The Social Costs of Pornography Research
Project
Project Overview
Under the aegis of its Marriage, Family and Democracy Program, the Witherspoon Institute has launched a two-year project on the Social Costs of Pornography. The project will consist of three parts: A) a Study Meeting to gather the most up-to-date research on the subject; B) the Publication of the findings of the study meeting in two forms: the proceedings of the study meeting in a book, and a position document; and 3) Four meetings to present the findings of the Study.
The purpose of the project is three-fold: 1) to establish the social costs of pornography 2) to increase public awareness of these costs and 3) to encourage public policy.
Pornography is of many kinds, and of varying degrees of realism. Today's pornography, however, is increasingly of the hard-core variety, meaning the presentation, through moving images, of real sexual acts, in which the focus of attention is on the sexual organs of the participants, male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, adult or child. The sale of pornography over the Internet is now thought to be a billion-dollar industry in America, and the decision of the Supreme Court to protect it as free speech means that America is identified across the world as the heart of the pornographic culture, a fact not unconnected with the growing anti-Americanism of Islamic countries. A few futile attempts are made to protect children, but these attempts cannot withstand the tide of permissiveness. In a culture in which pornography is permitted to flourish, and is, indeed, sold in respectable shops and marketed by respectable hotel chains, children cannot be insulated even from its direct effects, much less its indirect ones.
Under the aegis of its Marriage, Family and Democracy Program, the Witherspoon Institute has launched a two-year project on the Social Costs of Pornography. The project will consist of three parts: A) a Study Meeting to gather the most up-to-date research on the subject; B) the Publication of the findings of the study meeting in two forms: the proceedings of the study meeting in a book, and a position document; and 3) Four meetings to present the findings of the Study.
The purpose of the project is three-fold: 1) to establish the social costs of pornography 2) to increase public awareness of these costs and 3) to encourage public policy.
Pornography is of many kinds, and of varying degrees of realism. Today's pornography, however, is increasingly of the hard-core variety, meaning the presentation, through moving images, of real sexual acts, in which the focus of attention is on the sexual organs of the participants, male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, adult or child. The sale of pornography over the Internet is now thought to be a billion-dollar industry in America, and the decision of the Supreme Court to protect it as free speech means that America is identified across the world as the heart of the pornographic culture, a fact not unconnected with the growing anti-Americanism of Islamic countries. A few futile attempts are made to protect children, but these attempts cannot withstand the tide of permissiveness. In a culture in which pornography is permitted to flourish, and is, indeed, sold in respectable shops and marketed by respectable hotel chains, children cannot be insulated even from its direct effects, much less its indirect ones.
