'Porn causes more pain than pleasure'
The Literary & Historical Society (L&H) has sponsored debates at University College, Dublin (UCD) since the L&H was founded in 1855. Distinguished past speakers have included author James Joyce (1886-1941), poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), and statesman Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891). Every President and Prime Minister of the Irish Republic has addressed the L&H.For the opening of the L&H's 146th season of debates, the Society chose the motion, "This House believes 'Porn causes more pain than pleasure.' " Supporting the motion were Dr. Marie Murray, a clinical psychiatrist at St. Vincent's Hospital, Dublin, and a frequent commentator on media effects issues in Ireland; Mr. James Ridge, the chairman of Ireland's Publications Censorship Board; and a victim of pornography, Mr. David McCoy of Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
To strengthen the crowd appeal, the L&H brought in a British "model," one Wendy Taylor, and Paul J. McGeady, Director of MIM's National Obscenity Law Center, who travelled 3000 miles to speak for his allotted eight minutes.
Paul Brady, the auditor (or president) of the L&H, invited MIM to speak after observing the wealth of information on the topic on MIM's Web site. Mr. McGeady, whose ancestors hail from Dunlewy, Co. Donegal, Ireland, accepted the invitation on MIM's behalf.
The plan to draw a crowd succeeded. More than 300 UCD students packed Lecture Hall M in the University's Arts & Sciences Building on a Friday night to participate in the debate.
"Participate" is the correct verb. Following ancient tradition, anyone in the hall could stand up and call out "Point of information!" and query the speaker to clarify the point or make a sharp comment. To open the debate, one student made a speech to move the motion, another made a speech to second the motion, and a third spoke to oppose the motion. Shouts of "Point of information!" rang out like mortar shells right and left. Speakers could refuse to answer any request, and the first and last minutes of their alloted seven minutes were "protected time." But some speakers riposted comments on their feet with no other weapons than a sharp mind and a quick tongue.
Dr. Marie Murray, the first guest speaker in favor of the motion, told the students that porn is the abuse of all of us for the profit of the pornographers. As a working psychiatrist, she had seen first-hand the pain that porn causes, she said. A society sexually abuses its citizens if it does not defend them against porn, she said.
I have felt the tears of the victims of pornography, Dr. Murray said. As a wife, a mother, a psychiatrist, and a UCD graduate, please consider what you are doing and support the motion, she said.
Mr. James Ridge, chairman of Ireland's print censorship board, explained the procedure of the board in enforcing the country's censorship acts. He also noted that, worldwide, the porn trade is a twenty billion dollar business, and impoverished persons all over the world, particularly in eastern Europe, were being exploited wholesale by the porn trade. Budapest, Hungary, is now the capital of porn production in Europe, he said.
Mr. McGeady said that he needed to clear up some misconceptions. First, some people have said tonight that pornography is a matter of "free speech." This is nonsense -- obscenity is outside the framework of "freedom of speech" -- it has nothing to do with the exchange of ideas, Mr. McGeady said.
Second, he said, to those who bring up the question of morality, all laws are based on some kind of morality; obscenity and indecency laws are no different.
The available evidence, Mr. McGeady concluded, indicates that production and consumption of pornography causes grave harm to society and to individuals -- harms to the soul, to personal morality and chastity, to public morality, to marriage, to children, to those who perform in porn films and nude dance clubs, and to innocent persons criminally assaulted and murdered by those stimulated by porn.
(NOTE: Mr. McGeady's complete remarks, prepared for this debate, can be found here in our Porn's Effects section.)
Then guest Wendy Taylor was introduced. Dressed in a comparatively demure black pantsuit, Miss Taylor opposed the motion by reciting a list of cliches about "consenting adults" and "protection of children" and "freedom of speech."
Auditor Paul Brady then introduced the final guest, David McCoy of County Wicklow, Ireland. McCoy said he just wanted to tell the story of what happened to his family.
Like many Irish over the years, my wife and four children and I emigrated from Ireland in search of a better life, McCoy said. We moved to a little town in southern Alberta, Canada. Life was good and we liked Canada. In 1990 we had our fifth child, and two years later we bought a franchise for a convenience store in our little town, he said.
All that changed on 7 November 1994, he said. My wife, as usual, opened the store at 6 a.m., and stayed until 1 p.m. to meet the kids coming home from school. She returned to the store at 9 p.m. and stayed until closing, he said.
At 11:40 that night, 20 minutes before closing, a man came into the store, put a gun to my wife's head, raped her, beat her, and stole the day's takings. He then took her out of town and shot her to death at point blank range, McCoy said.
Her body wasn't found for two days. At first, the police suspected me, McCoy said, but three weeks after the murder, the killer attempted another murder, this time at a hair salon. He put a gun to a woman's head, demanded the takings, then raped the woman in front of her mother. He didn't have the guts to kill her in front of her mother, so he fled.
The police arrested the man three days later. It turned out the murderer was a 19 year old who came from the same town as us, McCoy said. When the police searched his apartment after his arrest, they found it filled with porn videos and porn magazines. The murderer had phone sex bills totalling thousands of dollars. He committed the robberies to pay for prostitutes, McCoy said.
He was acting out what he saw in the videos, McCoy said. He didn't care about his victims -- he just wanted his kicks. The police told me he was on his way to becoming a serial killer, McCoy said.
Porn killed my wife -- no doubt about it. I have five kids -- porn killed their souls. And what's worst -- they never got a chance to say goodbye to their mother, McCoy concluded.
Three hundred raucous students were pin-drop silent. Nobody dared to make a point of information. Later, an L&H committeeman told me, "We've had presidents and prime ministers speak here. We've never been this quiet here."
The hour was late. Dispensing with the usual "division of the house," the auditor put the question to a voice vote. The ayes had it. Mr. McGeady had shown how porn causes much more pain than pleasure, and Mr. McCoy showed how another's porn-induced pain nearly wrecked his life. Scholarship and painful experience combined to win the day.
by The JavaScript Source
- the calm River Liffey flows through the middle of Dublin;
- the General Post Office, where the Irish Republic was proclaimed in 1916;
- the statute of Daniel O'Connell, the Catholic Emancipator, at the foot of the street that bears his name;
- modern art at ancient Dublin Castle;
- the Bank of Ireland, which occupies the home of Ireland's Parliament before 1800;
- art dealers on St. Stephen's Green;
- at the gates of Lenister House, Ireland's present seat of government;
- the library of Trinity College, home of the priceless Book of Kells;
- Dublin's historic Four Courts building, on the north bank of the Liffey
Site developed and maintained by L'AMb Artistic Enterprises, Inc.