www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9504659
Brian Alexander E-mail We have the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the War on Crime, and now, t he War on Porn. And they won't jus t be looking for child porn, either, but pornography for grown-ups, made by grown-ups, featuring grown-ups. Critics say the specter of 10 G-Men hunched over video screens watching p orn princess Raylene diddle the pool boy may not be the best use of the FBI's time. Advocates say it's long past time the government cracked dow n because pornography can turn people into sexual predators. During the Reagan a dministration, for example, attorney general Edwin Meese III convened a controversial study panel to examine the effects of pornography and sugg est ways to prosecute purveyors. Certain fundamentalist religious groups and strains of feminists never ga ve up, however, and now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, spurred by co ngressional legislation, has taken up the cause. But if sources for the Post story are any indication, FBI director Robert Mueller may have a tough time finding agents who take the job seriously . Not only are they more focused on, say, rooting out terrorists and mak ing sure CEOs don't run off with the shareholders' dough, but an awful l ot of the FBI no doubt have some personal experience with porn. "Honestly," Gellman quotes one, "most of the guys would have to recuse th emselves." Of course, if porn really is such a danger to society, the effort might b e worth it. And if recent studies by Danish psychologist Gert Martin Hald of the Univers ity of Aarhus stand up, it's not likely to. Hald recently conducted a yet-to-be-published study on the usage of porn by men and women in Denmark that showed porn has become a part of the se xual lives of most people.
In a representative sampling of 688 young people aged 18 to 30, he found that 98 percent of men and 80 percent of women had viewed porn. About ha lf of those women used it at least once per month. About 38 percent of men used it three times per week or more, wh ich makes you wonder what these guys do for a living.
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