Yesterday I saw an anonymous piece which appeared in the National Review Online. Titled "Getting Serious About Pornography," the author claims that:

-- her husband left her because of porn

-- pornography is an addictive drug

-- hearings should be held, and the federal government should get involved.

When I emailed M. Simon a link to this, he was quick to suspect something was up with the timing. He emailed me back, saying,

I sent NR a bit of my mind on the subject:

She doesn't know why her husband left her but she blames pornography.

It's an April Fool joke right?

Anyway, because this isn't a new issue and I don't like repeating myself (or engaging in fruitless debates which convince no one), I might have ignored the piece entirely, but then I saw Dr. Helen's very thoughtful PJM post on the matter. She takes issue with "the insinuation that porn is to blame for an entire generation not being able to form lasting marriages and that it is damaging families and leading to rape and every other kind of ill in society" when the data show otherwise, and (noting that the husband ran off with another woman and not a magazine) expresses skepticism over whether pornography was the real culprit.

The author of the article thinks that she lost her husband due to "porn" (he ran off with another woman). She mentions a number of reports that point to porn's "harmful effects," such as one released by the Witherspoon Institute. "The Social Costs of Pornography" claims that pornography has negative effects on individuals and society. The ominous video on the report's website, however, makes me wonder what its real motive is. Perhaps it's controlling the sexuality of males?

Dr. Helen's conclusion shows that the author omits the full picture while blaming porn for things it does not cause, and warns about the danger of government intervention:

...although Anonymous suggests that porn viewership leads to rape, rape rates are plummeting even as porn becomes more pervasive.

I am very sorry that Anonymous's marriage did not work out. However, while blaming porn for every social ill and for her marriage dissolving may make her feel better, crusading for laws to make other men pay for this failure will not lead to better marriages. It will lead to even more men going underground to view porn -- and feeling resentful while they do.

I think there are many reasons that marriages are not working out, but porn seems to be the least of the problems. And I wonder -- does porn distort men's attitudes as much as romance novels and Lifetime TV distort women's? Maybe we should discuss the many social institutions that are giving women unrealistic expectations of men and a sense that they have the right to control men, and men's sexuality, in their own interest.

She claims that pornography is a "narcotic" which hides behind the First Amendment:

Consider a narcotic so insidious that it evades serious scientific study and legislative action for decades, thriving instead under the ever-expanding banner of the First Amendment.

According to an online statistics firm, an estimated 40 million people use this drug on a regular basis. It doesn't come in pill form. It can't be smoked, injected, or snorted. And yet neurological data suggest its effects on the brain are strikingly similar to those of synthetic drugs. Indeed, two authorities on the neurochemistry of addiction, Harvey Milkman and Stanley Sunderwirth, claim it is the ability of this drug to influence all three pleasure systems in the brain -- arousal, satiation, and fantasy -- that makes it "the piece de resistance among the addictions."

By the way, some women like porn; as one commenter to Dr. Helen's post said,

Speaking of myths about porn, am I the only one disheartened that this whole conversation can happen and nobody debunks the idea that only Men enjoy it? Many women also enjoy pornography; either by themselves, or watching it with their partner. We've made the social price for Women enjoying porn so high that we've put it in the closet because the Male is (by long standing mythology) the sex craved horndog and the Female is the forever recipient of his advances. This view of course hurts both men and women.

I'm very skeptical about the idea of showing people porn and pronouncing it a "drug" simply because changes are detected in their brain scans. I'm sure that showing them anything that gets their sexual attention would work the same way (including text). Moreover, I'd be willing to bet that a guy who gets turned on by a sexy pair of legs in a video might get just as turned on by a sexy pair of legs walking down the street. So, should "provocative" attire also be considered an "addictive drug"? What is that an argument for? Veiling women?

If the idea is that the First Amendment should not protect things that excite the brain, what are the implications for other texts and images that excite people -- like "hate speech" or, say, Muhammad cartoons? Suppose you were able to corral some radical fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, strap them down, hook them up to a brain scanner while prying their eyes open, and then forced them to stare at offensive images of their pbuh prophet. I am sure a lot of excitement would occur in certain areas of the brain. Does that mean controversial images are drugs too? Why not?

Anyway, I know I've talked about this before, but whether you like porn or not, I think the idea of treating it as a drug is absolutely beyond the pale.

And if science determines that certain forms of speech are like drugs, if that's an argument for anything it might be an argument in favor of offering more and better "drugs" to counter the alleged ill-effects of the first drugs. Fight speech with more speech. But the anti-porn crowd wouldn't like that, because just as the anti-drug people want to control what goes into your body, anti-porn activists want to control what goes into your mind.

While I have long seen the war on porn as a war on the First Amendment, this new meme ups the ante substantially by introducing a noxious new concept that outside images should be regulated not merely because they are "immoral," but because they have an effect on the brain.

To my mind, that's Orwellian thinking.

What goes on inside my brain is my business.