For those concerned with Free Speech (or Porn), it is time to get active.

Not superior specifically in terms of its sexual openness as compared to, say, a Christian society? Well I answered that India has not exactly been the epitome of a prosperous healthy society considering its extreme poverty and other social ills, but in any case if you really did not mean to put the sexual openness illustrated in the temple images above a Christian society's sense of sexual propriety, then I stand corrected and will retract my statement.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-29-2005 10:45 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 06-29-2005 10:46 PM

C'mon. That's a stupid question. It's like asking "if vanilla ice cream is delicious, then why do they make chocolate and strawberry?"

Drifting OT slightly, but I had a thought (it does happen):There was a recent study that indicates that watching pronography improves the quality of sperm. Given the instruction to go forth and multiply, does this discovery mean that watching pornography is actually encouraged by scripture?(Probably not, but it's a good excuse.)Incidentally, this only applies to heterosexual pornography. A woman/women with no men doesn't have the same effect, so is still bad and evil and wrong.

Did I say you did? There was discussion about the harm pornography can do to marriages.

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It depends on whether it is good or bad or neutral. I have been arguing all along here that it is bad for relationships, bad for women, bad for marriages etc.

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Even if you don't (yet) have a spouse it is an abuse of the one you may yet have, and it certainly is infidelity to your present spouse.

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I think it mostly has to do with its tending to turn the spouse/partner into a sex object and make demands on that partner, conscious or unconscious, that may not be welcome.

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If in fact it contributes to increased murder and rape of women in the culture (I think that is a distinct possibility) or puts pressures on marriages of the sort I have been focusing on, or feeds some men's dehumanizing images of women, as bodies and not persons...

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OK, so porn is bad for marriages, it is infidelity, objectifying, demanding, possibly drives a man more towards rape and murder, and puts pressures on marriages and feeds on dehumanizing women.I would consider a marriage where the husband is unfaithful, objectifies and dehumanizes his wife and makes unwelcome demands, a close facsimilie to a ruined marriage. Especially if he starts raping and murdering... I did, I never said anyone else said anything about it. I was not leaping to unwarranted conclusions. If you want to actually address the point I'll help you out: Perhaps you can highlight that my comment is a false dichotomy and point to other alternatives.This message has been edited by Modulous, Thu, 30-June-2005 08:49 AM

No offense meant, but the reason most people can stand to see females without wanting to puke is that we are not disfunctional.I should be careful not to say you have a problem because if you can get through life and are otherwise happy, then your disfunction is not a problem. Clearly though, you should not be reacting to normal anatomy with nightmare scenarios that make you want to puke. That's like saying every time you see forests or a certain flower you feel the need to puke. That's not normal cognitive functioning, or healthy.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

In some countries it would. You were asking why sexual elements had to be embellished if allusion were enough, and I pointed to a nonporn film where sexual elements had been exaggerated. And it was specifically from the Bible.We are only discussing difference of degree. Because different degrees of explicitness are acceptable to different people. Samson and Delilah could be found totally pornographic to some cultures due to its explicitness. Or let's say "bad" due to its explicitness.Where is the line for where explicitness is too much, or bad? How is that line drawn?There is also the issue of make new and different things, or improving on older things. But Crash has already addressed this well enough.By the way, I notice you managed to skip over the explicit details within Ezekial. At this point even Tal has recognized and quoted its extreme graphic content.How on earth do you escape a description of girls having sex with men with cocks like donkeys and cum like horses being called graphic? That really escapes me.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

This harks back to an earlier point I was making - it's impossible to have a sensible debate about this because half of the debaters want to talk about some abstract thing called "porn" without actually debating any specifics. Very strange......

All it takes is a small percentage of men to be inspired to rape and murder, not the entire population, to make porn a bad thing. All it takes is a general tendency to a dehumanizing of women, only really noticeable in a small percentage of the population, to make porn a bad thing. When you say "ruined marriages" as if I were saying it always does that to all marriages you are mischaracterizing my point. I think it is a tendency, a trend, and not a good one.And the alternative to porn is not repression. Yes that is a false dichotomy, thank you. Other alternatives to porn? How about healthy happy marriages?

My question about increasing explicitness was a reference to the other poster, I don't remember who, who said that people get bored and want more. That's not about inborn proclivities, it's about the product's whetting the appetite for new things. That is what I meant anyway.

But as I stated before - if I see a film that features Coprophilia or Urolagnia it does not follow that I wish to run out and try those practices with the first person I met.

Not got a problem with that idea. However, it would be difficult to untangle the old problem. If porn was totally non-existant, would the resultant sexual frustration cause more rape than allowing it? Unfortunately its mostly a matter of opinion, with only a small amount of data available.After all, people have been inspired by the Bible to murder, but that doesn't make the Bible a bad thing...nor any of the other things which people have been inspired by. Was it just the Bible, or was there a deeper force at work, such as mental illness or a nurtured misogyny brought about by child abuse?Alas, it is often impossible to say whether it is the porn that drives these rapists. I don't think it is, I think its falling into the trap of looking for simple explanations for complex phenemona. I don't believe I was, since I wasn't being deliberatly general in my text, and I believe I chose the appropriate tone for that. When I said: "Whether [porn] ruins marriages, or not", I meant that the debate was regarding whether or not porn, in and of itself, has the ability to ruin a marriage...the opposing position being that if porn can ruin a marriage there were deeper problems with the marriage to begin with, probably surrounding sexuality and communication. Example: I enjoy porn, every partner that I have been with knows this, I have openly communicated it. One partner was not entirely happy about it, and some other sexuality issues and the differences were irreconcilable: we didn't get married. Well, lets not misrepresent things too much here, whilst the end might be the same, the means were different. I proposed that expressing oneself by 'indulging in a little fantasy about a girl' was more healthy than repressing it. If that fantasy is realized visually using porn then so be it. It is better to fantasize than to act out (another possibility, but unacceptable to both of us (in general)).You propose that a healthy happy marriage is an alternative to porn. I disagree. A healthy happy marriage can include porn. Are you suggesting that if one is in a healthy happy marriage, one is not desirous of other flesh? I contend that anyone who truly believes they do not find others strongly sexually attractive once they get married is either a right and a very very rare individual, or they are wrong and they are repressing their sexuality...which is going to lead to bad things.Perhaps you are contending that one can be sexually attracted to someone outside of marriage, but express that through sleeping with their wife? I'm sure that works for some people, but not all, indeed its possibly even a minority. I imagine that most people desire to fantasize about others, and in general, men are stimulated by visual aids such as pornography. For these people to halt this desire, to push it down, to repress it, is potentially dangerous, no?

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That is ridiculous and only indicative that you have never actually read Playboy. I will give you that it trends to youngish
(though they sometimes feature older women), and perhaps can be said to feature more caucasions. Outside of that you are dead wrong. They have lots of brunettes and red heads, and girls with both large and small breasts.

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Some stats from the Playboy website about Playmates:Average age: 22Average measurements: 35-23-35Average height: 5'6"Average weight: 115 poundsLightest Playmate: 85 poundsHeaviest Playmate: "they'll never tell"Percentage that are blonde: 40%Since the 1960's, the average height has increased by 2" but the weight has only increased one pound. This means that the models have become considerably thinner over the years. They won't even list the heaviest Playmate because clearly, if it were to be a normal or high-sounding weight, it would be bad. (?)So, that's a pretty high percentage of blondes when there are 3 other hair colors. That's also a pretty tall, VERY thin average height and weight, and the average measurements also indicate a very thin woman.

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If you want to leave out saggy breasts, and obviously overweight then that would be true. They also manipulate the photos to remove cellulite.

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Well, then this supports my contention that Playboy teaches men that cellulite, which is normal, healthy, very common female body fat is ugly and that women who don't have any are more desireable that those who do.I will remind you that the "medicalization" of cellulite is a recent phenomena. The word wasn't even invented until a couple of decades ago. Before that, cellulite was known as "normal female body fat", and even bathing beauty contest winners in the 20's and 30's had it.

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So youngish (I'd say youthful even if older), toned, and firm breasts (of whichever size).

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I'd say young rather than young"ish", if the average age is only 22. I'll grant that the average breast size is smaller than I expected, but the height is taller, the waist size smaller, and the weight is much lower than I expected.

Nonsense. You certainly wouldn't apply that criteria to any other situation, now would you? Religion occasionally inspires a small percentage of people to rape and kill, often in amazingly brutal ways, or to commit mass murder on a scale that leaves a nation stunned; surely you wouldn't say that makes religion a bad thing? I mean, I'm fairly ambivalent, or even possibly antangonistic, to religion, and even I wouldn't make that argument. Another false dichotomy. How about happy marriages for the people that want them, and porn for the people that want that? Or both for the people that want both?

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It depends on the personalities and the degree of addiction to porn, which really is a big problem in some marriages these days.

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Well, sure, if someone is addicted to porn then they have a problem, the same as if they aare addicted to alcohol they have a problem.But surely you don't suggest that since some people can become addicted to alcohol that all alcohol is bad and that those who are not addicted shouldn't be free to have a glass of wine or a beer now and then, do you?

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All it takes is a small percentage of men to be inspired to rape and murder, not the entire population, to make porn a bad thing. All it takes is a general tendency to a dehumanizing of women, only really noticeable in a small percentage of the population, to make porn a bad thing.

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[quote]All it takes is a small percentage of men to be inspired to rape and murder, not the entire population, to make military service a bad thing. All it takes is a general tendency to a dehumanizing of all people, only really noticeable in a small percentage of the population, to make military service a bad thing.