A couple of weeks ago, Sen. Sam Brownback held his third hearing on pornography in the last twelve months. Like the last round of hearings, this one seemed to be most concerend that porn — gasp! — induces good, God-fearing folk to masturbate.

Brownback kicked off a 90-minute discussion of hardcore sex scenes, self-gratification and its negative impacts.

“This is not just a simple, benign form of expression, but rather a potentially addictive substance,” explained one of the subcommittee’s panelists, Jill Manning, a sociologist from Brigham Young University. “People watch a movie, read a book, listen to music, but they masturbate to pornography. In that difference, you have a different stimulation to the brain.”

Good to know that conservative sociologists — they exist! — are loopy and useless as their leftist counterparts. Yes, Dr. Manning. There are palpable differences between masturbating and reading a book. Imagine what public libraries would look like if that weren’t the case!

She went on to explain that the experience of masturbation activates about 14 neurotransmitters and hormones, causing a quick chain reaction of brain activity. “There have been some experts who have even argued that, in and of itself, overrides informed consent when encountering this material,” she said, apparently suggesting that an adult’s own sexual self-stimulation can lead to a loss of judgment.

Which would explain why everyone who has ever come into contact with pornography has broken into an unplanned, uncontrollable fit of masturbation.

Pornography, she continued, had been shown to increase the risk of divorce, decrease marital intimacy and cause misunderstandings about the prevalence of less common sex practices like group sex, bestiality and sadomasochistic activity.

Not really.

Men are not the only victims. Women, she said, make up about 30 percent of the audience for online pornography.

That’s kinda’ hot.

Sen. Orrin Hatch attended a portion of the hearing to voice his support for a clampdown on pornography. He compared explicit sexual material to high-fat food and secondhand smoke, saying this was a “problem of harm, not an issue of taste.”

Lovely. Proof that even conservative Republicans will latch on to the socialist “public health” model when it suits their purposes.

The only other senator to participate was Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who is a ranking member of the Constitution subcommittee. He told the panelists that he shared Brownback’s concerns over pornography involving children and human sex trafficking. But he seemed more skeptical about the overall tone of the hearing.

“The subject of this hearing suggests that we may be faced with proposals that go well beyond what Congress can constitutionally undertake,” Feingold said.

A touch of good sense from the Wisconsin senator. If only he applied the same critical thinking to campaign finance reform.

But [Brownback] mentioned several possible options, including a law that would encourage families to file civil suits against porn producers if they felt harmed by the material…

Tort reform! Personal responsibility!

He also talked about a federal public education campaign, along the line of anti-drug advertising, to inform Americans about the dangers of watching explicit sex.

I’m sure there’s a joke about fried eggs in here, somewhere. Actually, I support this. Only because I’m certain the anti-porn commercials will inspire every bit as much unintentional humor — if not more — than the ONDCP’s anti-drug commercials.

Finally, Brownback spoke of possibly expanding the law to ban certain types of pornography beyond the current obscenity statutes.

[...]

But he was repeatedly cautioned by one of the witnesses, Rodney Smolla, the dean of the University of Richmond School of Law…

“If you double or triple, or multiply tenfold, the prosecutorial efforts, you would see results, no doubt about it,” Smolla said. “The law doesn’t need changing so much as the social will to go after it.”

You mean like putting the war on porn on par with fighting terrorism?

In the meantime, however, the Justice Department continues to win obscenity convictions. Just a few weeks ago, Edward Wedelstedt, the millionaire owner of a chain of adult video stores, pled guilty to distributing a video later deemed obscene in Texas, “Tits & Ass #8.”

I should probably get a copy of this movie for research purposes.

At the hearing, Brownback nonetheless pressed his witnesses to find ways to expand the legal regulation of whole categories of pornography. He asked the panel’s legal experts if the courts might be moved to whittle away at First Amendment rights in the face of a public health crisis. “Are we getting to the point of evidence where a court would be willing to say this is enormously harmful?” Brownback asked.

Translation: How can I violate the Constituion, trample personal freedom, and contradict conservative talking points about personal responsibiity without actually looking like that’s what I’m doing?

And again with the “public health.” One of Brownback’s witnesses apparently testified that masturbation “lights up your brain like a parade.”

Which makes me think I need to get to more parades.

Or that Brownback needs to have hearings on how we can ban them.

It’s too bad Brownback couldn’t have called corn flake baron John Harvey Kellogg to testify. Like Brownback, Kellogg longed to eradicate masturbation, which he dubbed “the silent killer of the night!”

In fact, if Brownback truly wants to wipe out self-pleasure, he ought to stop pussy-footing around with pissant censhorship hearings and hold hearings on Kellogg’s less subtle cures for the habit. Kellogg, for example, recommended circumcising boys at age seven or eight, without anesthetic, so as to instill a firm sense of pain with the penis (as opposed to pleasure). He also invented odd contraptions to line the pants that inspired chafing and bleeding should impure thoughts inspire an erection. Perhaps sensing that 30% of them would one day come to consume pornography, Kellogg had remedies for the ladies, too. He recommended pouring carbolic acid on the clitoris to deaden the seductive little organ’s nerve endings. If the woman persisted, he recommended female genital mutulation. That is, slicing the thing off entirely. Kellogg also reportedly started his cold cereal empire because he believed hot cereal (and hot foods generally) inspired eroticism. He also enjoyed yogurt enemas. Lots and lots of them.

Kellogg was just a man before his time! Or perhaps Brownback is a man after his. In any case, if we’re gonna’ get serious about the scourge of masturbation we ought to — you know — get serious about it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 20th, 2005 at 10:41 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.