McMINVILLE, Ore. (BP)–There once was time when an individual would be ashamed for someone to know that he or she viewed pornography. Lecherous magazines were delivered via mail wrapped in brown paper. Patrons of seedy adult bookstores, mostly men, parked discreetly and slinked toward an entrance hoping no one would notice them. Pornography was ever present, but few would admit to having an appetite for the filth.
I remember stumbling onto a cache of Playboy magazines in a friend’s apartment. He quickly stammered that he had obtained them primarily for the insightful articles. I wasn’t convinced with his stuttering explanation, and I don’t think he was either. However, the sense of shame that was then associated with pornography caused him to at least offer some sort of excuse. After all, the last thing he wanted me to think was that he was some sort of deviant voyeur.
Times have changed and so has America’s collective attitude toward pornography. What once was seen as an activity to be undertaken in private is viewed in public. In the last decade, public libraries have become prime pornography viewing ground. No, your local public library has not been shelving skin magazines, but they have allowed access to the worst forms of porno via computers.
The practice of lewd library leering became so pervasive that lawmakers sought to curtail the practice so as to protect children from stumbling upon pornographic images.
Since 1996, the United States Congress has tried on three separate occasions to limit access to pornography through public library computers. In each instance the legislation was determined to be unconstitutional by a federal court. The most recent effort, the Children’s Protection Act of 2001, was last week deemed unconstitutional by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia.
The goal of the Children’s Internet Protection Act was to shield minors from obscene material on computers at schools and libraries. In order to achieve its aim, the law mandated filters to be installed that would block access to pornographic sites. However, the three justices who heard the case felt that filtering technology was too broad in what it screened out. The judges opinion included the following, “We find that it is currently impossible, given the Internet’s size, rate of growth, rate of change and architecture, and given the state of the art of automated classification systems, to develop a filter that neither under blocks nor over blocks a substantial amount of speech.”
The judges concluded that because filtering devices that block pornographic filth also screen out a few legitimate sites, the whole program must be unplugged. The result, a moral cesspool is allowed to flow freely into public libraries. Interestingly enough, the court only dealt with the provisions of the law pertaining to libraries. Schools are still subject to the law’s mandate.
While the judges’ ruling is disappointing, what is more disturbing is a society that no longer blushes when it comes to lewd behavior. When someone can sit in public view ogling all manner of perversion from virtual kiddie porn [which is now protected speech] to bestiality and everything in between, and not feel a twinge of shame, our society has problems that all the filters in the world cannot correct.
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Boggs is Baptist Press’ regular Friday columnist. He is pastor of Valley Baptist Church, McMinnville, Ore.
