How to best protect children from pornography

By Robert Peters
President of Morality in Media

The large majority of adults believe that children should be shielded from pornography on the Internet, but can parental supervision, parental use of screening technology, and enforcement of harmful-to-minors laws alone provide adequate protection?

Clearly, if every parent would monitor his or her children's use of home computers and would utilize screening technology, children's exposure to pornography on the Internet would be reduced significantly. But many parents can't or won't do so. Furthermore, screening technology on home computers can't protect children when the children aren't at home, and no screening technology is perfect.

Clearly, if harmful to minors sales and display laws were vigorously enforced -- they aren't at present -- children's exposure to pornography would be reduced significantly. But at present no such laws apply to the Internet -- except in the narrow circumstance where a pedophile distributes harmful material to a minor for the purpose of sexually exploiting the minor. [In 1998, Congress enacted the Children's Online Protection Act (COPA), which restricts children's access to some pornography on the Internet. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia challenging the constitutionality of COPA. A final disposition of the case is not expected until 2003 or 2004. Meanwhile, COPA remains unenforceable.]

Common sense should also inform us that you can't flood a society with hardcore pornography -- via the Internet, TV, telephone, U.S. mails, video stores, convenience stores, newsstands, vending machines, hotels and motels, and "adult" businesses -- and then expect to effectively shield children from it.

For one thing, whatever adults or older siblings bring into the home usually finds its way into the hands of children; and even if children aren't into the porn themselves, they will often be aware of the role model's habit.

For another thing, as hardcore porn becomes more accessible to adults, there will be more opportunities for minors to access it by: using fake IDs; by persuading or conning adults to access it for them; or by finding, stealing or hacking into it.

Many "mainstream" entertainment companies have also become more brazen in introducing pornographic content into films, music/rap lyrics and performances, TV programs (e.g., on HBO and Showtime), advertising, video games and comics.

There are other reasons why parental supervision and use of screening technology, and enforcement of harmful-to-minors laws alone will not provide adequate protection for minors. First, pornography doesn't just harm children. It also harms adults, including parents; and what affects parents (and their marriages) will also affect children.

Second, pedophiles often use "adult" pornography to desensitize and instruct their victims. If pedophiles aren't deterred by laws prohibiting sexual child abuse (which have very severe penalties), they are not likely to be deterred by harmful to minors sale and display laws.

Third, one type of hardcore pornography that is popular among adult porn consumers is "teen porn." Presumably, most (BUT NOT ALL) of the "girls" and "boys" who perform in "teen porn" are 18 and over, but many look years younger. Most "teen porn" isn't sold or displayed to minors. It's directed towards adults who lust for minors.

Fourth, a prosperous "adult entertainment" industry sends a message that is inimical to family life and children. After all, if "adult entertainment" is what adult life is all about, why bother with marriage and family? Why not look forward to a life of selfish promiscuity, infidelity and unspeakable perversity?

This is not to say that special measures to protect children from pornography aren't needed. It is to say that such measures will prove ineffective in a society where more and more adults are becoming addicted to pornography and where even hardcore pornography has now entered the mainstream.

If the American people want to protect children from pornography, they must also protect society from pornography. That is the purpose of federal and state obscenity laws; and those who truly care about the well-being of children should be at the forefront of efforts to promote enforcement of these laws.

Vigorously enforced, obscenity laws can provide substantial protection for communities, families and children from addictive and morally corrosive hardcore pornography.

How Hardcore Pornography Harms Children

In conjunction with the May 2002 Pornography Victims Month, MIM President Bob Peters prepared the following list of ways that hardcore pornography harms children:

1. Children are harmed when deprived of the opportunity to grow up in a decent society by the crass commercial producers and distributors of hardcore pornography.

2. Children are harmed when the word "adult" is so often associated in our society with morally depraved hardcore pornography - rather than with wholesome, loving, constructive behavior.

3. Children are harmed when their parents' marriage is destroyed by an addiction to hardcore pornography.

4. Children are harmed when their own addiction to hardcore pornography robs them of the opportunity to develop in a healthy manner psychologically, morally, and spiritually.

5. Children are harmed when they receive a sex miseducation from viewing hardcore pornography - almost all of which depicts adulterous, degrading, high-risk, perverse, promiscuous, and/or violent sexual behaviors.

6. Children are harmed when they are sexually abused by other children who imitate sexual behaviors they have viewed in hardcore pornography.

7. Children are harmed when they are sexually abused by adults who use hardcore pornography to desensitize and instruct their child victims.

8. Children are harmed when they are sexually abused by adults who are inflamed by hardcore pornography that depicts performers who may be 18 but who look like (or are made to look like) they are children.