But first I think it’s important to give some context. What needs to be saved about the American culture in the first place? The family.

A nation is only as strong as its foundation, and for a society, its foundation is the family: Children, mothers and fathers. But in America, all three are threatened as never before.

Children

• We kill 1.6 million children a year by abortion.
• A child sex abuse scandal continues to spread across our public schools and other institutions while the media and courts refuse to give sustained attention to it anywhere except in the comparatively small abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.
• About 9 out of every 10 children 8-16 years old have viewed pornography online.
• In our hookup culture nearly 1 in 3 teens is having intercourse, mostly with people they don’t consider their boyfriend or girlfriend.

Women

• Women are routinely treated as objects of pleasure in our advertisements and entertainments  — Beyonce at halftime at the Super Bowl, for example.
• Pornography is by far the biggest money-maker in the entertainment industry; polls say 2 out of every 3 young men you meet spend hours each week looking at it. This dramatically affects the way they treat women. Pornography is our culture’s most common expression of the female.
• According to the U.S. Justice Department 1 in 3 adult women in America has been the victim of rape or physical assault at some point in her adulthood.

Men

• Fathers abandoning their families is a national epidemic — their failure to help is the leading cause of poverty in women, and contributes to a whole host of problems, as James Dobson and Kurt Bruner point out in Fatherless.
• Men’s entertainment — from rap to metal to video games – is filled with crassness, violence and misogyny. Whether it’s hip hop culture or Oscar comedy, objectifying and demeaning women is mainstream
• Videogames have become the national pastime, for men especially. About 3 out of 4 gamers is 18 or older, spending an average 18 hours a week playing video games. Whether you think this makes men “shiftless, boring wimps” or contributes to violence, or not, it at least makes virtual violence  the centerpiece of our culture’s self-expression of masculinity.

So, with a tidal wave of anti-family sentiment that powerful, what could possible reverse the course? Only a sea change.

I argue over at the National Catholic Register (“The March for Life Lesson We Can’t Afford to Ignore”) that the significant victories we are experiencing in the right to life are capable of bringing about just such a sea change.

1. Embracing the right to life will mean stopping the slaughter of infants.
2. Embracing the right to life will pull the rug out from under the sexual revolution which has done so much damage to women.
3. Embracing the right to life will mean forcing men to take responsibility for their actions once again.

Now, I know there are very good arguments for why my position may be wishful thinking, and expecting too much. They just may be right. A culture like ours, in which the basic fundamentals of family life have been so systematically destroyed, may be unfixable.

In that case, the consequences will be severe. God won’t punish us in some mystical way. He won’t have to. He will punish us the way he punishes gardeners who don’t water their gardens.

• Our population will not replace itself, making our crushing debt crisis an imminent threat instead of a future worry.
• People who live sexualized childhoods will suffer in their self-esteem and their ability to form mature attachments, and their sexual maturity, worsening the cycle in the next generation.
• A nation of broken families will suffer economically, and a culture inordinately devoted to entertainment instead of self-mastery and value-production won’t snap out of that quickly.

That’s “the hard way” out of our mess: To be brought inch by inch to our low point until we look around, startled that we have gone from the world’s only superpower that unfortunately scored poorly on math tests to a has-been nation that aborted its future but was too busy on our smart phones to notice that it was gone.

But we might not need to learn this one the hard way.

I remember saying at a party once, “I don’t get why people don’t wake up to reality and reject this stuff!”

To which a woman responded incredulously, “Tom, you and nearly every person in this room has done just that.”

Indeed we have. And as we saw at the last March for Life, our numbers are growing every year.

I believe that if we focus on the right to life — if we focus on the “killing babies” plank of this twisted anti-family agenda — we can win this. Evil’s greatest victory in our time is that parents are willing to kill their kids. But the greatest threat to evil in our time is that of course they won’t keep doing that.

If we redouble the efforts we have made to compassionately and fearlessly defend life and help mothers, we absolutely can win this.

We’ll not be able to stop every act of senseless gun violence or any other kind of violence, we know that in the future. … I think we can begin again, not because of guns alone, but I think we can begin an endeavor that stops the coarsening of American culture and society. I think we can begin to turn this around. It’s not all because of guns, it’s a lot of other things. But maybe what happened in Newtown is a call to action about more than just gun violence, [it's] about civility in our society.

I’m all for reversing the coarsening of our culture and society. I’m glad the Vice President acknowledges that violence involving guns isn’t the only kind of violence that should be addressed.

But this call for civility and less coarseness came in the context of a serious effort for gun control. If we’re addressing the problem of coarseness and trying to restore civility, why is the first and flagship effort aimed at restricting the rights of millions of people who have caused no coarseness or incivility with their guns? No gun ever fired itself; it is fired by a person who chooses to pull the trigger.

What about pornography? Scads of pornographic images of consenting adults as well as children are taken every year with high-resolution cameras. Those children are violated by those pictures being taken. Even the consenting adults are injured by being so exposed and objectified. Pornography hurts families—ask marriage counselors. Are we going to push for a cap on the number of megapixels cameras can have and how many pictures it can snap in a short period of time to reduce the ability of pornographers to take those awful photos? Does the First Amendment prevent any such action? Why is the Second Amendment open to an interpretation that reduces rights so greatly but not the First?

Blaming the tool for the bad action of the user makes no sense. If you’re paddling a canoe down a river in the direction everyone has told you is the right way to go and suddenly you realize you’ve been paddling toward a waterfall, you do yourself no favors by blaming the paddle, tossing it away, and picking up a smaller one.

The coarsening of culture is a coarsening of the hearts and minds of the individuals who live in and make up the culture. Each person’s heart and mind is coarsened by the decisions that person makes and the decisions people around them make. We reverse the coarsening of culture by calling people to be better, not by taking away inanimate objects.

The only place where removing an inanimate object to prevent coarsening makes sense is in the home, raising children. Limiting your child’s ability to browse the internet, locking out certain stations on the television, monitoring the music your child listens to, and screening your child’s friends are just sound parenting tactics. Children need the guiding hand of a wise, learned adult precisely because they are not yet wise and learned. Lessons can be learned at the appropriate time, when the child has enough of a foundation of knowledge, wisdom, and emotional stability to handle the information.

But the government is not, nor should ever be seen as, our parent or our big brother.

We all should welcome actions that reduce the coarsening of culture and society—indeed, we all should pursue such actions whenever we can. But just as “hate laws” do not stop people from hating, anti-gun laws will not stop crime. If they did, Chicago, where they have some of the nation’s strictest gun laws would be the among the safest cities in the nation. They’ve already had 82 shootings this year.

This is not to say that government can do nothing. Expanded background checks for sales and stiffer penalties for straw buyers would be a good start. Laws that prevent persons known to be prone to violence due to a criminal background or mental instability from getting their hands on guns of any sort can be a good thing. But these laws cannot be as slip-shod and rammed through as Obamacare. They must be crafted so as to protect the rights of those who pose no threat to anyone but an unjust attacker or a usurpatious government.

Another triumph for the aggressive secularist state: Catholic dioceses in IL drop lawsuit, will no longer provide foster care. http://cvote.to/8O

Catholics have a duty to fight against pornography and its devastating spiritual and societal consequences, says family activist Patrick Trueman. http://cvote.to/8P

Obama has turned his back on Catholics, Michael Gerson writes in the Washington Post. http://cvote.to/8Q

Video of Herman Cain’s stumble on Libya gets 156,000 views in 18 hours. Watch. http://cvote.to/8U

Rick Perry calls for a part-time Congress an end to lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court in favor of 18-year terms. http://cvote.to/8R

Cain, Gingrich, Romney and Paul are in a four-way tie in Iowa. http://cvote.to/8S

Read the letter 27 senators sent to the Obama admin challenging its denial of a grant based on abortion. PDF. http://cvote.to/8T

Full text of Bishop Lori’s “stemwinder” speech on religious liberty yesterday. http://cvote.to/8V

Matthew Warner, with the Quote of the Day: “If you really were the 99%, the only thing you’d need to ‘occupy’ is the voting booth.”

Since the financial crisis, millions of families have stopped using credit cards, have accelerated mortgage payments and have delayed purchased until they have the cash. Total household debt has dropped by $1.1 trillion or 8.6% since mid-2008. To this glorious news, leave it to the Wall Street Journal to wag their finger. Jon Hilsenrath and Ruth Simon wrote an article called “Spenders Become Savers, Hurting Recovery.” Talk about insanity. http://cvote.to/69 (Subscription required).

A proposed sex ed curriculum for New York City schools is getting parents angry. Workbooks for older students direct them to a website run by Columbia University, which “explores topics such as sexual positions, porn stars, and bestiality,” according to NBC New York. http://cvote.to/67

Good grief: Sen. John McCain raised the prospect of military action against Syria. “The Syrian revolution may now be entering a new phase. The opposition has formed the Syrian National Council seeking to better organize itself. There are increasing reports of defections from the army,” said McCain. http://cvote.to/68

Bobby Jindal, a pro-life Catholic Republican, sailed to an easy re-election as Governor of Louisiana Saturday. He won 67% of the vote and won every single parish (county) in the state. His nearest competitor had only 18%. Once considered a possible 2012 presidential candidate, Jindal opted to endorse neighboring governor Rick Perry. Jindal’s next term will likely focus on education and health care reform.  http://cvote.to/6A

Sen. Rick Santorum says if he’s elected president, he’ll not only end all funding for contraception, but he’ll talk as president about the dangers of contraception. “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be,” said Santorum. That quote might endear him to Culture of Life Catholic voters, but it pretty much guarantees that he won’t win the White House in this current cultural climate. http://cvote.to/6D

Quote of the Day

“Conservatives ought to hate the big banks because they are the enemies of capitalism.” – Tim Carney, Washington Examiner columnist. http://cvote.to/6C

Notes:

Stay tuned later today for my interview with Sen. George LeMieux, R-FL. LeMieux was appointed to the U.S. Senate in August 2009 to serve out the remainder of Mel Martinez’ term. Marco Rubio now holds that seat. LeMieux now wants back in the Senate and hopes to defeat incumbent Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson.

Listen to Drew Mariani’s show this afternoon at 5:15 pm Eastern. I’ll be on to discuss Herman Cain’s recent comments on abortion. You can listen online here. http://cvote.to/6B

Other articles of interest:

The harm of addiction to pornography documented. http://cvote.to/6E

Roll Call forecasts the six most-expensive Congressional races in 2012. http://cvote.to/6F

After attacking Rick Perry for charging illegal immigrants tuition at the same rate as citizens of Texas, the L.A. Times notes that Romneycare provided health care for illegal immigrants. http://cvote.to/6G

Aside from lying about what he did, Weiner did nothing illegal. (I’m not even sure that lying about what he did was illegal.) Weiner was engaged in behavior that [hundreds of] thousands of people, men and women, participate in every day. The scandal was that he was a Congressman. We still expect better from some people, witness the response to the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church versus the response to the same type of abuse in other sectors of society. But I digress.

There have been reports that Weiner is checking himself in for treatment. Up to now, Tiger Woods is the only other subject of a sex scandal that I’ve heard has sought treatment.

But I was discouraged to see one of my favorite writers, James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal, mock the idea of treatment. Such thinking suggests an ignorance of the pervasiveness and reality of sexual addiction, much of it fueled by porn and various forms of cyber sex.

What Weiner did was very stupid, especially for a very intelligent man. Some would say that he, and other men involved in sexual scandals, are just power hungry. I think it takes more than an obsession with power to make the decisions that Weiner did. Forget the really obscene pictures he sent, think about the circumstances that get someone to the point where they think it’s a great idea to send a picture of their covered genital area from the gym at the Capitol? Really? Including one’s face? Really? Sent from one’s own account? Really. You can’t be thinking straight if you’re at that point.

Groups like Sexaholics Anonymous exist to help people (men and women) overcome sexual addictions. These include pornography, compulsive masturbation, cyber sex, etc. I’ve seen an increasing amount of references to scientific studies suggesting that porn is addictive and that it can be linked to sexual dysfunction. (There’s a very graphic, not PG, article written in the first person by a porn consumer in a recent edition of New York Magazine. This article is raw. Don’t read it if you will be scandalized or otherwise ill affected.)

Because this behavior is so mainstream, it won’t be long before a Weiner scandal won’t cause a ripple in the public eye. You see worse on MTV, various reality shows, and even network programming like “Two And A Half Men,” where fidelity and monogamy are portrayed as sexual deviance. In fact, I’m surprised that “Two And A Half Men,” was able to be filmed with actor Angus T. Jones, now a teenager, when he was much younger.

Efforts to limit access to pornography have been thwarted by first amendment protection. You can even watch porn at the library; it’s your “right.”

But we also have an opportunity here. Alcohol, tobacco, and drugs are all able to be regulated because they are extremely addictive and harmful. Dr. Donald L. Hilton, Jr., a neurosurgeon, has done groundbreaking research indicating that pornography can be as or more addictive than crack cocaine. And porn leads to cyber sex and many other destructive behaviors. People lose control of their lives. The New York Magazine above also suggests that these activities make it difficult/impossible to have a healthy sexual experience, let alone a healthy sexual relationship. The irony…

Weiner should be encouraged to get treatment. Anyone who is concerned about the “fiber” of our culture and society should be using this as an opportunity to discuss a serious addiction facing many, many people. You don’t have to be a right-wing and/or church going conservative to realize that this behavior is destructive and that it would be better for Weiner, Woods, Spitzer, Strauss-Kahn, Lee, Vitter, et al, to be faithful to their spouses. We’re all better off in faithful, loving, trusting, honest relationships.

The addictive and harmful characteristics of porn and its cousins raises an interesting possibility. As I noted, we regulate other harmful things like alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. Will the porn family lose it’s first amendment protection if we continue to see its detrimental effects?

Now is not the time to be hearing from the moralists or the family groups. Now’s the time to be hearing from the experts at Sexaholics Anonymous, therapists, doctors, and researchers who specialize in sexual addictions. They should be on the talk shows, in the news stories, and on the radio shows. I think we have a lot to learn and we will miss the opportunity the more that the behaviors become mainstreamed.

And if you think these problems don’t affect you, your family, your friends, your church, or your community, you are living in la-la land and I don’t mean Los Angeles. You are in denial and that’s not a river in Egypt. I think you get the idea…

In my own work and community, I have heard and seen the effects of these problems countless times. Talk to any pastor or confessor and they will tell you the same. Talk to anyone who works with teens, including your own, and you will hear it. Talk to therapists. Talk to IT and HR departments that monitor internet traffic in the workspace.

My thoughts and prayers are with Weiner, his wife, and all the others who suffer the effects of these types of addiction.

A new website fights pornography with science, not morality.

Just yesterday, I finished and sent off a pamphlet on pornography use that I hope you will someday soon be able to find in the back of a parish near you. It reuses information I gathered for Our Sunday Visitor and for my Christianity in Mass Media class at Benedictine College, but I also did new research for it.

In the process I found a strange phenomenon: As the pornography epidemic has reached greater and greater proportions, news organizations have been writing about it less and less.

Comment boxes may explain why pornography is no longer news.

When it was discovered that Osama bin Laden had lots of pornography to keep him company in his Pakistan compound, the com-boxes were filled with guys calling the story “irrelevant” and questioning why this was even reported. (Odd. Every other item in his compound, from his blanket to his jerry-rigged TV, was highly relevant.)

Another recent story about the clear link between pornography and divorce generated these comments:

• “Porn doesn’t lead to divorce, insecure women do.” (NB … I think when Dad is watching hardcore videos on the family computer, it’s the secure women who complain, and the insecure women who don’t.)
• “I love watching porn with my husband. Ladies, you are missing out! It can be a lot of fun.” (Um … I’m not sure if you can tell from under 20 words in a com-box whether someone is male or female, but that sounds like it was written by a guy.)
• “I recently discovered that my husband has a porn habit, which I think I could live with, except 95% of his porn stash consists of girls that look about 12 – 14. They are from legal, over 18 sites, but …” (I bet a lot of women who could “live with” the fact that a husband has a porn habit would have a hard time “living with” the actual content their husbands are looking at.)

I like one commenter who describes herself as a “liberal sociologist”:

• “Reading through the comments it’s laughable how men defend their pornography use while women are offended by it. Clearly different viewpoints¬. Is there a compromise possible? While seeing so many American men against marriage and pro-pornography, I wonder what the future holds. Will women — norm¬al women — be obsolete?”

The fact that 7 out of 10 men look at pornography probably explains why pornography isn’t news. It is defended because it is popular, not because it is good.

The sin of pornography has taken the same trajectory as the sin of abortion:

1. It begins as a shameful secret thing.
2. Then odd-duck federal judges lift legal restrictions on it …
3. … allowing businesses to promote it, using slogans (“free choice” or “free speech”) to defend it.
4. More and more people become complicit in it, repeating the industry’s mantras.

Confronted with suffering women the media looks the other way and protects sex and money. But Gallup’s recent poll has shown that we have reached another step in abortion’s trajectory.

5. A long, persistent education effort reminds people of the obvious about the sin.

Unfortunately, this process takes decades, and education on pornography has a long way to go. But efforts are underway.

Patrick Fagan and the Family Research Council put together a great summary of the research on pornography here.
Fight the New Drug is a great new effort at education.
True Freedom is a resource put together by Peter Kleponis for the Archdiocese of New York.
Unity Restored is the Arlington, Va., Diocese’s site.

Tom Hoopes is writer in residence at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, and editor of The Gregorian, the school’s Catholic identity speech digest.

I just notice that Sears sent an email to the American Family Association confirming that they have pulled the videos and won’t sell them anymore:

“We sincerely apologize to any customers who were offended. Our agreements with our vendors prohibit content that is pornographic or sexually explicit in nature. We are removing these items that do not meet our guidelines. We regularly review our processes to ensure compliance by our vendors, and we encourage our customers and community to help us flag any items that they believe might violate our guidelines.”

Kudos to AFA and all those who contacted Sears and convinced them that it’s not worth it for them to be associated with this material at all. It’s good that Sears.com is again family-friendly.

• The American Family Association discovered that retailer Sears is actually selling pornographic movies from their website. How distasteful and regrettable. Unless they reverse their decision, my family will shop elsewhere (and Sears owns K-Mart and Lands End, too.)




• The House passed the No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Act 251-175. Sixteen Democrats (including Rep. Dan Lipinski) joined all 235 Republicans in favor of the bill. Want to know how your Representative voted? Here is the roll call.




• Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was scheduled to show his documentary on Blessed John Paul called Nine Days That Changed the World at the Basilica of St. John in the political-important state of Iowa. Because Gingrich is contemplating a run for President, the Basilica decided to cancel the event. I think the Basilica made the right decision.




• With the death of Osama bin Ladin, Time magazine went and interviewed those 2nd grade students that President George W. Bush was reading to when his chief of staff informed him of the attack on the World Trade Center. The students are now in high school. They have something to say about Michael Moore’s complaint that Bush should have left the classroom immediately.

Marriott International, one of the nation’s leading hotel groups, tells Hotel Check-In that it’s pulling access to adult movies from the new hotel rooms it will be opening the next several years.

… Marriott’s decision also comes after years of discussing whether the availability of adult entertainment in guest rooms – for years, a money maker for hotels – is appropriate and whether secure safeguards exist to keep it away from children. [USA Today Travel]

Marriot I believe is one of the top 5 pornography providers in the world. Hilton is high up there as well (and may also be phasing out its adult content soon).

Obviously hotels have been attracted to offering pornography because it is a huge source of revenue for them. Pornography has a high addiction rate so they can expect an increase in repeat business. Hotel chains have discovered that many men traveling on business see their hotel room as a “safe space” to view pornography away from the attention of their families. But as a recent academic conference hosted by the Witherspoon Institute has shown, pornography always brings with it harmful social costs, for those who consume it and for those who must live and interact with those who are affected by it.

Furthermore, I have heard it argued that pornography in hotels is technically illegal. We can “thank” our Justice Deparment for doing nothing to enforce these laws.

Whatever the reasons for this change, good riddance to pornography, wherever it still exists.

Ph/t: AmP reader Luis.