hearing.
During the hearing Brownback reportedly said that some of his friends limit the time they spend alone in hotel rooms to avoid the temptation of pay-per-view movies.
