John Tanner, the attorney general in Daytona Beach, Florida, has taken a stand against pornography, but has been criticized for violating their First Amendment rights.
Rapists are 15 times more likely than non-offenders to have been exposed to “hard-core” pornography before the age of 10. Over 70% of all porn falls into the hands of minors, much of it given by depraved adults seeking to molest children. The FBI estimates that recreational killers murder 5,000 people in the United States each year. Most of them, say FBI officials, feed on pornography.
A 1984 study released by the University of New Hampshire revealed that rape rates are highest in States which have high sales of sexually explicit materials and lax enforcement of obscenity laws. A crackdown on adult bookstores, X-rated movie theaters, and massage parlors in Cincinnati resulted in an 83% drop in rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults. Pornography is a nasty, corrupt and defiling business. It is the kind of material that produces the “wilding” in New York City parks!
Dr. Victor Cline, a University of Utah psychologist, is quoted in a brochure by attorney Tanner. He has found four things to be true when males become immersed in pornography. These are based on a year long study of 225 individuals. This four-factor syndrome repeated itself again and again in their lives.
1. Addiction. Pornography is highly addictive. Dr. Cline says, “I find that as men get into it, it grabs them. It gets a hold on them, in a sense analogous to heroin or morphine.” They develop a need for new sexual highs that is both a “strong psychological/physical addiction.”
2. Escalation. The individual continually needs rougher, more mean, bizarre, deviant and explicit imagery to get his “turn-ons.” Dr. Cline explains, “When wives try to placate their husbands by participating in bizarre sexual fantasies they find to their dismay that there is no end to it.”
3. Desensitization. What at first was shocking, even disgusting and repulsive, becomes commonplace. It becomes acceptable and legitimate. Dr. Cline reveals it eventually becomes attractive, as the conscience is seared, and the individual is desensitized to its potential dangers.
4. Acting out. This is the final stage. Men begin to do things they have seen in the materials. Dr. Cline found, “An appetite has been cultivated, conscience has been immobilized by the desensitization process.” What was once wrong or immoral is now legitimized. It appears from the films, videos and magazines that “everyone is doing it.”
Dr. Cline, as a marriage and family therapist, daily sees the sad and tragic outcomes of shattered lives where men get involved in pornography. He states, “It is a direct attack upon the family and the marriage relationship.”