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More on hotel porn Date published: 7/18/2008
OUR JUNE 23 editorial, "Without Reservations," positing a link between hard-core hotel-room pornography and the sexual trafficking of women and children, inspired a thoughtful cross-examination by Spotsylvania letter-writer Bill Mehr ("Are porn, pregnancy rates really connected?" July 2). We thank Mr. Mehr for his views and the opportunity to extend ours. To clarify, the earlier editorial never suggested that men who view porn in Fredericksburg-area hotels, where often pay-for-view titles like "Barely Legal/Corrupted No. 7" abound, charge out onto city streets to seduce (or worse) teenage girls. Our argument was that in a town that is trying to curb a teen birth rate three times the state average--a statistic inordinately fed, according to its ob-gyn mayor, by the impregnation of girls by adult men--the blithe acceptance of Lolitaized porn (perhaps 20 percent of the typical PPV "menu") in big-name hotels raises the question: Are we serious? Think of it this way. If the city's smoking rate, along with its rates of lung disease, trebled the state average, would we wink (figuratively speaking) at cigarette girls pushing cancer sticks in hotel lobbies? To stem a public-health epidemic, shouldn't government walk its talk by discouraging that which condones the crisis? Shouldn't good corporate citizens re-evaluate implicated products and services? Indeed, precisely on such grounds, Marriott, a notorious hotel pornmeister, recently banned smoking from its properties. On the question of whether porn--pseudo-kiddie or otherwise--fuels sex crimes generally, the evidence, as Mr. Mehr notes (and we allowed), is less certain than, say, Newton's laws of motion. But reason indicts, arraigns, and all but convicts porn. Adult Video News--the closest thing the smut industry has to a professional journal--estimates that 20 percent of porn viewers become addicts. As porn increasingly colonizes the imaginations of these men, they tend to view human beings as objects on their mind's sexual stage and may seek to duplicate pornographic scenarios with flesh-and-blood people. This is, in fact, a common complaint of wives seeking divorces, a growing number of which are porn-linked: In a 2003 survey of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, two-thirds said that the Internet--especially Internet porn--played a significant role in divorces. MORE PORN, MORE ABUSE
I agree. FLS takes teen pregnancy and mangles it into a diatribe against porn. I'm no expert on either topic, but the editorial fails to provide any nexus. Fact - teens are impregnated by adults: how do we go from there to porn without further information regarding the nature of these cases? Scary conclusion-jumping!
Between the power of the consumer and unnecessary government intervention. I, for one, felt the first editorial was an effort by the FLS to spur local/state government to "do something". This seems to be an effort to dispel that concern. That's a good thing-because local hotels will respond to the power represented by individuals and civic organizations if they make their voices heard. And parents, DO YOUR JOB! Statistics show consistently that kids raised in stable, happy homes don't become statistics!
And you think PORN contributes to teen pregnancy?Your idealistic and outdated Christian Ethic is what CONTRIBUTES TO TEEN AGE PREGNANCY !!! Teach your kids about birthcontrol, about DYING FROM AIDS, about the ending of their lives as they know it., Hell, do volunteer work for FAHASS,but EDUCATE your children. We did, and all of my friends have, and you know what? NO PREGNANCIES !! GO FIGURE !! YES...We live in an area of Va with the highest teen pregnancy rate & very high aids rate...keep up the good work
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