Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
|
|
|
Nov 11, 2018 - 07:35am PT
|
Some nice Sunday morning reading....
How the GOP Gave Up on Porn
Once, the fight against pornography was the beating heart of the American culture war. Now porn is a ballooning industry—and maybe a harmful one—with no real opponents. What happened?
By TIM ALBERTA November/December 2018
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/11/republican-party-anti-pornography-politics-222096
The Year Was 1976. Republicans were reeling from Watergate. Christian conservatives were defecting to the Democratic Party. And Jerry Falwell, the Virginia preacher with a booming Baptist congregation and a popular radio show, decided he could no longer sit on the sidelines as he saw American culture succumbing to the creeping forces of secularism. The precipitating event was an interview given by Jimmy Carter, in which the Democratic presidential nominee admitted to having “looked on a lot of women with lust,” and “committed adultery in my heart many times.” Carter had never acted on such temptation, he implied, but the admission kept him humble: “Christ says, don’t consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife.”
The doctrine itself was not objectionable. But the language—and more crucially, the venue—was intolerable for Falwell. The interview had run in Playboy magazine, alongside nude photographs of Miss November and articles such as “The Vatican Sex Manual” and “Prurient Puritans.” In his televised Sunday sermons, Falwell began railing against Carter’s courtship of the randy men’s magazine and its 5 million readers. When Carter’s team tried to block one of his antagonistic sermons from being broadcast shortly before Election Day, claiming it violated the Federal Communications Commission’s Fairness Doctrine, Falwell raised the stakes. He assembled a group of leading fundamentalist ministers at the National Press Club in Washington and accused Carter of “muzzling a preacher of the gospel from preaching his moral convictions.” The press conference, which cemented Falwell’s status as an ascendant political heavyweight, would be looked back on as the inception of the Moral Majority.
It was the height of the porn wars. More than abortion or homosexuality, the rising tide of pornography in America was, in the 1970s, becoming central to conservative Americans’ perception of a civilization in decline. For faith leaders, it was an easily exploitable issue; for Falwell, it was a crusade. He fought to remove adult content from convenience stores. He went to court to battle Hustler and Penthouse. And he never forgave Carter—who ended up winning the White House in 1976, carrying the evangelical vote along the way—for his original sin of talking to Hugh Hefner’s publication. “Giving an interview to Playboy magazine was lending the credence and the dignity of the highest office in the land to a salacious, vulgar magazine that did not even deserve the time of his day,” Falwell said in 1981.
Forty years after that D.C. press conference, a very different scene unfolded. This one took place in New York and starred Jerry Falwell Jr., inheritor of the family business. Hours earlier, the younger Falwell had introduced the GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump to a massive gathering of Christian leaders, calling him “God’s man,” anointed to lead the nation in turbulent times. The summit was successful beyond anyone’s expectation. As they celebrated back at Trump Tower, Falwell sought to document the occasion with a photo. The future president stood in the middle, flanked by Falwell Jr. and his wife, Becki. Thumbs went up. The camera snapped. Falwell tweeted the photo to his 60,000 followers. There was just one hiccup: Lurking over Becki Falwell’s left shoulder, framed in gold, was a cover of Playboy, graced by a bow-tied Trump and a smiling brunette covered only by his tuxedo jacket.
The photo sparked a frenzy. Nothing, it seemed, could so neatly encapsulate the religious right’s backsliding as Falwell Jr. giving a thumbs-up in front of the very magazine his father had singled out as symbolic of America’s moral decay—while standing shoulder to shoulder with a man who had appeared in a softcore porno flick and who reportedly, as Jimmy Carter might have put it, screwed a bunch of women outside of marriage, including a Playboy model and hardcore adult-film actress.
And it highlighted something else just as striking: the total abandonment of pornography as a battleground in America’s culture war.
|
|
Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
|
|
|
Nov 11, 2018 - 07:39am PT
|
"White people are murderers and rapists" is an accurate statement but does not reflect the totality or general nature of white people.
We understand how simplistic rational works on the willing.
|
|
10b4me
Social climber
Lida Junction
|
|
|
Nov 11, 2018 - 08:31am PT
|
apogee,
Re: porn
the largest number of people watching porn live in Utah.
|
|
i'm gumby dammit
Sport climber
da ow
|
|
|
Nov 11, 2018 - 08:33am PT
|
Two recounts in Florida. Both triggered automatically. Trump and both R's are crying foul and saying the elections are being stolen by unethical liberals.
You know how that one person that's always worried about someone else lying to him or stealing from. It's cause that's what he would do in that situation.
|
|
rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
|
|
|
Nov 11, 2018 - 09:42am PT
|
10b....i don't live in Utah...
|
|
yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
|
|
|
Nov 11, 2018 - 12:04pm PT
|
Never really thought about it before, but now that you mention it, I guess it could be true to some extent that the "anti-porn" agenda has kind of switched political parties. Funny how those things go.
|
|
Norton
climber
The Wastelands
|
|
|
Nov 11, 2018 - 01:23pm PT
|
|
|
dirtbag
climber
|
|
|
Nov 11, 2018 - 01:34pm PT
|
Trump is white (actually Oompa Loompa orange) while the kneeling players are mostly African American. Trump is excused.
|
|
Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Nov 11, 2018 - 02:54pm PT
|
Apogee: Per your post about Jerry Falwell Jr. & his wife posing with Trump, with Trump's Playboy cover framed in the background.
I remember reading about it, but a search for a photo easily found one.
Any moral outrage Trump has done or can do, is just fine with Evangelical leadership.
|
|
donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
|
|
|
Nov 11, 2018 - 03:26pm PT
|
Evangelicals, long known for expressing their moral outrage, are now best described as suffering from terminal moral outage.
|
|
rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
|
|
|
Nov 11, 2018 - 05:29pm PT
|
TMO..Terminal Moral Outrage....That's really bad Andy...Goober from Andy Griffith...
|
|
Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
|
|
|
Nov 12, 2018 - 06:25am PT
|
Not defend.
Explain.
EdwardT, that's a noble cause. Perhaps while you are at it, you could explain the 2nd amendment to the right wing. They seem to miss that whole 'well regulated militia' thing.
|
|
apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
|
|
|
Nov 12, 2018 - 07:28am PT
|
Things are looking good for Sinema in Arizona...her lead over McSally just keeps growing as the votes are counted...not many ballots left in Arizona....
Dems need as much sway as they can get in the Senate.
|
|
John Duffield
Mountain climber
New York
|
|
|
Nov 12, 2018 - 08:31am PT
|
//
Things are looking good for Sinema in Arizona...her lead over McSally just keeps growing as the votes are counted.//
Seems it is now called for her. There's a lot of blather about doing right by our vets once a year but the day after they get kicked to the curb.
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
|
|
|
Nov 12, 2018 - 08:38am PT
|
👍👍👍👍🤞🏼
|
|
donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
|
|
|
Nov 12, 2018 - 08:42am PT
|
Yeah...politicians constantly laud vets and at the same time they move heaven and earth to ensure that their children never become vets.
|
|
Lituya
Mountain climber
|
|
|
Nov 12, 2018 - 10:31am PT
|
EdwardT, that's a noble cause. Perhaps while you are at it, you could explain the 2nd amendment to the right wing. They seem to miss that whole 'well regulated militia' thing.
Ummmm, Gary, this was decided in 2007 Heller and 2010 McDonald. But maybe you know more about these matters than the Supreme Court? In any event, the right is certainly better constitutionally defined than, say, the right to an abortion.
|
|
Jim Clipper
climber
|
|
|
Nov 12, 2018 - 10:46am PT
|
Lituya?!
re: Militias? 2nd amendment rights.
Maybe it is a question of equal access. My cousin, a police officer, once said that he thought the police and criminals should have the same "weapons". Certainly better than the militarization of our police forces that was seen after excess spending in the Homeland Security budget. Still better?
Disclaimer. This is probably way off base, but I had to take the opportunity to respond to you. I will gladly, and at my best, most humbly take correction from you.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
edit:guns have not always won the day
|
|
Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
|
|
|
Nov 12, 2018 - 11:29am PT
|
Ummmm, Gary, this was decided in 2007 Heller and 2010 McDonald. But maybe you know more about these matters than the Supreme Court?
In this particular instance, I do indeed.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!