So I heard this on the Rod Arquette (Utah radio) show last night. There is a group teaming up with Elizabeth Smart that wants to get rid of all porn in Utah somehow Their strategy is to follow the pattern big business did when they wanted us all to hate cigarettes. Change societies perception about cigarettes. Cigarettes use to be acceptable, on tv, in restaurants, at work, in the office, out in the open. Not no more!

Can it work?

http://www.11alive.com/news/local/elizabeth-smart-pornography-made-my-living-hell-worse/304985711



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/23/2016 10:08AM by poopstone.

So when is she going to talk about her father?

I would bet that Mrs. Smart discovered hubby being curious one evening while she was busy with her piety.

Somewhere in her mind, Elizabeth has equated porn with sexual deviancy. Guess what? Before porn there were deviants.

I would never, ever wish anything as horrific to happen to anyone as it did to her, but she needs to move on with her life.

As a survivor of sexual abuse, I can only assume that Elizabeth wants to prevent sexual abuse in the first place. Eliminating Porn will not achieve that.

RMM

...wow.

She didnt say she wants to ban porn-at least not in that article. She said Mitchell used porn to arouse himself and then raped her. Not the same thing.Maybe she does want to ban porn,I dont know, but I have never heard her say that and certainly not in this article. Let's try to be accurate.

She has teamed up with Fight The New Drug. They are the ones who produced this video. She is fighting all pornography.

Still, she didnt say that or that she wants to ban all pornography.

It is possible to have concerns with porn and not want to ban it outright and in all cases. It is also possible to support an organization and not agree with everything they say. Besides most porn is constitutionally protected speech.

bona dea unregistered Wrote:
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Besides most porn is constitutionally protected speech.

I wouldn't be surprised if they hope to get a new constitutional amendment. It happened with alcohol consumption, and it could happen again with depictions of sexuality.

She's also spoken out repeatedly against Mormon purity culture.

She's free to warn anyone against anything she likes that she finds harmful. Even if we disagree, and I do, the price she pays should not be condescending comments about her trauma. I find that sickening.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/23/2016 11:36AM by woodsmoke.

I want to ban harps.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
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> I want to ban harps.

...and accordions.

flanders Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Dave the Atheist Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I want to ban harps.
>
> ...and accordions.


Definitly accordions... *shudders*

Elizabeth is a harpist, not an accordionist.

"Definitly accordions... *shudders*"

That reminds me of someone's definition of a gentleman: a man who knows how to play the accordion, but chooses not to in public.

Except for Weird Al. He can play his accordion all he wants.

She is working for an organization that is trying to ban porn. She lives in a Mormon culture currently at war with porn. There is no way that she could not know what she is doing. It just isn't possible.

She has a right to take whatever positions she wants. It is a free country. I don't know why anyone would feel the need to pretend that Elizabeth Smart hasn't just thrown her support to the "Fight the new drug" "Porn kills love", etc.

The whole reason for being of the "Fight the new drug" organization is to ban porn or convince everyone to stop watching porn. Since they have a fairly limited message/concern, I am not sure what other organizational goal of theirs she could be supporting.

Isn't her 15 minutes up yet!???

If what had happened to her happened to me, I'd get whatever I could out of it.
People get money every day for playing games in public, performing in dumb movies, running off at the mouth on TV or in board meetings, selling fast food, defending killers and corporations...why on earth only be annoyed by this poor girl?

Her dad made his living selling real estate and was quite successful as a businessman.

For them, her being an advocate against sex crimes is viewed as both a public service, and a way to use her status to not only helping others but it also has made her a very wealthy individual in her own right.

Had she not survived it would be an entirely different conversation altogether.

:/

And she deserves to do so. People make money for far less worthy things every day.

"People make money for far less worthy things every day."

<cough>Kardashians<cough>

Yep. Advertising companies. TV producers. McDonalds.

But she shouldn't make money off of this? Please.

They need to start with the gate way to porn, clothing catalogs!

I was lured onto porn by the Sears catalog!

Also contributing was puberty. Bann puberty and more than half the battle will be won!

Boobs & buttocks... are the devil's playgrounds!

I preferred abs. Lots and lots of abs and pecs.

Don't forget the Sunday ads as well! Especially towards summertime!

Okay, I feel that some/much porn is simply erotic and harms no one. Some of it is violent, illegal, victimizing, and hurtful and as such, profoundly immoral.

I think immoral porn is somewhat similar to bigotry, racism, sexual predation and addiction to violence. All have been around in some form forever. The factor that has taken it all to an extreme level is the interconnectedness of social media via the internet. Where in the past, small groups were in touch and validating each other in whatever predilection they had, now these people have 'found their tribe,' and it is worldwide. They don't see themselves as out of the realm of normal, accepted behavior. They have plenty of acceptance from thousands of similar people all over the world and feel empowered to act out.

So for sickos, porn can be addictive and progressively evil because of the damage to the people who may be forced to be part of it.

For healthy people, erotic porn is like a glass of wine--no big deal.

Here's a simple chain of logic that helps me simplify it all:

This government does not legislate morality, or it shouldn't. Porn that was not made consensually in any small way ought to be illegal with punishments fitting the gravity of the crime. If there is a legitimate health crisis, let the evidence be presented. Otherwise, the Internet became a thing because of porn... literally. There are crime drops that coincide with digital technology accessibility, not rises. Porn is an outlet, not a gateway drug. At some point one is forced to admit we did not come from two fully formed adult Homo sapiens only six thousand years ago who never experimented with their own bodies — we come from a long line of mammals, including many curious apes who had a lot of down time all those millions of years straight. That's our heritage. Thats where the human sex drive comes from. Anyone is entitled to to their opinion, but to step in the way of somebody else's Liberty, especially when they ain't hurting no one, you gotta have a reason. You also have to consider whether the thing you want to ban is even really possible to ban or if you're just going to create a black market where your creepy uncle's old hard drive is suddenly worth millions of dollars.

"This government does not legislate morality, or it shouldn't. "

I'm guessing that you never lived in Utah. Not too long ago, we had a State Government position, officially called the "Porn Czar"
They tried to ban cable companies & satellite providers from showing Cinemax movies. You still can't legally buy an X-rated DVD in Utah. The entire Utah Legislature is about legislating morality.

This issue reminded me of an incident I hadn't thought about for many years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Rakolta

Terry Rakolta, Mitt Romney's sister-in-law, called for a boycott of "Married With Children" in 1989 on the grounds that it was too raunchy for network TV.

The outcome:

"However, the boycott did little economic damage to Fox and to Married… with Children. A year after the boycott, nearly all the defecting advertisers had returned, and ratings were higher. Rakolta herself felt that her boycott had contributed to the show's higher viewership."

And of course, you can now watch reruns of "Married...With Children" anytime. That show now appears tame, compared to what's on network TV nowadays.

Perhaps she should start by fighting religion as this man did what he did while under the delusion that he was a prophet of god and was commanded of god to take a wife, yada yada.

A huge percentage of the free world looks at porn occasionally to regularly. A very small percentage of people ever kidnap and rape. Sorry but your cause and effect association isn't really there. Just because most men in America look at porn and some men in America rape, it doesn't mean there is a cause and effect. Most men in America eat bacon and some bacon eating men have committed the crime of rape.... So I guess we should get bacon the hell out of our stores?

She also fights the Mormon culture pretty regularly as a commentator.

One of my cousins is a never Mo born and raised in Utah in the heart of Mormondom.

He started his life of crime as a teenager watching porn flicks in the comfort and privacy of his bedroom at his mother's home in Ogden, before branching out and becoming a psychopath criminal and later murderer.

Has been in and out of prison for a large portion of his adult life.

For him it only started with porn. It didn't end there.

Porn was easily accessible for him in Ogden as a teenager. It wasn't something had there been laws against I doubt it would've stopped him from getting his hands on. He would've found a way because it was illegal for minors then to have porn, and he could get it as easily as any adult at the time.

What porn did for him was contribute to his delinquency. It wasn't tasteful porn. It was sick porn he was into. Which was just as easily obtained as the "tasteful" variety. He was sick/psycho to begin with, his viewing of sleazy porn only made him a worse person than he was already rapidly becoming.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/23/2016 12:35PM by Amyjo.

It doesn't happen that way.

Psychopathy starts in childhood, either as a genetic trait; or due to profound abuse/neglect, a form of development that also produces borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. The other way it occurs is through traumatic brain injury later in life, when the regulation mechanisms are broken.

Your description sounds psychopathic: using extreme porn when society does not accept that would be anti-social behavior at a young age. There may also have been shoplifting, even cruelty to animals, bullying. Other symptoms would include. The subsequent pattern of "in-and-out" of jail fits the pattern too.

But the porn would not have transformed him into a psychopath. It may have appealed to that which was broken in him; it may then have redirected the underlying tendencies a bit. But the psychopathy you describe is much deeper, more fundamental, and earlier than the porn. Barring physical injury, psychopathy is usually in place by the end of the third year of life.

If you don't mind, roughly what period was your cousin/were you in Ogden?

My cousin lived there until he moved away as an adult. His teenage years were during the 1970's.

Last I heard he now lives in Washington. After serving time in Montana penitentiary for manslaughter.

His crimes started with pornography, which he wasn't arrested for - why? Maybe because he was buying the hard porn instead of selling it, I don't know. They didn't end there. That was his start as a criminal.

Agreed, his sociopathic tendencies were likely developing before that, but we didn't grow up together (thankfully!)

He was/is crazy as ever including as a teenager. In and out of jail. His initial arrests were for check fraud, forgery, car theft and such. Then he just kept deteriorating more into a life of crime.

After his last release from prison his mom died, and he got cancer. He says he's now a "born again Christian." I don't believe a word of it, coming from him.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/23/2016 01:47PM by Amyjo.

Hmm. I had relatives in Ogden back then. I wonder if I, or they, knew him.

Anyway, I've worked a large part of my life in an industry in which there are lots of psychopaths and narcissists. My ex was also damaged severely by a psychopathic father. Random outbursts of anger/violence, beating the wife and kids, lots of infidelity, shoplifting, other crimes without remorse. Your description is spot on.

I wonder if there were things in the way your cousin was reared as a kid that contributed. Things like high-conflict parents, neglect or physical or emotional abuse; weeks or months away from, or ignored by, the primary caregiver during the first two years of life.

The other thing is that if he had not been exposed to porn, he'd still have become a criminal. If he was a psychopath, as you persuasively say, then it was a done deal. Extreme sense of entitlement, grandiosity, lack of empathy or conscience. . . In his teenage years he'd be in and out of court and juvenile detention, with the pattern continuing at a more serious level when he became an adult and lasting the rest of his life. The presence or absence of porn would not have affected that much.

The conversion to Christianity is also not surprising. Part of pscyhopathy, as I've read about it and seen it, is grandiosity. In prison a fair number of psychopaths are born again--and many, including my ex-FIL, become priests. That way they are special to God, saved, perhaps even leaders with influence over others. When I hear a person introduce himself as a priest or pastor or other religious leader, red lights flash. The odds have risen that he is a narcissist or a psychopath.

It was readily available. All you had to know was where to go to find it. He knew the right places, had no problem finding it.

Back then it was the old movie projectors w/film reels. He thought it was so cool. It still makes me sick just remembering how devious and sinister he was.

I don't know why I didn't just tell his mom on him. I was "sworn to secrecy" when he told me, and showed me a clip of something he was watching. He had reels, not just one or two.

The porn was hard core, nothing soft about it.

Ogden in the 70's was in the top ten of the worst crime ridden cities in the United States. Satanism was flourishing during those years. I lived there during my junior year of high school with my mom, and peers of mine would drive by the Satanic house of worship downtown Ogden at night and gawk at people as they entered and left the building like it was a big, dark secret.

Met a handful of Satanists the summer before my senior year when I moved away to Palo Alto. They were really creepy people! I had no contact with my cousin after my summer in junior high. He was in and out of jail so often he wasn't around much during his later teenage years. I just avoided him altogether by then.

How do you know it started with porn? He also probably ate at Mcdonalds a lot as a teen, so could that be the cause?

Look, most men look at porn. I surely do. Perhaps you would classify what I look at as "sick", I don't know you so I don't know what you are offended by. But I have never committed a major felony in over 40 years of life. Most of the men I know also look at porn and I don't know a single person who has murdered or raped or kidnapped.

If 90% of men look at porn then of course 90% of men who murder also likely look at porn, but there is no cause and effect there.

I am not saying porn cant play a role in how people develop or what actions they take. I am sure most men who like watching porn that involves a woman having anal sex probably have asked their significant other to try anal. But, viewing porn has nothing to do with rape, murder, etc. Now if you want to more deeply classify it, to say something like people who view child porn are pedophiles then of course you are correct, but then again child porn is illegal. As are snuff films, etc.

Look at it this way. Scat porn is huge in Japan, but you don't see a lot of people taking a dump in public in Japan. In fact such behavior is extremely unlikely there. Just because someone enjoys seeing something doesn't mean they turn into an uncontrollable monster about it.

I know because I spent a summer there when I was 14 and he was 15.

He'd watch it when his mom wasn't home, and she didn't know about it.

He knew he was breaking the law but that just made it more exciting to him.

That was his start as a criminal. He thought it was really funny and entertaining. But the porn he was into was really sick, twisted, and just sleazy.

Like there's grades of movies A & B. His taste in movies was like a D or F. I kid you not. That just added to his delinquency, viewing that kind of trash.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/23/2016 01:26PM by Amyjo.

How do you know to rate the kind and quality of his porn? And the frequency of his viewing and the location of his viewing?

Was he a Communist?

As a career criminal, I can vouch for the fact that one does not need to view porn to get a toe hold in the industry and climb the corporate crime ladder.

I think it was the McDonald's!!

When I was home alone when I was 14 or 15 I would watch porn also, so would pretty much every 14 or 15 year old that I knew.

None turned into violent criminals...

I don't totally understand her position. She was kidnapped by a fundamentalist mormon psychopath who believed that god had called him to be a prophet and that he had to take multiple wives.

He was able to brainwash her using mormon teachings regarding girls and sex into believing that she was so unworthy that not even her family would want her back.

As part of that he used porn, drugs, violence, and rape to abuse her.

So why is porn the main problem? It seems to me like mormonism was a much bigger cause of her abuse and the main tool that psycho used to abuse her than anything else.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/23/2016 06:44PM by brucermalarky.

I agree, to me the main issue is Mormonism itself, as that psychopath used it as an excuse to kidnap, brainwash, and rape her repeatedly for months. He used the fundamentalist form of polygamy as an excuse, and the licked cupcake thing she was taught to keep her from trying to escape.

To me, it sounds that the only form of "therapy"she might have received was from the cult itself so she's started to parrot the church's teachings against pornography itself. As Utah is often #1 in porn viewing, it could be said that the majority of residents, especially Mormons are potential rapists. The fact is, most males view porn, but the majority of them aren't rapists or pedophiles at all.

When did she say it was the "main" problem? That's just putting words in her mouth. She actually openly says the opposite, that it wasn't the cause or the main problem.

Amyjo...

As a minor, did your cousin:

1) set fires, or was he intensely interested in fires?
2) wet the bed?
3) you said he was a bully...was he cruel to animals (or to younger kids)?

This is the triad of behaviors that often reliably predict later psychopathy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/2016 12:18AM by Tevai.

The anti-smoking campaign had facts on their side.

But those have never stopped TBMs.

Maybe they could do it. I'm interested to see the litigation that follows. Is touching yourself going to be illegal? Or is downloading anything above a PG-13-ish rating going to be like buying alcohol from the Utah state liquor store? Will we make girls cover up or throw battery acid in their face? Or will we ban them from school all together just so the boys won't look at them?

This easily turns into a witch hunt or lays the foundation for another Utah theocracy... or, should I say, more of one. I'm not sure the first one ever truly ended.

Elizabeth isn't being smart. I would never belittle her experience at the hands of a sex-crazed psychopath. She's been through enough. But allow me to point out that the man was a Mormon purist who believed that women were hardly better than chattel and that all of Utah had gone astray and owed him many wives as recompense or something. That'll be the day that we tell a story with a secularist in the spotlight that goes as far into CrazyTown just because he saw a boob on his computer.

You are really misrepresenting her position.

He wrote three sentences about Smart's position.

"Elizabeth isn't being smart. I would never belittle her experience at the hands of a sex-crazed psychopath. She's been through enough."

I don't see how that is misrepresenting her position. The rest is clearly his opinion, so I'm not sure what you find objectionable.

If we put that aside, Cold-Dodger's arguments are worth consideration. His portrayal of Mitchell seems right to me, and the church is indeed trying to use Smart's experience in the political ways that he indicates.

None of this was about "boobs on computers." It was about if porn, especially violent porn, increases the risks of sex offenders reoffending. Every single piece of evidence we have suggests it does.

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/09/01/15-time-playboy-cover-model-pamela-anderson-urges-people-to-stay-away-from-porn.html

Before people get instantly dismissive of Fox News, note that this is simply Fox news reporting on her op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, which is now mostly subscription-only.

I don't believe that, if it weren't for the LDS stance that all things sexual are/should be repressed, this would even be a topic.

Damn.

I posted two comments that made it past the censors 24 hours ago. One said that Jacob 2 states that the only permissible purpose of polygamy is procreation, that sex is the point. I said that we need to bear that in mind when discussing what the practice was in the 1840s.

In the other comment I wrote that the church fought the RLDS over this for decades and that, in the Temple Lot case, the LDS took affidavits from many of Joseph's wives stating that their marriages were marriages in every way. It would be unfair, I continued, to disregard all that testimony as well as the Lyons story, given that those were faithful women and their stories comported with the views of the LDS church in the late 19th century.

The DN posted those, left them up for 24 hours, and then deleted them. There were about 34 comments in total but now that is down to 29. I can't believe that only 29 people commented, so apparently the newspaper is trying to shut down the discussion completely.

Polygamy, sex with little girls, etc., are too sensitive to permit open discussion.

I don't totally understand her position. She was kidnapped by a fundamentalist mormon psychopath who believed that god had called him to be a prophet and that he had to take multiple wives.

He was able to brainwash her using mormon teachings regarding girls and sex into believing that she was so unworthy that not even her family would want her back.

As part of that he used porn, drugs, violence, and rape to abuse her.

So why is porn the main problem? It seems to me like mormonism was a much bigger cause of her abuse and the main tool that psycho used to abuse her than anything else.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/23/2016 06:43PM by brucermalarky.

It isn't the main problem, nor did she say so.

The odds of making pornography illegal circa Q3 2016 is pretty much nil. There are way to many SCOTUS rulings protecting that kind of speech. It wasn't always so, though. The odds of making porn less socially acceptable, like cigarettes, maybe, but I doubt it. I'm no fan of that material, and think it has done harm to our culture in general, but lets be realistic about the likelihood of it changing anytime soon.

Also, while it is nonsense that porn turns one into a sex maniac or a psycho-killer, it is equally absurd to believe constantly dosing on hardcore pornography is going to have *no* impact on one's mind, sexuality, and relationships. There is plenty of evidence it does.

If it's NSFW, it's certainly NSFKids!
Why on EARTH does the MORmON Doomsday Sex CULT insist on publishing depictions of their perverted Pagan Porn God?
What Brian David Mitchel did was precisely what Joseph's Myth did to his follower's wives and teenage daughters, as young as "a few months shy of 15", yet MORmONS sing his praises, knowing this?

She is a courageous woman. After all she has been through, to recover to the point that she can move on with her life is something to respect and admire.

It wasn't everything, but Porn contributed to the psyche of the twisted rapist she endured for months.

No one wants to admit their addiction is affecting their lives. Porn has the potential to be toxic, just the fact.

I don't understand why so many think watching porn leads to rape, but don't seem to think that watching murder leads to murder.

My wife watches countless cop shows on primetime network TV with shooting, blood, corpses, etc, etc. In one episode they opened a frig and there sat a guy's head on the top shelf.

The only reason I can think of for this disparity in logic is that men are more interested in porn, and women more interested in violence. Therefore it seems to be an anti-male agenda to focus on a war against porn.

Watching violence does lead to violence in high risk individuals. Every study on the topic reveals that to be the case.

As to your second part, that seems like an attribution of causation based on your own hangups about "anti male agendas."



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2016 10:27AM by woodsmoke.

Now Pamela Anderson, of all people, is anti-porn.

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/09/01/15-time-playboy-cover-model-pamela-anderson-urges-people-to-stay-away-from-porn.html

Before people get instantly dismissive of Fox News, note that this is simply Fox news reporting on her op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, which is now mostly subscription-only.

Methinks some career re-creation is going on...which is not surprising (it has to be done, if a popular-audience performer wants to stay viable in the industry)...

...though the vehicle of that re-creation is kind of surprising to me.