A View from Riverside Drive

Commentary by Ed Hynes
July/August 2003 issue

Sexual offender registries top 386,000

More than 386,000 convicted sex offenders were listed by February 2001 on registries maintained by all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the latest statistics available from the Justice Department. Their names, addresses and photographs are available on web sites maintained by many of the states. The sex offender registries are intended to warn people if one of their neighbors may be a sexual predator. That goal was given the priority it deserves in March when the United States Supreme Court came down on the side of public safety and decided the sites do not unconstitutionally punish the sex offenders twice.

A story out of South Charleston, West Virginia, the other day illustrates the nature of the sexual predator threat. The Associated Press reported police had arrested a 37-year-old man suspected of posing as a security guard in a Target store to sexually assault an 11-year-old girl who had wandered away from her mother. Police were investigating the possibility that the man was involved in a similar incident a few days earlier at a Wal-Mart store in Ashland, Kentucky, where a man posed as a security guard to gain the confidence of an unsuspecting 9-year-old girl before assaulting her. This girl also had wandered away from her mother.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale reported in January that an 11-year-old boy had been charged with sexually assaulting three younger boys for more than a year, and that his mother said the 11-year-old learned the behavior from a pornographic movie he watched three years earlier with a group of little girls. She did not know where he got the movie.

An expert from the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire told the paper, "That's a typical way for children to learn sexual behavior."

Arresting an 11-year-old boy is one thing. The boy needs attention and may learn from his involuntary exposure to the law. But what about going after the porn distributors who are flooding the country with morally corrupting movies?

You might think that the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in June has put an end to the heated wrangling over pornography filters on computers in public libraries. The decision upholds the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which was Congress's third attempt to shield children from pornography on the Internet. The Act requires public libraries to use porn filters as a condition of federal support, and provides that adult library patrons may have the filters turned off for a legitimate reason during their use of a computer. Who could object? Well, there's the American Library Association, which brought the suit to have the law declared unconstitutional.

In a news release immediately following the decision, the ALA "expressed disappointment" and said, "We expect libraries that decide they must accept filters to inform their patrons how easily the filters can be turned off... Justice Kennedy's opinion requires that filtering companies create filters that can be immediately and easily dismantled to meet the information needs of library users... [The ALA] again calls for full disclosure of what sites filtering companies are blocking, who is deciding what is filtered and what criteria are being used. Findings of fact clearly show that filtering companies are not following legal definitions of 'harmful to minors' and 'obscenity.' Their practices must change... Library users must be able to see what sites are being blocked and, if needed, be able to request the filter be disabled with the least intrusion into their privacy and the least burden on library service."

The road ahead may be as bumpy as the one just traveled.

Software maker Symantec Corp. says a survey it sponsored reveals that more than 80% of children who use e-mail receive "inappropriate spam on a daily basis... half of the kids surveyed reported feeling uncomfortable and offended when seeing improper e-mail content... Parents need to educate their children about the dangers."

There was no mention of the need to enforce the obscenity laws to go after the porn producers who cause the danger. Just let the parents do their job. Otherwise smart people have been saying that for years and the Internet just gets more dangerous.

A study by the Heritage Foundation has found that sexually active teenagers are "significantly less likely to be happy and more likely to feel depressed" than "teens who are not sexually active." The study also found that sexually active teenagers "are significantly more likely to attempt suicide" than "teens who are not sexually active."

Study findings were released June 3. Data used in the study were taken from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, Wave II, 1996, which was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and 17 other federal agencies.

In addition to the harmful emotional and psychological consequences of sexual activity for teenagers, the Foundation analysis also found that

• Roughly one quarter of the nation's sexually active teenagers have been infected by a sexually transmitted disease. Nearly three million will become infected this year alone.
  
• In 1997, approximately 48% of American teenagers of high school age were or had been sexually active.
  
• In 2000, some 240,000 children were born to girls aged 18 or younger. Nearly all these mothers were single. These mothers and children have an extremely high probability of long-term poverty and welfare dependence.
  

These findings make a case for sexual abstinence that all thinking teenagers, and their parents, will find persuasive. Who needs to be unhappy, diseased and prematurely pregnant?

Fox TV cut its sexual content in the family hour (8 to 9 pm) by nearly half from 1998 through 2002, but now Fox is trashing the 9 o'clock hour with "Paradise Hotel," a plotless new "reality" show. Hidden microphones and cameras allow the audience to listen and watch a group of young men and women who haven't met before grope, fondle and kiss each other as they arrange to "hook up" in pairs and share a bedroom for a week. It's understood that each of the women is free to switch to a different partner in subsequent weeks.

The good news is the show was fourth in the ratings on opening night, June 23. In the entertainment business, that's a "train wreck." Let's hope it was a learning experience for Fox and for the advertisers - Taco Bell and KFC; Greyhound Lines; McDonald's; Progressive Insurance; GlaxoSmithKline; 20th Century Fox; Nintendo; Sony; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; Paramount Pictures; Samuel Adams beer; Telecom USA, and Arbor Mist wine.

NBC Network President Jeff Zucker says "Coupling," the British import scheduled for Thursdays at 9:30 pm eastern (8:30 Pacific) will "push the envelope" - code for still more shock and titillation. The New York Post (June 18) described "Coupling" as "the new 'Friends'," and, with a mere comment, dismissed the show's potential to offend audiences and adversely influence impressionable young viewers: "There's no explicit language or frontal nudity, but lots of allusions to sex. A huge tease." Here's hoping for another train wreck.

The headline in the New York Daily News June 11 said almost everything you needed to know:

"Male call at Spike TV/Rated T for testosterone"

But to plumb the true depths of this new cable channel, you had to read the squib describing "Ren & Stimpy Adult Cartoon Party": "Once a favorite of Nickelodeon, the duo is back - this time as a gay couple. Not a minute goes by without a gag about bodily fluids, so keep the TV dinner on ice while watching." Sure thing, bubba.

The Jerusalem Post has been tracking the Playboy Channel's efforts to get around an Israeli law that bars broadcasts that depict a woman and her body parts as objects for the pleasure of men. In June, the Council for Cable and Satellite TV approved evening broadcasts for Playboy, deciding that the Playboy Channel is erotic, not pornographic - a distinction without a difference in the view of a coalition of feminists, social action organizations and some 35 Members of the Knesset, who have appealed to Israel's Supreme Court to stop the broadcasts.

Airlines often edit the films they show on their flights, for one reason or another, and little notice is taken. But when some lesbian kissing was cut from Paramount's "The Hours," spinning, finger-pointing and posturing broke out on all sides.

The New York Post reported June 24 that a spokesman for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation pronounced, "We are in discussions with the airlines and are asking them to re-evaluate the process by which they edit their in-flight entertainment."

A Hollywood producer asked, "Shouldn't the airlines have greater concerns these days than editing films?"

And the airlines ducked for cover. One company spokesman told the Post: "There was no mandate from above about homosexual content... Maybe another airline asked for those cuts. But I like to think of Continental Airlines as forward-thinking."

It's hard to know what that means, but if Continental foresees public acceptance of lesbian sex in movies on its flights, the airline needs to have its forward-thinking antenna checked.

The public's preference for movies they're not embarrassed to watch... or be seen watching... has affected movie-making decisions in Hollywood. The Wall Street Journal's "Hollywood Report" underscored the point on June 13 with a story that carried this headline: 'Studios Turn Down the Body Heat: Racy Fare Falls Out of Favor As Adult Market Shrinks..." The Journal reported that only eight studio movies produced this year were rated "R" for sexual content, compared with 18 last year and 25 in 1997.

The Journal predicted that the box-office winner among movies opening in June would be the family friendly adventure film "Finding Nemo" from Disney's Pixar Animation Studios. The Journal was on the money. In six weeks through July 18 "Finding Nemo" grossed $274.9 million, more than any other film this year and far more than the several R-rated (for sex) movies mentioned by the Journal: "No Way Out" grossed $31.7 million in 1987; "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," $9.3 million in 1988; "Basic Instinct," $115.8 million in 1992; "Out of Sight," $37.5 million in 1998, and "Unfaithful," $52.8 million in 2002.

"Finding Nemo" was just the latest family friendly hit from Pixar. It followed "Toy Story" (1995), "A Bug's Life" (1998), "Toy Story 2" (1999), and "Monsters, Inc." (2001).

When the American Film Institute announced its selection of top movie heroes and villains of the last 100 years on June 3, Atticus Finch, played by Gregory Peck, was named top hero. Finch, a widower raising a daughter and son, was a small town lawyer in the south who defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. He was easy to admire. Jean Picker Firstenburg, Institute director, spoke for many when she said, "I think Atticus Finch just represents the goodness all of us want to see in others and feel in ourselves."

The AP reported out of Hollywood July 22 that the Motion Picture Association of America has launched a public information campaign to convince the public that it is wrong to download pirated copies of films over the Internet. It is wrong, of course. But the news is ironic; the MPAA is the organization that slaps a rating label on morally corrosive movies and pretends its hands are then clean.

People in the hardcore pornography racket want the world to think they're legitimate business people entitled to respect. But then one of them opens a porn shop next door to Midwest Baptist Church in Stewartville, Minnesota, and puts up signs mocking the congregation, their pastor and their faith. And then the monthly Adult Video News runs the story for laughs under this headline: ADULT RETAILER NEXT TO CHURCH OFFERS CLERGY DISCOUNT.

Here, typos and all, is what the porn shop's signs said:

AND GOD SAID
GO OUT INTO THE WORLD
AND HAVE GREAT SEX
GODS GIFT TO WOMAN
AMEN & AMEN

IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE
HOW TO DO "IT" VIDEO
NOW AT PURE PLEASURE
ENJOY GREAT SEX

SEX IS IS
A GREAT GIFT FROM GOD
ENJOY ENJOY
TO GOD B THE GLORY

NO NEED TO MAIL ORDER
GAY VIDEOS IN STOCK
CLERGY DISCOUNT
HAVE GOOD SEX
HALLELUJAH

Adolescent boys in a middle school locker room might think that's all very funny. Real, grown-up, adult men would not.

When Mal-Mart Stores decided in June to use U-shaped shields to cover the racy and offensive teaser lines on Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Marie Claire and Redbook, a spokesman for the Magazine Publishers Association sprang into action with what may have been the first words that came to mind. He told the New York Times (June 7): "We firmly believe that freedom of choice is fundamental to the American way of life and therefore believe that millions of people who enjoy their favorite magazines should not be deprived of their ability to purchase them with full knowledge of their contents." Huh? Like they're not able to lift the covers and look at the magazines before they buy?

PS - Many pro-decency organizations, including the American Decency Association, American Family Association, Catholic Daughters of the Americas, Concerned Women for America, and Focus on the Family, have helped in the campaign to put the salacious women's magazine under covers in the checkout lanes, but it was Morality in Media that launched the initial effort in 1999 and achieved the first successes.

Copyright © 2003, Morality in Media, Inc. All Rights reserved.
Site developed and maintained by L'AMb Artistic Enterprises, Inc.