Defenders, foes of pom square off
ruitTN irom page 1
The links will fill up the page.
Click on one of the links, and they lead
to hundreds more. And hundreds more
after that. Into the billions.
Just pick one. It won’t take long.
Pornography loads fast on the Internet.
Remember - instant gratification.
It’ll be there. A man, a woman,
usually oppose legislation to regulate
it.
“Some see porn as nudity. What
about if it’s nude artwork from hun
dreds of years ago? You tell me. You
simply can’t define what pornography
is.”
Tom Osborne says he can. And so
begins his side - along with many
maybe both, eroti
cally intertwined for
the viewer’s enter
tainment. Maybe
there’s two men.
Maybe'two women.
-Maybe a group.
Maybe animals.
Maybe all of them,
qjl together.
And it isn’t sick
to everyone. It
couldn’t possibly be.
If it were, the indus
try of sex - the
videos, the prosti
66
You
simply
can’t define
what
pornography is.”
Matt LeMieux
Nebraska ACLU
UII1C1 WIIU I1CIVC
stood with him - as
to why pornogra
phy ought to be
curt>ed.
The prurient
issues
The billboards
have been taken
down now.
But there was a
time, about four
years ago, when
people across
\T_I_1. „ 1 J
tutes, the Internet sites, the strip clubs,
the diamond ring a man buys his mis
tress - wouldn’t have the same worth
in dollars as the number of people it
enraptures: billions.
Pornography has its detractors out
in force, too, actively campaigning
against the evils of hard-core sex and
the bad influence they say pom has.
On the flip side of the coin,
pornography has its staunch defend
ers, the strongest ones preaching First
.\mendment rights - the right to free
dom of speech, and in porn’s case,
freedom of expression of a very sexual
nature. It’s a debate that has raged well
before Hugh Hefner ever introduced
Marilyn Monroe to world with the first
Playboy in December 1953.
So look at the picture on the com
puter screen. So is it? Is it pornogra
phy? Isn’t seeing knowing?
Isn’t it?
“I’ve heard so many people say
Til know pornography when I see it,”’
said Matt LeMieux of the Nebraska
chapter of the American Civil
Liberties Union. “And that’s the prob
lem . You can’t define it.
“And I don’t see the government
changing how we look at pornography
without sweeping into the First
Amendment,” he said. “That’s why we
nvuiaoiva tuuiu
spend their morning drive time staring
up at the man GQ Magazine once
called God - Tom Osborne, the former
NU head football coach who was in
the process of leading the Comhuskers
to their first national title since 1971
72.
He sat on a chair, holding a chil
dren’s book surrounded by elementary
school-age Nebraskans. Him smiling,
them grinning, a message appeared at
the bottom of the billboard in harsh
looking letters: “Real Men Don’t Use
Pom.”
It was Osborne’s most public foray
into the pornography debate. And
although he’s still strongly against
what he calls “the ills of prurient inter
ests,” it was his last truly public denun
ciation of pom.
“(The billboards) weren't my
idea,” Osborne said. “There were
some people who just said, ‘Would you
be willing to put your face on there?’
“I’m really not a billboard person.
I’m not comfortable with billboards. I
don’t like that. But it was a important
project,” he continued. “So even
though I wasn’t personally happy with
it in terms of the publicity, I though it
was worth the price.”
Osborne has since severed ties
with the organization that arranged the
billboard. But he’s still committed to
the anti-pornography movement.
He will expound upon it in the
many speeches he makes, or if
approached, he will espouse his phi
losophy. Osborne said his biggest
problems lie with magazines like
Hustler, “X-rated stuff” and even
movies on cable TV
“It’s garbage in, garbage out,”
Osborne said. “If you, hour after hour,
day after day, fill your mind with those
kinds of images, it does play out.”
Osborne described a former foot
ball player at Nebraska who brushed
with the law. Osborne blames music,
what he calls a “violent pornographic
record,” on the problems the player
had.
“It pushed him over the edge,”
Osborne said. “He entered into a men
tal and emotional breakdown. He real
ized later that the record was a major
factor. I think it’s an evil, pernicious
thing.” -
But when pressed about what
exactly is defined as pornography,
Osborne gives the same idea LeMieux
outlined: “When you see it, you know
what is.”
“It goes toward only prurient inter
est,” Osborne said. “It has no social or
redeeming value.”
Still, Osborne has some contradic
tions. He allows his team to be part of
the Playboy All-American football
team. Once, he was even invited to a
Playboy event, which he attended.
“It wasn’t my type of deal; I wish I
had never gone,” Osborne said.
He’s never read Playboy, but says
he doesn’t “suppose everything that’s
in there is of bad nature.”
“I couldn’t tell a player he couldn’t
go td a Playboy All-American func
tion,” Osborne said. “That’s their
choice.”
These types of gray areas are what
LeMieux refers to as the real problem.
The regulation
One of the biggest mantras anti
pornography groups use to regulate
pom deals with the damage it does to
its participants.
And with one specific area of pom
- child pornography - it does hurt the
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participants, LeMieux said. On that
subject, there is no debate, as it is ille
gal.
So are “snuff” films, a film that
shows the actual rape or murder of an
individual -/usually a young woman -
during a sex act.
Aside from those two categories,
LeMieux said, claiming pornography
hurts people is a foggy issue.
“I don’t believe there’s a jump from
child pornography to adult pornogra
phy in terms of victims,” LeMieux
said. “Typically, a child is forced to
participate. There isn’t a government
study that proves to what extent
women are forced into pornographic
material.”
And if there’s no study that can
prove it, LeMieux
said, the ACLU will
come down on the
side of defending
pornography.
A good exam
ple comes from
Oklahoma City,
where police and
state officials tried
to block the avail
ability of “The Tin
Drum,” a 1979
Academy Award
winning film about
a boy growing up in
Nazi Germany, lhe
film implies a sex act between the boy
and a teen-age girl. The ACLU sued
the district attorney in Oklahoma City
and won a preliminary ruling in 1998.
Despite the legal protection, many
pornography users don’t tout their
behavior. Most people keep it very
quiet.
The social sanctions
Take a walk over to Adult Book
and Cinema X Bookstore on 921 O
Street and there’s bound to be some
customers inside. There has to be
sometime; otherwise the place would
go out of business.
However, no one can see inside the
store. From the outside, blackened
window greets a passerby, who, if they
entered the sture, would notice an
atmosphere that demands ID for those
who look too young and casts a wary
eye upon those who linger in the store.
The companies that run adult
stores are equally hush-hush. A call
placed to the Adult Emporium, an
adult bookstore located in Council
Bluffs, Iowa, elicited this response:
“Let me get a manager,” the first
man said. No names were ever given.
The next person comes on the line.
The question is simple: “What kind of
traffic does a business like this get?”
“Just a minute, let me get some
one,” the woman said.
Manager No. 3 - a man again -
said no information can be given with
out the permission of the supervisor,
who doesn’t work at the store, but
rather resides “elsewhere.”
The number to the supervisor,
then?
“Oh no Manager No. 3 said. “The
supervisor will call you. If he wants to.
And he probably won’t want to.”
Why the cloak-and-dagger antics?
“It’s the nature of this business,”
Manager No. 3 said. “It’s just the way
this business goes.”
usoorne said me social stigmas
against pornography still exist,
although they were once much
stronger in the 1960s, the early part of
the era, anyway. At that time, Osborne
said, pornography was strictly frowned
upon, even movies that were R-rated.
“But now it appears that the only
major sin in our culture is intolerance,”
Osborne said. “If you’re intolerant of
anything, you’re out in left field.”
The absence of social mores is
more prevalent with the Internet - a
point-and-click alternative in the sex
industry. The best part for anyone that
wants to keep a low profile is that it can
be done within the privacy of the
home, an option that has left the indus
try booming with more cash than ever
before.
Kevin Krueger, director of finan
tt
“If you, hour after
hour, day after day,
fill your mind with
those kind of images,
. it does play out ”
Tom Osborne
former NU coach
cial planning at the Minneapolis-based
Pinnacle Planning Group, advises cus
tomers who don’t want |heir money
invested in pom-related industries to
come to him.
Oftentimes, Krueger said, compa
nies that seem unconnected to pom
sites actually are tied to them through
advertising deal. He said more money
is tied up with or connected to the sex
industry than is realized.
“The money is unfathomable,”
Krueger said. “We’re talking million
upon millions. Billions, actually.
Pornography is a bulk moneymaker. It
does extremely well.” That makes reg
ulation against pornography, if there
ever was to be any, much harder. It’s
not readily admitted, but, Krueger
said, porn pours
money m the econo
my like many other
industries. Try tak
ing that money -
nobody knows
exactly how much
because of the num
ber of organizations
involved - out of the
system. Just how
many unhappy
Americans would
there be? “There’s a
lot of people in the
business and who
like (pornogra
phy),” LeMieux said. “It is their First
Amendment rights that need to be pro
tected.”
To try and succeed
So look at the computer screen.
Still on the sex site? Good. And the
picture there, is it pornography? For
sure? If one adheres to LeMieux’s phi
losophy, seeing and believing isn’t
enough.
It’s enough for personal choice,
sure. It’s enough for a person to decide
whether or not it’s for them. But can
they decide for others? If one adheres
to Osborne’s philosophy, yes. Not only
should people make those decisions,
but they should try and regulate the sex
industry for the common good of soci
ety.
But ultimately, the picture on that
computer screen won’t do anything
more than exist for others to find it,
much like the other activities outlined
in this series of Sex, Drugs and Saving
Souls. It makes no proposals of its
own.
Alcohol, marijuana, premarital
sex, pregnancy, pornography - they all
exist to be experienced, for better or
worse. But there are those who have
clear choices and intend to influence
those who have not.
An easy conclusion doesn’t exist in
examining the sociological impacts of
these activities. As LeMieux said
about pornography: “It’s a different
definition for everyone.”
1 hroughout, it s clear that every
body’s definition of “what” - what is
sex education, what is binge drinking,
what is pornography - is different.
And, in the end, the struggle in obsess
ing in these high-risk behavior remains
very real and very human.
-It might be best said by Russian
novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who
would have been 100 years old
Thursday. His trademark novel,
“Lolita,” was a lesson in obsession.
The obsession of his anti-hero,
Humbert Humbert, serves as a reflec
tion point for all such pleasurable
devices that surround us. Humbert’s
obsession may be have been different
from most (a 12-year old girl) but his
rationalization behind is universal:
“While my body knew what it
craved for,” Nabokov wrote, “my mind
rejected my body s every plea. One
moment I was ashamed and fright
ened, another recklessly optimistic.
Taboos strangulated me.
Psychoanalysts wooed me with psy
choliberations andpsycholibidoes...
“But let us be prim and civilized.
Humbert Humbert tried hard to be
good. Really, truly, he did.”
Maybe it is the effort, not the
ideals, that really matter.
