Protecting Children, or Attacking Freedom?

[Laurel]

from msnbc.com
http://www.msnbc.com/news/550748.asp?0nm=C11L#BODY

In the name of the children:
Anti-porn crusaders hide behind our kids

WASHINGTON, March 27 — The Children’s Internet Protection Act is nothing more than the latest offensive in the moralistic jihad against pornography. It is a key offensive in the culture wars camouflaged by the twisted rubric of “protecting children.” Shame on its soldiers. This war exploits children by using their collective innocence as a rhetorical shield in a vicious verbal crossfire that has simply not yet spilled over into violence.

THIS LAW MANDATES censorship inside the very institutions we’ve built to teach and strengthen the free-speech principles of the First Amendment, our schools and libraries. It does this by requiring these federally funded institutions to install so-called “filtering” software that is supposed to block access to obscene content.

Under the CIPA schools and libraries are the victims of nothing less than federal extortion: Either they agree to the law and install the filtering software, or they don’t get federal funds.

It is sad to see the same gaggle of “child protection” advocates line up, yet again, to defend an indefensible law that strikes at one of the foundations of our democracy. You see, we’ve all been here before. The folks supporting the CIPA also supported the Communications Decency Act, which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down as unconstitutional.

The subtext of the anti-porn crowd’s rhetoric was the same then as it is now, but these days the words are harsher, the warnings more graphic and the language more explicit.

These days Donna Rice Hughes vamps for the cameras and camps on a well-rehearsed sound bite that invokes a warning about a child researching the Net for a school project on wolves only to be exposed to a picture of woman having sex with a wolf.

But it’s a lie. There is no such picture. Just like when the CDA was being fought in the courts, Hughes and her ilk liked to talk about children innocently stumbling across a picture of a woman allegedly driving nails through her labia and into a board (their words and imagery, folks, not mine).

During that time, I must have asked for proof of that picture a thousand times. No one ever produced any evidence of it. I present the same challenge now with the wolf picture … and I’m not holding my breath.

And even if the picture does exist, it would take a Herculean effort to find.

Want proof? Try this: Go to Google.com and just enter the word “wolf.” Google comes back with 2.2 million references. You tell me, what are the odds of a 16-year-old kid with raging hormones wading through even a quarter of those hits in the hopes of finding the infamous wolf picture? Slim to none.

PORN WILL FIND A WAY

The filtering programs required by this law are the Firestone tires of the high-tech industry. None of them works as advertised, and, worse, they lull parents and officials into a false sense of security.

No filter is perfect. Even with a filter activated little Johnny or Suzie will eventually be exposed to some kind of pornography if she sits and searches long enough. I guarantee it.

This begs the question: How little exposure to porn is too much? The anti-porn crusaders say exposure to such material wounds children, but they never say how much exposure inflicts the damage.

Filtering advocates all acknowledge the technology’s failings. When confronted with the “how little is too much” question, they usually snort, “Well, it catches most of it, and that’s better than nothing.”

That is a specious answer and makes those that support the CIPA culpable for knowingly allowing our children to travel in harm’s way on the digital highway.


LIVING ON BRIGHT AVENUE

I am the father of five kids, four boys and a girl. I am a veteran of these online parental content wars. I’ve fought my share of battles with my older boys, and I’m re-grouping for when I’ll have to fight them with my two little ones.

I am not an apologist for the porn industry, but those I’ve talked to that are involved in the industry really aren’t out to target our kids. Why should they? There’s no money in kids. In fact, some of the most popular adult content providers, like Danni Ashe, go to lengths to warn kids away from her site. The last thing she wants, as a businesswoman and content provider, is a long drawn out fight with outraged parents pushing for government restraint on her business.

This war, like so much of sex, is won or lost in the mind. Parents, not government, should take the lead here. Talk to your kids openly about sex and sexuality. Heck, crack open the Bible and read the Song of Solomon to your kids and encourage them to ask questions. Yes, they will have questions.

Set down rules and guidelines for Internet use by your kids. If you don’t trust your kids, if your kids don’t respect you or listen to you, well, then you have a much bigger problem than online porn on your hands.

And you can always pull the plug. That’s right, don’t let your kids go online unless you’re sitting right there beside them. I know it’s tough; I did the same with my kids.

What about school and libraries? If you’re really afraid your children are going to be exposed to something you don’t want them to see, talk to the teachers and have them excused from those online sessions. For libraries, discuss with your kids what is appropriate use, and trust they’ll listen to you. If they don’t, discipline them as you see fit.

Censorship or Common Sense?

I don’t have definitive answers. I do know that anti-porn crusaders will kick at the “darkness” until it bleeds daylight; I hope they never see that morning.

Every day I battle against the darker angels of our age in an effort to carve out a better life for my kids, as I’m sure you do. No one ever said being a parent was easy.

The issue is a difficult and highly personal one that needs to be dealt with on a family-by-family basis, not through government edict and screeching moralistic rants.

We don’t need a war; we don’t need soldiers on the left or right. We need heroes, disguised as parents.

 

[Countess DeWinter]

We don’t need a war; we don’t need soldiers on the left or right. We need heroes, disguised as parents.

*silently standing to applaud*

 

[Sparky Kronkite]

Hey Babe L. and interested others....

Freedom is for everybody - it really has no distinctions what so ever. Freedom does not see color, Freedom does not see race, Freedom does not see age.

One of the biggest travesties in America - Home of the Free - is it's generally disregard for Children's Rights relative to Freedom.

Even dies hard Freedom Fighters - 1st Amendment advocates and other anti-censorship type folks - don't usually address this issue. In fact - they, many of course parents - actually place a "different set of rules on their own children" than they espouse in public forum for adults.

America's High Schools - the prime place to teach our children the value of Freedom - literally does not touch the subject. High Schools newspapers (if they are even allowed to be published) are severely censored by the faculty.

General most parents (old folks?) don't believe that their children have many rights of Freedom. Parents want to nearly completely control their children. Sure, they'll let'em pick out the cereal they want but when it comes to dress, or who they hang out with, or what job they may want to take, or what artistic expression they may want to undertake - parents want, even demand - a large degree of control.

As a parent I find this understandable - but again (I wrote about this yesterday) I would urge "thinking adults" to look at things from different perspectives - look a these issues from the child's side - look at these issues from the schools side as well as the loving parent side.

There is a balance - and it's not being met - and our children are suffering a lack of Freedom for it.

 

[WriterDom]

I support filters in schools and libraries. Seems to be an interesting parallel to this argument and the gun control argument. There are some on the far right who would like to see an end to all Porn on the net. There are some on the far left who would like to see all guns outlawed. Fortunately our system is designed to find common ground in the middle.

 

[Countess DeWinter]

Thank God for that, WD. Okay, I'll thank God...ya'll can thank whomever you want

 

[Purple Haze]

I like the part of a website that asks you if you're under eighteen. This is so effective. Brilliance at work.

 

[Laurel]

LMAO! That's called C.Y.A., baby. Lawyers have a more offical term for it, though.

I'd be 100% pro-filtering if there existed software that banned porn and all porn. Unfortunately, tests have found that all the major filtering software contains biases and bans things other than porn - i.e. hate sites, Planned Parenthood, political sites that the authors of the software disagree with, the sites of the filtering software's competition, etc. AND they still don't block ALL porn - not even close...so parents are lulled into a full sense of security.

 

[Madame Pandora]

My problem with this issue remains constant.

I still say we protect our kids from the wrong things.

I find it profoundly amazing that a parent will take a child out to hunt or fish, teaching (whether intentionally or not) about the reality of the food chain, survival of the fittest, and the certainty of death without batting an eye, but then squirm about teaching a child about sex.

I am curious...when exactly did it become necessary to wrap the world in bubble-tape and protect children from reality? I must have missed that memo...but I'm guessing it's about the same time yuppies started their "Mommy/Daddy And Me" classes and making sure their politically correct children matched their sofas.

I'm a Generation Xer. You know what fucked up my rose colored glasses? The fact that the whole generation before me turned into a batch of hypocrites. Sex...Violence...that's just the real world. Always has been. I was more pissed off by how my "elders" tried to hide that fact with pretty packaging.

By all means let's raise our kids in Never-Never Land.

Sure...everyone's entitled to an opinion...whatever. But when the hell will the majority quit caving to easy answers because people are too fucking lazy to watch their own children?

And Sparky – you’re absolutely right. We send children back to abusive parents time after time because “birth parents have rights” to hell with a kid’s right to choose not to go back.

I’d be willing to make a proposition. On the day that the government can clothe, feed, and protect EVERY child in the US, then they begin a debate on how harmful the realities of “sex” is on children.

Here…let’s take a poll. I was 10 the first time I accidentally stumbled on a porno (ON TV, we hardly knew ye). A woman was getting very carnal with a picnic repast all by herself. Shocked my socks off. As far as I know I’m sexually normal.

I’m willing to bet that pretty much EVERY person here (if not in America) probably saw their first Playboy/porno ABOUT OR BEFORE they were 10 years old. How many of us are or know someone who is a sexual deviant? I have known one in my life who I would truly call a deviant (my personal definition being someone who harms themselves or others in sexual acts). He’s in jail. Of the thousands of people I’ve come across in my life, I’d lay that at pretty good odds.

Okay…sorry…done ranting now.

MP

 

[Purple Haze]

It should ultimately be up to the parents to watch over their children's activities, to know what they're watching on TV, what video games they are playing and what websites they are getting their information from.

Guess what? They aren't doing this. As a father of small children I have to not only be concerned with what my kids are doing, but also what other parents are not doing. Here's one example:

My ten year-old daughter comes up to me while I'm cutting the grass and asks if she can go next door and watch "American Pie" with the neighbors. I'd seen this movie before and laughed my ass off, but of course my answer was a very quick nada. I'm glad she asked. When I brought it up to Superdad later, his sheepish explanation was he didn't know what kind of movie it was, and two minutes into it, he shut it off, shocked. Well the R rating might have given him a clue, had he paid a little attention to it.

It turns out that their eight year old boy had gotten up in the middle of the night and watched the whole thing while parents were asleep. Talk about your sex education. These people have the internet now, and if you think I'm overly concerned about the kids next door, I'm not. I'm concerned about the millions of kids next door.

Can the government solve this problem perfectly and make everyone happy? No way, Jose', but I'm losing faith in parents as a whole, and I'll take flawed internet filtering in the schools over none at all. At least I might have SOME control over that.

Sex sites aren't my biggest concern here, but imagine there's a nine year old accessing rotton.com. If that doesn't scare you a little, then maybe you're the problem I get to deal with.

 

[genderbender]

Lest anyone forget, parents are still the primary teachers of values to children and last I checked, ours is a pretty conservative country. Unfortunately, this subject is so fraught with hot buttons that it's easy to burn down every structure in view in arguing one side or the other of the issue. I don't think its surprising that parents are searching frantically for solutions when they've witnessed the insanity unfolding all around them. How do we make sense of the violence in schools, teens on drugs, teens getting pregnant? I marvel at the incredible investment of love and energy parents make in those beautiful little creatures that have been entrusted to them by life. We've one person on this board who can speak of the pain of having a teenage child murdered. I can imagine nothing worse than having your child suddenly taken from you through violence…or to see your child's life irreparably damaged by promiscuity or drugs.

I don't believe fighting pornography will solve those problems, but I understand the impulse behind the effort to find a solution. And this thread surely parallels Laurel's other recent thread about book burning. Attempts to control other people's behaviors will never succeed, yet the prospect of addressing the underlying fractures in our society seems too big a task for us to tackle. How do we foster kindness for our brothers and sisters? How do we address social and economic inequities that result in such profound dislocation for families?

We do what happens on this site; we argue on behalf of what we passionately believe, hoping that out of dialogue something better will arise. It has always been so in our country and will not doubt continue, though I'm not particularly sanguine about the prospects for easy solution of these problems. As we become more conservative as a nation many of the values I hold are eroding, yet I know with certainty that the conservatives among us are relieved that the treachery of the left is finally being reigned in. We're in this together and like the best of families we will, hopefully, keep the dialogue civil even if tempers on occasion flare.

 

[Sparky Kronkite]

I'm with you MP.

And what's amazing is that many of the "over protective" parents I come in contact with today.......

They go completely against "how they acted at younger ages."

And I can understand (but not condone) this as I too - don't want my sons doing some of the shit I pulled when I was younger - I mean I think I'm lucky to be alive and if they did the same stuff I did - I'd fear for their safety.

But - I made it. And I don't think I'm such a terrible person (ha! you all may argue that) after all is said and done.

There is a reasonable balance in letting children have some freedom and attempting to guide them. I think I see to many parents panicking and overprotecting their kids.

Life is life - kids should not be sheltered from the realities of it.

As for filters - I'm with Laurel - they're a shark net that nets too many valuable species. They have to let the good stuff through. I'd rather teach my kids to deal with the porn myself than have then not get the valuable stuff inadvertently filtered out.

 

[DarlingBri]

Can I ask a really stupid question?

OK, so you're 9 years old. You don't accidently stumble across a picture of a woman fucking a wolf, but you do end up clicking a button that takes you to the home page of your basic, run of the mill porn site... bored looking women, big breasts, and say, a banner ad for cum shooters, just for good measure.

What's the actual impact this is going to have on you? How damaging and manifested how?

 

[CreamyLady]

I learned the hard way to question authority (being one of the generation MP calls hypocrites), and made sure to teach WitchsKat the procedure from the cradle. It wasn't hard; she has a natural aptitude for awkward questions.

The people who get all hot and bothered about freedom of access at libraries are the same people who are busy doing something else while their kids are online or watching TV. It would never occur to them to be sitting right next to the kid, monitoring use and being frank about what is, and what is not, appropriate viewing -- and why. It would also twist their panties to realize their kids might have their own opinions -- and a perfect right to them.

A family is not necessarily a democracy; it's more like a benevolent dictatorship. However, when the kids are ready for more independence of action and thought, it's the really stupid parent who won't let them fly. It's how I learned to question authority in the first place, and I've still got the scars.

 

[genderbender]

A family is not necessarily a democracy; it's more like a benevolent dictatorship. However, when the kids are ready for more independence of action and thought, it's the really stupid parent who won't let them fly. It's how I learned to question authority in the first place, and I've still got the scars.

Wonderful words of wisdom CL! Now the question to be asked, is why do so many parents become so distracted that the kid is left alone to fend for him or herself? Let me count the ways...

 

[Starfish]

Right on! Good point within a good question.

OK, so you're 9 years old. You don't accidently stumble across a picture of a woman fucking a wolf, but you do end up clicking a button that takes you to the home page of your basic, run of the mill porn site... bored looking women, big breasts, and say, a banner ad for cum shooters, just for good measure.

What's the actual impact this is going to have on you? How damaging and manifested how?

Excellent!
I saw sex when I was 5, in magazines I found, and I am normal. Didn't turn me into a pregnant teen or a whore.
I think most everyone else saw sexual things when they were young, and have adapted quite well. Except those who shun sex.

I think this is all about adults being embarrassed about their own sexuality, and displacing it on the subject of porn and childern. They themselves can't deal with sexuality, so in their minds they want to make it go away for everyone. Hum?

 

[jcgirl]

Porn isn't bad. And who exactly came up with the definition of what porn is?

In some countries outside the US you can turn on the television and see a soap commercial with a naked woman soaping herself up.

Ironically, these countries who exercise more freedom with the human body, have lower statistics of rape, murder, and other violent crimes. Especially sex crimes.

What's wrong with being open and honest with children? Im not saying you should walk around naked and banging your sig other in front of them, just not hide so much, that they will eventually see sooner or later. Most likely sooner.

Hell, who amongst us never snuck out to a R movie with friends, or sneaked under our Dad's bed to peek at his Playboys?

Now I wouldnt want my children seeing child porn, or rape porn, or some old lady getting boinked by Duke the willing pooch. But they are going to learn that the freaks are out there.

Educate them, understand thier interests, instill in them appropriateness.

 

[Madame Pandora]

Okay...one last point (Yes, I hear you groan "Is she STILL typing...)

People who want to "protect" their children, in my experience, are merely protecting themselves. They don't WANT to face the fact that their "innocent" little boys and girls are really just little people and not dolls. They want them to keep wearing adorable outfits and do what they're told and be magically imbued with the wisdom of Solomon.

Forget what kids should or shouldn't know. Most kinds know more than their parents dare to imagine.

No. I've never had children, but I volunteer with them a great deal and I've heard horror stories that have NOTHING to do with pornography or the subtexts of controversial novels.

You know...I'm really sorry if Billy has a nightmare about movie X or website Y. Or if he has to ponder for a few minutes about the complexities of a naked woman humping a camel. No, of course I don't think kids should be on rotten.com when they're 5 years old. But, frankly, kids have more morbid imaginations than a cast of Stephen King characters. Watch a pair of young boys mutilate grasshoppers or ants or other critters. Kids are just not that fragile and the ones that are - as cruel as this sounds - well, those are the ones that evolution would have weeded out. If they don't get the extra attention they need no amount of "filtering" is going to change things.

I am more worried about the kids who get beaten everyday. The ones who don't get fed. The ones who have seen people get killed in front of them. The ones who DON'T HAVE THE PRIVELIDGE OF COMPUTERS, let alone computers with filtered websites.

Police the bad neighborhoods and keep these kids safe and then I'll worry about policing the internet for the middle-class kids. Keep these kids fed and clothed and THEN talk to me about what's feeding their heads.

This is, sadly, an elitist issue.

I'm amending my previous statement. Not only do we protect our kids from the wrong things, but we're vastly focused on protecting the wrong kids.

Show me a kid who sees porn at age 10 and a kid who sees a shoot-out in his backyard at age 10 and then let's see which one has more problems along the path of life.

And Creamy, of course I shouldn't have spoken in absolutes about your generation - there are a great many people, like you, still fighting the good fight in their individual ways. In general, however, the "Baby Boomers" do look like hypocrites in retrospect. Certainly no one should be held to the ideals of their youth and judged outright, but it was a generation that had unprecedented opportunity and they traded it in for SUVs. It's one thing to explain to a child about so-called sexual perversion, it's another to explain how adults trade in ideas for material possession. Know what I mean?

MP

 

[CreamyLady]

It's okay, MP. I have always wondered about families who take separate Volvos to Sierra Club meetings.

Personally, I found it relatively easy to answer questions about sex. The hard questions all involved finance, exchange, economic policy (national and domestic), and the acquisition of capital.

Why don't they talk about THAT on the playground?!

 

[DarlingBri]

Re: Can I ask a really stupid question?

OK, so you're 9 years old. You don't accidently stumble across a picture of a woman fucking a wolf, but you do end up clicking a button that takes you to the home page of your basic, run of the mill porn site... bored looking women, big breasts, and say, a banner ad for cum shooters, just for good measure.

What's the actual impact this is going to have on you? How damaging and manifested how?

No takers? It was a serious question. I don't have any children.

 

[Countess DeWinter]

Re: Can I ask a really stupid question?

OK, so you're 9 years old. You don't accidently stumble across a picture of a woman fucking a wolf, but you do end up clicking a button that takes you to the home page of your basic, run of the mill porn site... bored looking women, big breasts, and say, a banner ad for cum shooters, just for good measure.

What's the actual impact this is going to have on you? How damaging and manifested how?

Okay, in my opinion...if one of my children were to see something like that they probably wouldn't be instantly and irreprabaly damaged, but they would probably loose a bit of their innocence. I did when I was a preteen/early teen and got my first look at porn. It also made me very curious.

I started reading romances - the teen kind were quickly too boring so I got right to the good stuff - then when I was old enough to date (age 16 and very few people had parents more strict or conservative than mine!) it took all of three months for me to loose my virginity.

But I was still curious. I kept looking for it (sex, porn, whatever you want to call it. It wasn't long before just naked people just wasn't enough. Then people fucking wasn't enough.

Sadly now, at the ripe old age of 32, there is very little sexually that I haven't tried (I don't have a dog, but I'm sure if I did, I'd have tried that by now too). There is also very little that arouses me. I don't even read the stories about romance or erotic coupling anymore...there has to be a taboo element to it or it's not exciting enough.

I do in no way claim that my story is typical, but I have more than once thought about that verse in the Song of Solomon that warns not to wake love before it's time. I've always taken that to mean that if you feed that natural hunger, you'll have to keep feeding it for the rest of your life...and it's appetite grows.

 

[genderbender]

DarlingBri - This is a bit off target, yet I think it may address you're question. Studies have shown that a child who has been sexually assaulted will fare much better if from a family in which the trauma can be acknowledged, the child calmed and the perpetrator pursued. In these circumstances children generally can return to normal functioning without great difficulty. The children who have most difficulty with the experience are those unable to take their terror home to a safe place. Very often the home is precisely where the abuse occurred. I would generalize from these studies that a child who finds him or herself exposed to something shocking, which I think most of us would agree is found on most porn sites, at least when you consider that a child's eyes are doing the seeing, and who comes from a healthy, nurturing environment, likely isn't traumatized and can move right along. The obsession in which I found myself after first discovering pornography was more a product of the unhealthy circumstances in which I'd livee for so many years, than of the images themselves.

Of course, your question is especially provocative when you consider it was addressed to a group of people, who through their participation in this site are likely playing out some aspect of their sexuality, whether healthy or not.

[Edited by genderbender on 03-28-2001 at 03:22 PM]