When I Was Young

From FOCUS ON THE FAMILY

Today • Thursday • June 26, 2008

By Dr James Dobson

In 1985 and 1986, I served on the United States Attorney-General’s Commission on Pornography, which turned out to be one of the most difficult assignments of my life.

For 18 months, I had the unenviable responsibility, with 10 other commissioners, of examining the most wretched material ever published. Many people think obscenity consists of air-brushed nudity, as seen in popular men’s magazines, when in reality, much of it involves unthinkable violence against women, depictions of bestiality, the abuse and even killing of children and other subjects that I can’t describe in this setting.

I regret to say now that everything I had witnessed during those 18 months is now available on the Internet and can be accessed by any 12-year-old with a computer and an Internet connection. They can pull down and print in high-resolution material that’s clearly similar, albeit illegal, to anything found in adult bookstores.

So I want to tell you, as a child psychologist, that this material is terribly destructive, especially to boys in the early adolescent years. It teaches them to associate sex with violence and sets them up for a lifelong addiction. And yet, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the law designed to protect children from this curse was unconstitutional.

All I can do in response is to plead with parents to monitor what your kids are being exposed to on that innocent looking computer.