This week’s column and a little backstory. . .
Hi friends – here is this week’s column about the “pornification of the culture” as Laura Ingraham rightly calls it. I’ve just had it with the stuff that can get onto my computer, even with filters. I’m also furious at the billboards my children and I are forced to look at driving down the highway. Some of the ads on buses and at bus stops aren’t a whole lot better. But lately it’s the internet that really drives me crazy, read below and you’ll see why.
What I didn’t get into in this piece (no room!) is that I think a lot of parents are very naive about what their kids are viewing, either purposely or accidentally, on-line. They think “we go to church, my little Johnny would never do that.” Yes, he would, because these images play on the good, God given sexuality in us that is supposed to respond to sensuality. It’s just that instead of lifting up the good things about seduction and sensuality within marriage, these images degrade us and sexuality in general.  So it’s not just that this stuff is degrading, as I tell my kids, it’s that it portrays sex in a way that isn’t good enough for them!
http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=HART-10-18-07
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October 25, 2007
Dear Betsy,
I’ve enjoyed and related to your writings for many years now. Being a single parent myself, raising four children, three boys and a girl, we can use all the help we can get. Your thoughts have always provided to me a strong foundation for the incredibly difficult job it is to raise kids in today’s sometimes lazy, crazy, and negligent parenting culture. Your recent column, The Pornification of Culture was especially relevant because I have two boys, 10 and 11 years old, who spend more time on the computer than they do watching TV. I don’t understand why it has become acceptable for free porn to be so accessible to anyone who has the internet. The fact that you can trip, or stumble, upon porn when making innocent searches through any of the search engines is an inexcusable result of the way the internet developed in such a hap-hazard way. I wouldn’t allow a dirty book store on my street, why am I allowing them in my computer?
The solution I believe is two fold. First, all porn must be segregated into a different domain name ending with XXX. Any porn sites ending with COM, ORG, EDU, GOV, or any other name need to be disciplined. This will take regulation of some sort. Second, all ISP’s must restrict all XXX sites to a permission only basis. So if you have Comcast as a provider, Comcast blocks all XXX sites unless specific notification is given otherwise. Same with all the ISP’s. Owners of the computers should be able to check at any time to verify if the XXX access is allowed or not. This solution is simple on the surface, but probably difficult to execute. Unlike TV, where broadcast stations are regulated and restricted, anyone can own a server on the internet and “broadcast†their own channel, and that‘s one of the great qualities of the internet. However, the internet should be more like TV. I know there’s a dirty movie somewhere on my TV, but I didn’t order it, so I won’t see it.
Thanks Betsy, for letting us know we’re not alone in our thinking.
- Dan
October 25, 2007
Dear Betsy,
I found a reference to you through in the article “Online pornography and children” by Mrs. Roslyn Phillips, in “Australian Family Association” journal. Thank you for that article.
Yours faithfully,
Yves
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