Pornography, like Brussels sprouts and plaid slacks, is
something to be chosen (or not) and consumed (or not). It is
also something to have opinions about. This is, after all, a
free country. But public policy based on opinion rather than
fact is bad public policy. And a vocal minority is demanding
that their strong opinions about porn be enshrined in law.
I am a person of faith: I have faith in science. And I have
faith in the vision of America as a place where adults can make
their own private choices. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
said that the ultimate freedom is the freedom to be left alone.
This freedom is now under attack by those who lack faith. They
lack faith in science, and they lack faith in their neighbors.
Our federal government now finds it convenient to listen to
people who claim to be victims of pornography. Instead of facts
they have fear, and they demand that the law comfort them. Our
congressmen are listening to their stories this week, making
generalizations and drawing conclusions that even a high school
science student would be criticized for.
The so-called victims of porn trot out each new rapist or
unfaithful husband as "proof" of the damage pornography causes.
They point to rapists with porn in their pockets, and husbands
making love to their computers instead of their wives. As a
psychologist, I can verify that there are tens of thousands of
such rapists and husbands.
A compelling argument against pornography? Not at all. Everyone
agrees that tens of millions of Americans consume porn. That's
more people than watch CSI, or go to pro basketball games, or
own an iPod. When you drive down your street tonight, every
fourth or fifth house you pass has someone in it who enjoyed
porn last month. The overwhelming majority of them don't rape
strangers or emotionally abandon their wives.
In reality, knowing that a man uses porn doesn't help us predict
anything else about him--not his income, education, marital
behavior, religiosity, or personal hygiene. The 50 million
Americans who use porn include far more ministers, PTA members,
policemen, teachers, soldiers, dentists, and Boy Scout leaders
combined than rapists or abusive husbands.
To properly evaluate the role of porn in criminal or abusive
behavior, we would have to look at the porn behavior of
non-criminals and non-abusers. Groups that drive anti-porn
hysteria have never done that. They don't want to know about the
porn habits of law-abiding, loving, productive citizens.
The argument that "this sex criminal was found with a cache of
pornography--his victims are victims of porn" is simply false.
Every sex criminal in America started with milk. Virtually all
drive cars. Neither milk nor cars make people sex criminals, and
neither does porn. There has never been a validated scientific
study showing that adults who use porn are more likely to engage
in antisocial behavior than adults who don't use porn.
Of course there are people who feel harmed by porn. There are
also people who feel harmed by giving women the vote,
fluoridating water, and racially integrating schools. We could
easily find articulate people to tell their stories about the
personal pain caused by these things. That doesn't mean that
these choices actually create danger for the public, or that
they should be unavailable to the larger population.
Deciding social harm based on pleas made by people who have been
harmed is a terrible approach to public policy. In order to
decide if porn is really harming communities, the government is
obligated to 1) hear from porn consumers who say their use has
been benign or positive, and 2) consult a range of actual sex
experts. To find highly credentialed experts who believe porn is
benign or positive for most adults and communities, the
government has only to contact professional sexologists (we have
several national organizations). At hearing after hearing,
including two this spring, it has never done so. Similarly,
lawmakers have repeatedly rejected the Adult Freedom
Foundation's offers to provide expert witnesses to present the
Adult Entertainment Industry's side of the story.
Those who claim that communities or neighborhoods with strip
shows, sex clubs, and adult bookstores suffer from crime and
distress should be required to show their data. They can't,
because there are no such "secondary effects" of porn and
related activities. The police departments of New York City and
Phoenix couldn't provide it when challenged in court-because it
doesn't exist. Porn doesn't destroy communities; if it did,
there would be no America.
The new concept of "porn addiction" is another example of the
harm supposedly caused by porn. This idea has never been
accepted by the psychiatric, psychological, marital counseling,
or sexological professions. There is no DSMIV or ICD9 (that is,
professional) diagnosis of "porn addiction." Just because people
feel addicted doesn't mean they are. And as every
psychologist-conservative and progressive-knows, the true
sources of people's dysfunctions are rarely what people think
they are. That's why men and women find psychotherapy and
marriage counseling so necessary and valuable.
Finally, aren't children victims of porn? Don't they suffer
every time spam offers them bigger penises or orgasms? Aren't
they traumatized when they can find a picture of a bare breast
or pubic hair?
No. In America's thousands of professional publications and
scientific proceedings, there is no peer-reviewed data showing
that access to sexual imagery harms kids. The really young ones
ignore it, older teens are already sexual, and kids in between
do what they've always done--they look, giggle, blush, and move
on to more interesting things. It's only adults obsessed with
sexuality who imagine otherwise.
So are there no victims of porn? That's actually the wrong
question, since porn itself doesn't do anything.
Are there people who use porn inappropriately, even
self-destructively? Of course. The same is true of cars, money,
and food. Are the majority of porn users, their families, or
their marriages damaged? Like the majority of those who drive,
spend, and eat, of course not.
We should all be full of sympathy for those who have been
genuinely hurt by others. Similarly, people terrified of the
sexuality of those around them deserve our sympathy as well. If
only they weren't trying to take away our right to be left
alone, we could give them our compassion much more easily.
