Speaking of pornography...

(Tim) A dear friend who works as an attorney out east sent an E-mail in which he commented, "I thought you might be interested in (this) New York Times article regarding prosecution of pornography. Here are a couple of interesting quotes:

While pornography by itself is not illegal, it can be prosecuted as obscenity if it fits the definition laid out by the Supreme Court more than 30 years ago. Under that ruling, Miller v. California, a work may be deemed obscene if, taken as a whole, it lacks artistic, literary or scientific merit, depicts certain conduct in a patently offensive manner, and violates contemporary community standards.…

Professor Lochner said he doubted Ms. Buchanan's efforts would have much of a deterrent effect because they were so few that pornography producers had come to regard being prosecuted by her or anyone else as 'being struck by lightning.

My friend adds this question: "What if the rule laid out by Supreme Court precedent were actually followed and enforced? I wonder if progress could actually be made at stemming the tide of lewdness in our culture.  That is unless we have devolved so much that 'what is vile is honored among men' (Psalm 12:8) and there is nothing 'patently offensive' about pornography."

Comments

[Mark Koontz]

For the sake of completeness, the procedural posture of the Miller case should be noted. The Miller case arose after the enforcement of a section of the California Penal Code that made it punishable to knowingly distribute obscene materials. One of the issues in the Supreme Court case was whether application of the California law prohibiting obscenity was violative of the defendant's First Amendment freedom of speech. The Court in Miller reiterated that obscene speech may be regulated by the states (or the Federal government for that matter) and laid down what is now referred to as the "Miller test", as quoted in the post above, for determining what "speech" is obscene and therefore unprotected under the First Amendment. The decision in Miller is not "enforceable" against anyone; it only lays the boundaries of how far a government may enforce obscenity laws on its books.

If you search for "National Obscenity Law Center" on the web and click on the link on the right column of the page entitled "Federal & State Oscenity Statutes," you will find a list of statutes that may be enforced by officials on the state and federal level. I have not verified the accuracy of the list or whether it is up to date.

I believe the current state of ready access to pornography has much to do with a failure of enforcing currently enacted law. Although there are Supreme Court cases that protect the rights of people to distribute what would in any case be considered "pornography" by anyone with any moral sensitivity, it still remains that a great quantity of material goes beyond the limits the Court has set for free speech. I sympathize with law enforcement officials who have thrown up their hands in frustration over confronting the problem of illegal pornography. With the advent of the internet any prosecution must seem like a drop in the bucket. I wonder, though, whether something more is at stake. Perhaps this issue is not more vigorously pursued because we as a culture have given up in the area of sexual morality. Our lack of prosecution is a dereliction of duty.

[Fr. Bill]

"Our lack of prosecution is a dereliction of duty."

True. More ominously, however, is this: that the long established pattern of non-prosecution lays the foundation for arguing that the "contemporary standards" are NOT violated by this or that instance of pornography.

Consider a prosecutor's task in establishing that this or that pornographic work violates community stsandards. How would he prove such a thing? Put a string of witnesses on the stand who say their standard is violated? Against such a demonstration, a defense attorney could point to years, even decades, where there was no prosecution for the same or similar pornography. Next would follow anguished cries of Puritan values being imposed on the populace.

[Robert Perry]

What might be even more effective would be actual enforcement of public indecency laws, especially during "gay pride" parades. I'm certainly in favor of punishing pornographers, but perhaps it would be an easier and perhaps even more effective first step to simply punish public indecency.

Why so? Because of what Dr. Reisman notes. Few start drugs with heroin, and in the same way, few start porn with the vilest stuff you can find in San Francisco. One works up to it, and a key part of that is public displays that really ought to be punished via indecency laws.

[tdsands]

When we talk about "protecting Christian values" or prosecuting pornography users and makers, we're really talking about ourselves as oh-so-holy Christians using the force of government to lock sinners in cages or confiscate their property. (I'm speaking literally, avoiding euphemistic jargon.) Like big brothers or controlling daddies we're giving our pagan brothers a soul-reforming spankin'- or think we are. We may as well poke out their eyes- it would accomplish the same goal: forcibly preventing sin. Prosecuting pornography users is a method of forcible deterrence, since it uses the fear of (or actual) punishment to prevent the sinner from sinning. This idea is the great superficiality of the American church: prevent the sin and you have improved the heart. The conservative seems to forget that virtue is not simply the absence of sin. The sexually indulgant sinner is no better than the forcedly chaste- but the latter thinks he is, (with the tacit, de facto agreement of the conservative Christian.)

How long will we evangelize with force? How long will we try "reclaiming our nation" through Washington and the local police? How long will we shirk off the persuasion of the heart in exchange for the jail cell? When will we realize that Christ did not rule by physical force but by the intimate communion of the heart?

American Christianity understandably turns people away from Christ and embitters the heart. The sinner is forced to go through the routine of morality, and presto!, we live in a more moral nation, the sinner's heart is closer to God, and the Christian has done his evangelical duty. Somehow it takes a pagan to see the superficiality in all this.

[Eric Wilson]

tdsands,

You have a point here, we do make a grave error if we neglect the necessity of God changing hearts, and if we trust in laws to bring lasting change.

But you have assumed that the use of force precludes a desire for true holiness, and that does not follow. To discuss the merits of prosecuting immorality does not imply that legal action would complete the Christian's duty. Perhaps the Christian's duty includes involvement in establishing laws that would not accomplish morality, but would instruct in morality.

Should I neglect the rod on my children because they are not more holy if their obedience is forced? No, when I spank them, they learn that disobedience has painful consequences.

Similarly, prosecution of lewdness serves to instruct many of the devastation that comes from sexual sin. This grave warning could lead to repentance.

[tdsands]

eric,

your'e working off a faulty paradigm: government as a benevolent father and citizens as wayward children. "Should I neglect the rod on my children because they are not more holy if their obedience is forced? No, when I spank them, they learn that disobedience has painful consequences."
And of course the painful consequences we're teaching sexually immoral adults are jail time and monetary loss?

By doing this you sow the seeds of rebellion. The true consequences of sexual immorality are guilt, loss of manhood, further separation from the Creator. It is the Christians job to communicate and persuade these actual consequences. Giving your fellow man a spanking tends to blind him to these true consequences and instead view the consequences as merely physical. A nation that is chaste because of fear of AIDS or prison time for example is no more holy than a Sodom, as you have agreed. Furthermore, neither is that society any more instructed in the rightness or wrongness of sexual sin. They are merely instructed in levels of risk associated with certain proscripted behaviours.

In the undeveloped mind of a child we use physical pain to represent spiritual consequences. This is why a well-disciplined child will adhere to the behaviors engrained into him long after the threat of physical discipline is removed. We have taught spiritual consequences through the paradigm of physical consequences. However, spanking (or jailing) an adult whose mind is fully developed is to treat him like a child and cause him to rebel further. The mentai transition between physical punishment and spiritual consequences is no longer feasible in adults.

The "grave warning" that I may go to jail for sexual sin leads to as much deep repentance as a politician exposed in scandal or a drug addict at the end of his supply. It in no way teaches that it is wrong.

So, in other words, treating your fellow man as a child to be disciplined through the force of the state is neither instructive nor edifying. Its inherent superficiality, obvious to all but the special breed of conservative Christian, drives the lost further from Christ while imparting them with the bitter fruits of being trampled on by callous Christians. On a side note, you can't rationally believe in freedom of religion if you believe in prosecuting various sins, such as pornography.

I pray for the day when Christians will stop evagelizing with a Bible in one hand a sword in the other.

[Eric Wilson]

"For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil."

In America, we all govern. Thus we are God's ministers, appointed to execute wrath on him who practices evil.

tdsands, you have chosen to neglect this responsibility, and to condemn the responsible, loving practice of it. For this, you should repent. I pray that you will.

[tdavid]

Verse 3 is strange. The civil rulers in Paul's time were indeed a terror to his good works and he definitely received no praise for them (instead being persecuted unjustly everywhere). Paul states that rulers will act in a way that was the opposite of his own experience. ...Perhaps this was a subtle rebuke to those rulers, made in anticipation of this letter's interception??

Where in Scripture do you see Christ or the Apostles using any sort of wrath (violence) on those who practice evil? Excepting Christ in the temple, this is surely never endorsed or practiced. Should they also repent?

[Stacy D McDonald]

tdsands,

I might add that when we condone pornography (by ignoring it in the secular realm) then we also allow it to seep into our culture (on our billboards, the Internet, our grocery store check out lanes etc.) - a culture we're to claim for Christ - a culture our children will be affected by and exposed to.

[Brandon]

Thomas,

As a libertarian myself, I can understand why you come down on this issue as you do. However, I firmly disagree with libertarians on this issue. Obviously, as a Christian, I think that pornography is wrong and should not be produced or consumed. Further, I think that pornography is one of the few social ills that our (federal) government should seek to stop. Pornography is not a mild social problem. It's epidemic and deadly. Like crack for the drug addict, so is porn for the sex addict. Examples of the problems that pornography causes are legion, but a sad one is that many serial killers claim to be pornography addicts. For their sake and ours,I believe that not only as a Christian but as a citizen that pornography needs to be censored and put away.
I hate the nanny state. It's silly that IU thinks it necessary to ban smoking. Yet, she houses the largest collection of porn in the world. This certainly hasn't had an effect on IU or Bloomington, has it?
True, taking away porn would not solve the world's problems nor make people more likely to confess faith in Christ. True, people do need to take responsibility for their actions and not expect the government to take care of them. However, I would still stop a person from walking out in front of a speeding car. That's how I view censoring pornography and or its ban.
Perhaps I've seen too many people ruined because of the effects of pornography. This does make me an inconsistent libertarian, but I don't mind. I can't justify allowing pornography to be uncensored.

[Jacob Mentzel]

"Like big brothers or controlling daddies we're giving our pagan brothers a soul-reforming spankin'- or think we are."

"You're working off a faulty paradigm: government as a benevolent father and citizens as wayward children... By doing this you sow the seeds of rebellion... Giving your fellow man a spanking tends to blind him to these true consequences and instead view the consequences as merely physical... Furthermore, neither is that society any more instructed in the rightness or wrongness of sexual sin. They are merely instructed in levels of risk associated with certain proscripted behaviours."

Thomas,

Our fathers and older brothers always teach us who God is. More often than not, they lie to us. Even children from good families find many ways to rebel against their maker as they do their parents, and many ways to justify their rebellion. Yet God has given us fathers and made them to bear the image of God the Father over his household. His success or failure has no small bearing not only on his child's view of God but of all authority. This is because all authorities bear that image in varying degrees and likenesses. The civil authorities are no different, and more explicitly bear the image of God as Judge in their exercise of justice. When civil authorities fail to execute justice they lie about who God is- but in a different way than you've characterized it. What they are to communicate is not that God is an "overbearing daddy" but that He is a judge who will one day judge all men by their deeds. While a father who refuses to discipline his sons does not love them and teaches them that God is the same, civil authorities who do not execute justice deny that God is a judge who will one day set the world aright.

Further, all law is instructive, as you've pointed out, and it's clear that we disagree on the use of civil law. However, you are working off of faulty premises. The fact that many are strengthened in their outward rebellion when justly opposed by God's appointed agents of justice only serves to prove the inherent rebellion of the human heart and serves as no ground for establishing principles governing the establishment of civil law. You make the claim that civil restraint feeds this rebellion. However, the truth is that it exposes it. If in response to it we rebel, we prove ourselves rebels. If in response to it we give lip service to it, we prove ourselves hypocrites. If we find ourselves in harmony with it, we prove ourselves in harmony with the Lawgiver. But it refuses to leave us neutral. Men are already wicked to the core and civil law has no power to make us more or less so. When the law comes, we're just forced to deal with the reality of it. This is gospel territory. It's where heart-work begins for the Christian evangelist.

However, you would have us remove all foundations in the civil realm for understanding God's standard for His creation as well as all aspects of civil authority that bear His image. Why? How does that accomplish what you claim civil law fails to accomplish- namely, address anyone's heart? All it does is put one more barrier between a pagan and the Gospel. Worse, it proclaims a god who winks at sin and has no concern for those whom he created. It is anti-Gospel.

While we may prefer our sins to remain in darkness out from underneath the scrutiny of both civil law and God's law, it is exactly by these means that we come to conviction of sin and understand our need for mercy. The response to that conviction is universally the same- repentance and faith or hardened defiance. The prevalence of hardened defiance is only a symptom you're attempting to address. You're the one who is missing the heart of the issue. And if it weren't enough, even if it were practically destructive to the advancement of the Gospel, neither pragmatism, practicality, nor personal experience are ever to dictate our understanding of God's revelation.

What we need to reckon with is that all children rebel against their parents. All citizens defy civil authority. And both are reflections of our disposition towards God. If those authorities that God has placed in your life have embittered you to Him, it is not because He has failed, but because you are a rebel. And while those authorities, corrupt and just, will answer for how they taught you, you will be the one giving an account for the work of your hands.

[Tim Bayly]

Dear Jacob,

May God bless you with much fruit from this wise and pastoral letter.