Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has promised to initiate a war on porn if elected…. “America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography. It contributes to misogyny and violence against women. It is a contributing factor to prostitution and sex trafficking,” the former Pennsylvania senator wrote in a statement posted on his campaign website. Santorum has chosen the porn industry as his latest target in his effort to be viewed as the most conservative candidate in the GOP primary…. The statement also took the opportunity to slam the Obama administration and its handling of the issue so far, stating that the president has “refused to enforce obscenity laws” and that the Department of Justice “seems to favor pornographers over children and families.”
Wow; how could I have possibly been so wrong? All this time, it seems I’ve been thinking like a typical silly, clueless Liberal. I was convinced that the real issues facing America were things like the economy, education, health care, war, and infrastructure. By thinking so myopically, I somehow managed to completely gloss over the REAL threat America faces: pornography. How do I know this to be true? Because Rick Santorum has removed the veil of ignorance from mine eyes. Praise God and pass the AstroGlide!!
Who would have thought that videos of people having sex could threaten to derail the American experiment? If only I’d listened to Santorum, I’d be leading a godly, Conservative, and chaste existence, thus punching my ticket for entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. Or was it a direct flight to Syracuse? I forget….
Little Ricky knows that his only shot at securing the GOP nomination is to (believably) “out-Conservative” Mitt Romney. It doesn’t seem that enough Republican primary voters are buying his appeal to their inner mean-spiritedness and lack of compassion. Now Santorum is appealing to Evangelicals and Social Conservatives by doubling down on his personal War on Porn. Never mind his claims that porn is rotting our brains and turning us into sex-mad zombies isn’t backed by any…you know, hard evidence.
Of course, Santorum, operating as he often does- in a fact-free environment and/or making up facts as he goes- clearly understands pornography only enough to attempt to manipulate it to his political advantage. Some, like Chicago Tribune writer Steve Chapman, have taken issue with Little Ricky:
I can understand if Rick Santorum wants to prosecute pornographers on the grounds that explicit fare encourages non-marital sex, promotes the use of birth control or saps vital fluids. I would think he’s off-base, but he’d at least have a plausible case.
When he claims that pornography “contributes to misogyny and violence against women,” though, he’s just wrong. All of the evidence argues the opposite.
Santorum doesn’t seem to notice that as porn has become ever-more available via the Internet, the prevalence of rape has plunged. Since 1991, the national rate has fallen by 86 percent — compared to a decline in overall violent crime of 65 percent….
Santorum, however, is one of those people who just knows pornography has bad effects, because he finds it morally offensive. But when reality contradicts your ideology and religious assumptions, it’s wise to reconsider them.
Little Ricky has historically enjoyed a tenuous relationship with the truth, so it’s no surprise that he’s just plain wrong in his argument against pornography. There’s nothing wrong with finding pornography to be morally wrong, of course; Santorum’s certainly free to his opinion. That said, if you’re trying to win votes, it’s usually best not to make up facts (i.e.- lie) as you go. Being a Conservative is one thing; being a CONservative is just dishonest and disingenuous. Not that Santorum evidently has any problem with that.
