The Anchorage Daily News reported July 28 that Judge Stephanie Joannides decided against the prosecutor’s request because the judge “said experts strongly disagree about whether there is a connection between pornography and sexual crimes.”

But evidence of a “causal connection” between pornography and violent sex crimes exists and has been compiled by Morality in Media President Robert Peters. His report has been posted to the Porn Problems & Solutions page of www.obscenitycrimes.org, a web site of Morality in Media. In it, Mr. Peters cites the work of scholars at Miami University (Ohio), the University of Utah, the University of Pennsylvania, Mills College, Goucher College, and the University of Calgary.

Anecdotal evidence in the Peters report is taken from interviews and testimony given by police officers and prosecutors in New York City, Michigan, Oklahoma, Australia and the United Kingdom, as well as from newspaper accounts of sex crimes and trials in 15 states during the last 20 years.

We need to do WHAT about cyberporn?

People magazine (April 26) ran a long and thoughtful, but ultimately disappointing, article about “how online porn can color a child’s views of love and sex.” It had anecdotes from some presumably typical teenagers, insights from academics who have studied the issues involved, techniques and lingo used by Internet pornographers, software solutions for worried parents, and more. It left little room to doubt that something has to be done to save the kids. But what? Parry Aftab, who runs a helpful web site—WiredSafety.org—has much to say on the subject of Internet porn, but People featured this: “It’s unbelievable stuff you wouldn’t be able to buy in most porn stores. We need to prepare kids for this.”

How we do that was left undiscussed, as was the question of why preparing the kids gets the emphasis when there are laws against Internet porn. There was no mention of stepping up obscenity law enforcement to drive the hardcore pornographers—who are criminals, after all—out of business. It’s been done before.

If you like your humor on wry, you’ll find this part of the People article deliciously laughable:

Of course, pornographers argue that—in the right hands—porn has its place. As anyone in the industry will readily proclaim, millions of men and women enjoy Web erotica harmlessly, and some couples turn to porn to enhance their sex lives. Insiders also stress that the vast majority of adult sites are precisely that and have no interest in attracting children. “I’m happy to say most people who contact us do ask about how to keep out kids,” says Kevin Godbee, director of sales for a Boca Raton, Fla., company that operates as an “adult chamber of commerce” and publishes an Internet-porn trade magazine. “It’s a very, very small percentage of people involved in this industry that don’t have the highest moral and ethical standards.”

CAN-SPAM? Not yet

The Federal Trade Commission has established a new e-mail address—SPAM@UCE.GOV—for people who want to report “deceptive” spam, which the Commission describes in its news release as “pyramid schemes, money-making chain letters, credit card scams, bogus weight-loss plans, fraudulent business opportunities, and other scams that were promoted via email.”

There’s no mention of porn spam, which is among the most common, most harmful and most resented forms of spam. That omission would be explained by the fact that the FTC’s authority in this matter derives from the “CAN-SPAM” Act of 2003, in which porn spam is given a pass if it carries a warning label.

No, not “LOOK OUT! HERE COMES THE PORN!” but this non-judgmental variation:
“SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT-CONTENT:''

By “sexually explicit content” the Commission means pornography. Some of that may be indecent but not obscene, and therefore legal for adults. But much will be obscene and therefore illegal and all of it—obscene or indecent—will be harmful to minors.

Anyone with a complaint about hardcore “adult” pornography on the Internet can go through www.obscenitycrimes.org, Morality in Media’s hotline to the Justice Department. Since the site was launched in June 2002, more than 45,000 complaints have been submitted (mostly as a result of porn spam), helping to build a database that the Justice Department has found to be valuable.

FOOTNOTE: The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was intended to reduce the problems associated with the junk e-mail that clogs computer inboxes worldwide, but the Symantec Corporation, which produces software designed to block spam, reports that the volume has gone up, not down, from 49% of all e-mail in June 2003 to 65% in June this year.

Public discourse turns rude and crude

Once upon a time, coaches taught their teams to outplay their opponents but treat them with respect; trash talk was not part of the game plan. That made sense as a matter of self-interest as well as simple good sportsmanship.

It’s much the same in the public marketplace of ideas, where the old rule was to attack your opponent’s argument but not your opponent. But public discourse has taken a decidedly uncivil turn, in keeping, perhaps, with the coarseness in so much of our popular media. Dick Cheney some weeks ago and Teresa Heinz Kerry more recently paid the price of public embarrassment for speaking hastily and in anger.

Then along came Whoopi Goldberg at a political fund-raiser in early July. The New York Daily News (July 15) reported she “reeled off a series of vulgar sexual wordplays on the president’s last name.” The New York Post carried the story under the headline, “Lewd Whoopi bashes Bush.” The Daily News story reported that her performance cost Ms. Goldberg her job as a spokesperson for weight-loss company Slim-Fast.

Being rude and crude doesn’t pay, but it might be contagious.

Family friendly TV is getting a boost from sponsors

The June 29 edition of the Chicago Tribune carried encouraging news for TV viewers. The Family Friendly Programming Forum is having “a real impact on the kind of shows that the major broadcast networks are airing,” according to AP Television Writer David Bauder. The Forum was started five years ago by companies that rely on TV advertising to help sell their products and services. They wanted to find ways to get broadcasters to produce programs the companies would feel comfortable sponsoring. But TV producers were leery of advertiser involvement in their creative processes.

The companies now review scripts submitted to them by the networks and help finance those they like. Three new Forum-endorsed programs are to debut this fall: the ABC sitcom Savages, NBC comedy Father of the Pride and CBS drama Clubhouse.

In addition to the three new shows, the Forum endorses the WB drama Gilmore Girls, WB variety show Steve Harvey's Big Time, ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, and NBC drama American Dreams.

Members of the Forum include Coca Cola, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, FedEx, Ford, Gillette, Hershey Foods, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg, McDonald’s, Merck, Nestle, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Sears, J.M. Smucker, Tyson Foods, Unilever, Verizon, Wal-Mart and Wendy's.

Toned down ‘Sex and the City’ comes to basic cable

Meanwhile, on basic cable, TBS has begun airing a less explicit version of Sex and the City, which ran on HBO’s subscription service for six years in full raunch. At least some of those who’ve seen the sanitized version report nothing important is lost in the editing. Nothing but some rough language and nudity and explicit sex, all of which are said to have been toned down, obscured or dropped. Which leads to the question: If the raunch wasn’t needed, why was it included in the first place? Is there a lesson here for the producers, and reason for hope among viewers who don’t favor raunch?