In the first numbered section of this Statement, I demonstrated that modern pornography is not innocuous, and that it has nothing to do with the classic "naughty magazines" that featured leggy models in skimpy bathing suits. Rather, it is thousands of magazines, quickie films and now videotapes with close-ups of nothing more than bestiality, masturbation, rape, sadomasochism, gang sexual assault, fetishes, and even sex-murder actually occurring. Here I ask the Congress to consider what happens to the mind, the consciousness, the subconsciousness, that way of looking at life and sex, the entire value-orientation of a man who is a devotee of this stuff .. who entertains himself for hours on end, devouring each new issue of the magazines, collecting pornographic films, joining "sex clubs" to watch in someone's bedroom the orgies the films and videotapes and magazines instruct in how to carry out. Let us assume for the sake of argument that this man--whether from lack of opportunity or lack of boldness--never actually commits a pornography-related crime; that is, he never commits a crime that is sexually-related and that amounts to an acting out of fantasies depicted in his pornography collection. For all of that, would the members of Congress feel comfortable with such a man as a next-door neighbor? Consider what he has made himself: He is a person who entertains himself by paying to watch women have intercourse with dogs. He is a person who enjoys watching helpless women being raped on film. He has filled his mind, his memory and his very subconsciousness with gory scenes of sadomasochistic torture. As he watches, he joins the perverted action and takes part vicariously. He wants to cannibalize, in his imagination, the pleasure he sees-and approves--and wants for himself as he views the protagonist abuse his erotic victim. The more fully he can immerse himself in these scenes the more pleasure he pirates for himself. He knows that the actor in the films is enjoying himself immensely; he wants that enjoyment for himself: He would like to be the actor in the film, just the way people at a boxing or wrestling match identify with one participant as he batters the other into a bloody pulp. (But they attended such spectacles rarely and, in modern times at least, the barbarities are infrequent; our modern pornophile can pursue his self-debasement for hours on end, and typically he seeks ever new kicks through an endless pursuit of ever more twisted pictures of perversions.) Unless Congress acts, it is inevitable that almost every neighborhood in the country will have such a person resident. In the article already cited, the Psychiatrist Wertham observed: Negative media effects do not generally consist in ments. What is true of violence is also true of scenes of animal sex. As practitioners of hypnosis have demonstrated, the subject, under hypnosis, can be made to "regress" to infancy even; and as he travels back mentally through his personal history, he can recall specific scenes and experiences which had long been dormant in his subconscious. Thus Wertham notes that negative media effects are long-range and cumulative, that images are stored in the brain--if ordinary childhood experiences such as the first day of grammar school or even losing a toy, how much the more scenes of sexual torture or rape? On one level, it is quite true that we never fully forget what we have learned; it is also true that visual experiences constantly repeated and reinforced penetrate the subconsciousness and become part of the very psychic being of the person. The clinical psychiatrist Dr. Melvin Anchell has written: The adverse effects of audiovisual obscenities permitted in today's entertainment media are sexually devastating to children and adults. The belief that pornography is unsuitable mental fare for children but harmless for adults is illogical. It is like saying a human being suddenly becomes immune to poison at age 18. (Newspaper article, A Psychiatrist Looks at Pornography, emphasis added.) He Dr. Anchell goes on to point out that a young person absorbed in pornography frequently "fails to make a mature adjustment. remains stunted in self love which is satisfied with immature fore pleasures." Pornography embellishes the physical sex life of free lovers and perverts who find it difficult to fulfill their complete sexual needs. But complete sexuality is more than a physical relationship. To be life-sustaining, human sexuality must encompass the mind as well as the body. The affectionate component is as important as the physical. Without companionship and affection, the sex act alone produces frustrations that can lead to serious sexual maladjustments. Free lovers and sexual deviants are in a constant state of conflict with themselves. They project their conflicts onto others with sadistic vengeance. Though I could continue in this vein, I believe that the point has been proved beyond cavil: the devotee of pornography is--lit erally--psychologically sick. Now, by withdrawing any effective Federal laws against the already monstrously-large magazine/film/videotape porn industry, the Congress will hasten the expansion of what already is--literally--a psychologically sick generation. This is no longer a question of how the man down the street entertains himself in private. It is now a question whether my other neighbors and I have a right to quarantine and prevent the spread of sickness in our neighborhood. It is also a question whether my children will attend schools where some of the teachers have made themselves psychologically sick, a condition we see too often in these times. It is also very much a question whether the TV producers, the magazine and other media editors and writers, and even some of our political leaders might, over the years and because the dam that was the law has burst, make themselves psychologically sick. Unless one believes in widespread schizophrenia, it makes no sense to say that people can be psychologically sick in one area of their lives--the intimate area of sex and attitudes about it--but will be ordinary, normal, healthy, good people in other areas. As an American citizen, I will be harmed in a thousand subtle and some not-so-subtle ways, if some of my neighbors, and their children, and the local school teachers, and some of those who create our public entertainments, and some of those who run our government--if these people become psychologically sick. Because some people seem incapable of perceiving psychological or moral contaminants to what, in a broad sense, one might call our spiritual environment, I will conclude this section by returning merely to my pornophile neighbor. Consider his influence: Our daughters, while babysitting or visiting, chance to turn on his videotape player and view scenes of strapping women raping men and worse--much worse our junior-high-school-aged sons are invited by the neighbor's older boys to pore over the father's poorly-concealed collection of manuals on autoerotic stimulation and worse--much worse... during a party for the neighbor's college-age children the main entertainment, talked about for months afterwards by everyone in attendance, are sadomasochistic films. ... Perhaps our government, which subsidizes both the growing of tobacco and research on cancer, will increase its appropriations for mental health, to address the psychological problems of the porn addicts. Regrettably, after-the-fact palliatives will not cure the moral contamination, typified by a case given by Dr. Anchell in the article already quoted: Marty, age 17, came to me for treatment of his recurrent It had begun four years previously when Marty was in The movie turned out to be hard-core pornography, |