***This article originally appeared on TheBlaze - Read It There***
You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. Matthew 23:27
Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook would be hiring 3,000 new employees to be “content monitors” for removing acts of sexual violence, hate speech and child exploitation. Incredibly there are people who live stream actual rapes, murders, and suicides. It is immensely disturbing that our society produces individuals that not only will commit such acts, but are doing them at least in part, if not entirely, for the notoriety Facebook and other outlets make possible. What’s more disturbing is that these videos went viral. We have met the enemy and he is us.
The first symptoms of our societal schizophrenia occurred during the decades long legal debate on obscenity. The sexual exploitation of women has always been profitable, but with the advent of mass media the profits exploded. Obscenity laws were the only bump in the road for pornography without borders, but the Supreme Court ultimately concluded that virtually any act committed and filmed with “consenting adults” is protected by “Free Speech.” The “actors” may be getting paid for sex acts captured on film, but if there is no camera present, and there is a cash transfer, its prostitution. Now prostitution that’s bad, so it’s illegal. Young men and women who can’t make it as porn stars go to jail, porn stars get rich and famous.
Our media driven culture sends a constant barrage of soft core porn out, hoping to entice men, but even that’s changing, into paying for hard core porn. Since younger is better, we have pitches like “Barely Legal”, that go right up to the line, but if you cross over, its child porn and the viewer is a sexual predator. Law enforcement is out there on the web looking for these predators, using “rouses” to ferret out the offenders. When captured it’s a slam dunk felony prosecution requiring lifetime registration as a sex offender.
There is of course nothing new about glorifying violence in our culture, but for the advances in technology. Video games of modern warfare and feudal combat make it possible to realistically slaughter hundreds in a single sitting. Combine sexual conquest and blood lust in a horror film and its sure to do major box office. Is it a stretch to believe that the most prolific customers of this kind of “entertainment” are the ones most likely to act out their fantasies? Do a live stream of a random act of violence and you can be sure of achieving one’s coveted fifteen minutes of fame.
In 1996, when all of this was just really getting started, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act (COPA) designed to require that Internet providers keep “minors from receiving sexually explicit material on the Internet.” Challenged as a restriction on Free Speech the United States Supreme Court in Ashcroft vs. ACLU II in a 5-4 decision found this new law to be an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. Four of the five justices in the majority were Republican presidential appointees, including Clarence Thomas, who is not known for agreeing with the ACLU. So who was offended by this decision? Evangelical Christian “leaders” of course, like Jerry Falwell and Dr. Dobson. That was then, and this is now. Today these same “leaders” enthusiastically supported a presidential candidate who openly bragged about committing sexual batteries on women, and getting away with it due to his star power. No matter, Jerry Falwell Jr. just let his fellow evangelicals know that they “have found their dream president.” What makes him a “dream,” his politics of course. Character is not even secondary, its nonexistent.
Whether it be implicit, or complicit, this is nothing less than misogyny. It is now manifesting itself in the proliferation of the child sex trade. Young girls are kidnapped or sold into sex slavery while the Attorney General of the United States concentrates his law enforcement efforts on punishing cities that consider themselves to be sanctuaries or states that have legalized marijuana. The hypocrisy hoisted upon us by these so called leaders is staggering. Protection of the innocent, now even our children, is less important than partisan politics and our “Right” to exploit our most prurient desires at a staggering profit. We are left to rely upon private citizens of good conscience like Mark Zuckerberg to do what they can to stem the tide. The rest of society will just have to eat a couple more Prozac so they can feel better for awhile.
Written by: Philip Remington Dunn is a practicing criminal defense attorney, social justice advocate, and author of the critically acclaimed book: When Darkness Reigns.