Page 64 - AVN October 2016

FEATURE
Barna also conflates the porn produced by the legal
adult industry with child porn, and claims “use of
pornography is the primary gateway to the purchase
of humans for sex.”
All in all, The Porn Phenomenon is on a par with
the Witherspoon Institute’s The Social Cost of
Pornography—in other words, complete crap from
page 1.
NCOSE, however, remains the most prolific
purveyor of horseshit about the adult industry, and
sex in general. Its website, PornHarms.com, features
non-peer-reviewed treatises on why porn is bad, as
well as videos by self-described “experts” on porn and
the law such as Dani Pinter, who claimed in her short
video “Is Distributing Pornography Illegal? Obscenity
Law Explained,” that “When we say ‘hardcore
pornography,’ we know that that is synonymous with
‘obscenity.’ ... What that practically means today is
that all of the hardcore pornography that is being, you
know, streamed all over the internet is most likely
illegal, and at the very least cases could be brought by
the Department of Justice.”
Somewhat related to the anti-porn fight has been
the American Family Association’s (AFA) war on
the VH1 show Dating Naked, which features couples
in exotic locations swimming, eating, playing games
and generally getting to know each other, including
sexually—while naked. And it doesn’t matter that
the show’s editors have computer-masked the
participants’ nipples and genitalia; The Godly know
what’s under there!
Before Dating Naked, AFA and 1MM waged a
campaign to get advertisers to withdraw their support
from another TV program, this time The Real O’Neals,
loosely based on the life of gay sex advice columnist
Dan Savage. It’s a simple story about a Catholic
couple in the midst of a divorce (but trying to hide
same from the neighbors), whose 14-year-old son
has just come out as gay, and whose slightly younger
daughter has just come out as an atheist.
“The Real O’Neals mocks Christianity and insults
Catholicism,” wrote Cole last March. “1MM
recognizes this show ridicules people of faith,
and Christians across America are offended by it.
Almost every scene is filled with s-xual innuendos,
implications, or mockery of faith.”
What most people need to understand is
that repression of sex and its media expression,
pornography, has little to do with the content
itself. Since time immemorial, rulers (church and
otherwise) have understood that the best way to
control an individual is to control his/her sex life.
People as a general rule enjoy sex, and when the
opportunity to have it presents itself, they are not
necessarily all that picky about the particulars. Sex
can easily be an end in itself; for most people, its
“purpose” is not—as Barna and many, many others
claim—to produce offspring.
But religions flourish in large part due to the
number of adherents they can draw to their
philosophies—and people who have sex for
enjoyment rather than procreation defeat that goal by
not adding to the potential pool of followers. So this
whole notion that “God” only condones sex in the
context of making babies clearly benefits the church
leadership, not the flock.
64 | AVN.com | 10.16
This focus on maintaining power through
procreation also explains most religions’ stance on
the “sin” of homosexuality: Gay unions, generally
speaking, don’t produce biological offspring—and
many ultra-religious types don’t even want gay
couples adopting, lest they spread “the gay disease”
by close contact. And as for abortion, that also
doesn’t add to the congregation. Contraception, same
thing. “Morning after” pills, ditto.
This mania to stop virtually anything viewed as
sex-positive is leading to some interesting potential
disasters. On September 6, a bill to fund research
to stop the spread of the Zika virus was voted down
by Senate Democrats because Republicans insisted
on attaching an amendment to defund Planned
Parenthood—and that’s hardly the first time good
legislation has failed because of Republicans’
attempts to make anti-sex social policy part of
proposed laws.
And speaking of Planned Parenthood, another
development that’s driven a lot of right-wing
legislation at both the federal and state levels was
the “revelation” by faux “citizen journalist” David
Daleiden that the women’s health agency had been
selling aborted fetus parts at a profit. The proof?
Daleiden and his cronies secretly video-recorded
their meetings with Planned Parenthood employees,
then edited pieces of the videos together out of
context to make it appear that PP had committed the
crime. People who’ve seen the unedited interviews
overwhelmingly agree that Daleiden’s finished
product paints a completely inaccurate picture of
what actually happened—but to this day, right-wing
groups continue to cite Daleiden’s work as though it
were factual.
To conclude with a bit of good news, however, it
appears that Prenda Law is finally out of business,
and some of the firm’s principals face heavy fines and
possible jail time for their underhanded practices.
Prenda supposedly represented Lightspeed Media
Corp, and the firm sued thousands of internet users
for allegedly using hacked passwords to gain unpaid
access to various pay sites operated by Lightspeed.
However, Lightspeed was discovered to be entirely a
creation of Prenda, and many of the people sued had
in fact never had any contact with Lightspeed sites.
So far, Prenda attorney John Steele and his associates
have been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars by
judges in several jurisdictions.
So ... where are we? With conservatives at the
helms of a multitude of municipalities, and currently
having a strong majority in the U.S. House, not to
mention enough senators to break filibusters, the
adult entertainment industry in all its many forms
is under increasing attack, even as more and more
Americans seek out just such entertainment. Strip
clubs and adult retailers still face zoning battles in
towns across the country, and AIDS Healthcare and
Cal/OSHA seem determined to drive the industry out
of California, while activists of many stripes seek to
cause the industry as much pain, legally, financially
and otherwise, as they can. But the point is, the fight
for sexual sanity goes on, and the adult industry is
playing an ever-increasing role in that fight, so good
on all of you!