I'm interested in facts too. I'll give you an example. Tobacco harms those who smoke it and those who get the so-called passive smoke. My father died of lung cancer in 1950 when I was 16. His doctors told him even that long ago that it was almost certainly due to his heavy cigarette smoking.

I will not buy Kraft food products, because of the link between Kraft and Phillip Morris Tobacco. Not because of what tobacco did to my father, but because of what it continues to do to people who, for the most part, are deliberately hooked as children or teenagers. This is not conjecture, we know it to be true.

It is my belief that the kind of so-called porn which most of us in Australia can live with [whether we are personally interested in it or not] has not been proven to harm anyone. Child porn, bestiality and extreme sexual violence is [as far as I am aware] banned here anyway and I would think that most of us are pleased about that.

It is my belief that what we legally have in Australia will not harm a normal person [which I believe covers most of us]. We can't ban everything which could possibly have a negative effect on society's misfits, otherwise we would ban alcohol, gambling and motor vehicles. And dress our women in burkas. And the US would most certainly need to ban guns completely.

It is my belief that non-sexual nudity cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be classed as porn. In this respect, do you have any comments on my post on Saturday? I posted these three assorted examples to illustrate the difference between what gets some US authorities hot under the collar and what most of us in Australia can handle with nonchalance.

Sorry to hear about your father.

With timely scientific investigations into the harms of smoking, fewer people would have died.

Scientific studies on the effects of pornography should include the effects of viewing porn on attitudes of the viewer towards females. Studies should test whether or not pornography makes objects of females, affecting definitions of what they "are," and therefore the relationships they are "entitled to."

Extensive studies should be funded before conclusions are drawn about the harmlessness or harmfulness of pornography.

From: Bob Herbert, "Why Aren't We Shocked?", Oct.l6:

"Who needs a brain when you have these?" -- message on an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt for young women

In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a large public high school in Colorado, the killers went out of their way to separate the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the girls.

Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed and a number of others were molested in the Colorado attack.

In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis or race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews....

...violence against females is more or less to be expected....

The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock. Guys at sporting events and other public venues have shown no qualms about raising an insistent chant to nearby women to show their breasts....

In a misogynistic culture, it's never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what reallly matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.

A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes in the U.S. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count....

Thanks, Hawaiilawyer, for your response.

In regard to smoking, British doctors were warning of the danger to health back in 1948. They were basing their warnings on carefully considered evidence. But people, and governments, didn't want to listen, and in many instances they're still not listening.

But, at the same time, people were being criticised for short skirts, low necklines, tight jeans, skimpy bathing costumes and even silly slogans on teeshirts. None of these things can be shown to be detrimental, but to some people they are "offensive", so it's legitimate to moralise about them and try to have them regulated by law.

I have no objection to scientific studies on the possible effect on the population of anything at all. But the studies need to be totally unbiased. And any alleged effects need to be based on their alleged bearing on average people, not just on the ultra-conservative, or ultra-religious, or psychological misfits.

I suspect that the ultra-religious will never accept anything at all which does not fit in neatly with their preconceived ideas, regardless of how extensive and unbiased the research may be. Because, after all, God is on their side and they absolutely KNOW what God thinks about everything. Just consider how the fundamentalists, many of them intelligent, well educated and successful, manage to stick to the idea of creation happening only a few thousand years ago.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/2.asp

And the fact remains that Australian authorities and Australians in general don't seem to be quite so hung up on nudity as many Americans. The resident religious moralists on OLO aren't typical of Australia, much as they would like to think otherwise.

Your various examples of ill-treatment towards females are regrettable, but can't simply be linked to your definition of porn without adequate evidence.

"A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes in the U.S. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count...."

HL, I think you are trying to attribute all these things to porn,
which is nonsense. Yours is a violent culture per se and its
encouraged. Perhaps Americans need to focus more on the rights
of other people, rather then on promoting more guns, more violence
etc.

If you want to understand sex, go back to nature, where we evolved.
Pairbonding happens in many species, where lots of resources are
required to raise the offspring. Females evolved to fuss over the
offspring, males evolved to provide resources for the offspring,
but they also evolved to get horny, so for eons these partnerships
of mutual benefit evolved. Males got their bit of nooky, but brought
home the food etc, females got the food for the family.

Claim what you like, but you ignore nature at your peril. We are
products of our genes, as well as our environment.

Yes, I would agree scientific studies need to be totally unbiased. If they are biased, they are unscientific by definition.

Yankee Lawyer

You are talking about Epidemiologic studies that are generally categorized as descriptive, analytic (aiming to examine associations, commonly hypothesized causal relationships), and experimental (a term often equated with clinical or community trials of treatments and other interventions).

Confounding factors must be taken into account, so bias is irrelevant, it is a question of indentifying confounding factors. An Epidemiologic study can be unbiased but still incorrect while still being scientific.