Army of Darkness

Perhaps no greater hypocritical inconsistency was ever expressed than this from the character of Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now":

We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene.

The United States armed forces has always been mighty concerned about all aspects of morality, with the exception of small tidbits like "collateral damage." Of course, one would NEVER expect that soldiers could possibly be allowed to view pornographic materials in This Man's Army. I mean, God only knows what might happen if those floodgates were ever opened:







Despite all of the horrific consequences that our doe-eyed, innocent fighting men and women would face if they were subjected to nudie pictures every now and again, the US Military has launched an all-out attack against God The Creator Himself, with their plan to sell Playboy and other magazines in base PX's:

A Christian advocacy group is encouraging military families, and other concerned citizens, to write letters to the Defense Department expressing concern over the recent decision by the Pentagon that allows the sale of certain adult magazines at military exchanges.

The Military Honor and Decency Act was passed by Congress and prohibits sexually explicit material from being sold on Defense Department property. However, it is up to a department review board to determine what material is considered explicit, and it has ruled that magazines like Playboy and Penthouse can be sold at military exchanges.

Hell, we're stationed in the Middle East already ... why not re-create Sodom and Gomorrah all over again? OneNewsNow's concerned readers weigh in on the subject:

This is especially interesting in light of the
removal and destruction of "religious" material
from jail and/or prison libraries.
How ludicrous to insinuate that "religious"
media material would cause more problems
than any type of pornography.
Posted by Star Stuart

Yeah. Prisons don't have enough Bibles. You nailed it, Star.

As a mother of a newly enlisted Marine, I am not too pleased to hear about this decision. I've been monitoring computers for quite some time now. Why is pornogoraphy in any shape or form necessary any where? I feel they should have other issues on their minds than this. Perhaps they could read their bibles instead and read and reread about Soddom and Gommorrah, exactly what this world is becoming.
Posted by Carol

Carol, I'm wondering what would cause your son to voluntarily enlist in the Marines ... the fact that you monitored his computer use, or your continuous insistence that he read his Bible at bedtime. I'll go with both.

To take a wonderful human being and turn her into a sex object. How evil. Even the taliban has respect for the sacredness of the female body.
Posted by MJ

So, in order to "respect" something, we must hide it from view completely and act like it doesn't exist. Evidently, when the Kennedy family locked away their mongoloid kid and had him lobotomized, it was out of "respect."

But the Gem of the Day goes to...

I hypothesize that porn is a leading cause to the rise of sexual assaults being experienced in the military. The DOD has a duty to put in place policies that prohibit the sale of porn on military installations, the viewing of porn on military installations, and to educate soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines of the harmful effects of porn. This is no different than alcohol abuse or drug abuse.
Posted by Barry Wright

Nice hypothesis, Barry. Back when I was a behavior analyst, I hypothesized that porn actually REDUCED the overall incidence of rape and sexual assault. Since I was naturally curious to learn whether or not my hypothesis was true, I decided to do what's called "research" (which, surprisingly, does not involve memorizing Biblical verses). Although there is a limited amount of information available on the topic, my favorite study was done on Porn and Sexual Assault in Japan. A few nuggets from this well-crafted article:

Presently in Japan, sexually explicit video tapes, books, and magazines which cater to all sorts of erotic interests and fetishes are readily available. These include sexually obvious manga without age restrictions as to availability. Phone booths in commercial areas and city newspapers contain advertisements for sexual liaisons of every sort. However, this availability of modern pornography is relatively new. Essentially since the end of World War II with the imposition of American military rules, which lasted until 1951, there was prohibition of any sexually explicit material. This continued under the Japanese government into the late 1980s; images or depictions of frontal nudity were banned as were pictures of pubic hair or genitals. No sex act could be depicted graphically.

The situation began to change markedly at the turn of the present decade. While the laws themselves were not modified, interpretation of them changed. Judges during this period became increasingly liberal allowing more pornography of wider scope to be considered "not obscene." Concomitantly with this, as the widely reported uproar regarding a case of rape by American servicemen of a young Okinawan girl in 1995 might reflect, this crime is taken quite seriously in Japan (Anonymous, 1995). Analysis, thus, particularly of the years covering this last decade of rapid change, seemed of value.

Aw, jeez. More Americans raping foreign nationals. That is one horny fighting force! Anyhoo...

This present study concentrates on the offenses of Rape, Sexual assault and Public indecency in Japan and analyzes how their occurrence correlates with the increasing availability of pornography. [...] We particularly attend to any influence the introduction of widely available pornography might have had on juveniles.

[...]

Despite the absence of evidence, the myth persists that an abundance of sexual explicit material invariably leads to an abundance of sexual activity and eventually rape (e.g., Liebert, Neale, & Davison, 1973). Indeed, the data we report and review suggests the opposite. Christensen (1990) argues that to prove that available pornography leads to sex crimes one must at least find a positive temporal correlation between the two. The absence of any positive correlation in our findings, and from results elsewhere, between an increase in available pornography and the incidence of rape or other sex crime, is prima facie evidence that no link exists.

I highly recommend that everyone - most especially Barry - check out the whole paper. See, now that I have read this "study," I can actually feel more confident in my belief that the availability of pornography may reduce the likelihood of violent sex crime. Hell, it may even reduce the occurrence of hot liaisons between comrades in their foxholes.


"The Horror."