UNNATURAL EQUALITY

The demand for pornography has become so great that, in western countries, it has developed into a regular industry. In America itself this industry has an annual turnover of $ 8 billion. The problems created by it are of such magnitude that a U.S. government commission has issued a report linking sex crimes with hard-core pornography. The commission, headed by then U.S. Attorney General Mr. Edwin Meese, called for a law enforcement effort of unprecedented scope against the $ 8 billion-a-year pornography industry.8 Another commission set up by the U.S. Justice Department has come to a similar conclusion. This report, entitled Degrading Women, was published in the national press. In an introduction to its final report, the Attorney General’s commission on pornography urged action against the pornography industry, including more severe penalties for violation of obscenity laws. The report found that exposure to most pornography bears some causal relationship to the level of sexual violence, sexual coercion or unwanted sexual aggression. The commission’s conclusions conflict with those of a 1970 presidential commission that found no link between pornography and violence or other anti-social behavior. The 11member commission formed by Attorney General Edwin Meese said most pornography in the United States would be classified as “degrading,” particularly to women. “We have reached the conclusion, unanimously and confidently, that the available evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that substantial exposure to sexually violent materials as described here bears a causal relationship to anti-social acts of sexual violence and, for some subgroups, possibly to unlawful acts of sexual violence,” the report said. The commission also concluded that there were ties between the pornography industry and organized crime. “There seems strong evidence that significant portions of the pornography magazine industry are either directly operated or closely controlled by La Cosa Nostra members or very close associates,” the commission said.9 THE CONSEQUENCES OF UNRESTRICTED FREEDOM Women’s emergence from their homes, the free mixing of the sexes and the pervasiveness of pornography add up to a situation in which sexual excitement is inevitable. The institution of marriage having proved inadequate for the satisfaction of such artificially stimulated and now unbounded sexual urges, free sexual relations have gradually become the order of the day, and in the modern West, there seems to be no limit to the occasions on which sexual liberties may be indulged in. By representing free relations between men and women as being as harmless as shaking hands with one’s friend, books, films, plays, etc., have played a major role in encouraging the acceptance of such behaviour as the norm. The marriage bond, as a result, has come to be viewed as burdensome, superfluous and outdated. So many young men and women have started to live together without being married that the term “unmarried couple” has now come to be considered just as lawful a term as “married couple.”