人生行路 — The Journey of Life

Penthouse has been back in military exchanges for a while now, and the reaction by anti-pornography groups (example) should be no surprise, but unlike tobacco and alcohol, the military conduct no campaigning against the use of pornography. Sex-related public service campaigns seem only to include sexual harrassment/assault, abstinence promotion aimed at minors, and the prohibition against viewing pornography on government computers, the latter topic of which is never found on AFN commercials.

The Navy Times article linked says that the law does ban “sexually explicit” publications, despite that Penthouse fell out from that definition, and Playboy has fallen outside ever since the the specific law’s existed, meaning that according to the board evaluating the magazines, they do not contain “as a dominant theme the depiction or description of nudity, including sexual or excretory activities or organs, in a lascivious way.” When comparing this to barring pornography on government computers, what exactly is the definition of what kinds of sexual materials are banned? I don’t know which law bans pornography viewing on government computers, but if command policies ban “pornography,” and “pornography” is inherently “sexually explicit,” and Penthouse and Playboy aren’t “sexually explicit,” then what exactly is banned? This doesn’t mean officers should immediately stop enforcing the full intent of command policy, but somebody could try to bring this up. The specter is far more real for shore commands, which can’t force an individual into NJP.

To address those advocating a complete ban of pornography–using, of course, a much looser definition–they will end up having to address why the military doesn’t do the same for alcohol and tobacco, especially considering the content of public service campaigns as mentioned above. Those not familiar with AFN commercials, be informed that they do cover a wide range of topics other than alcohol and tobacco, covering seemingly everything from eating breakfast, to powers of attorney, to those of the Loose Lips Sink Ships variety.

A more consistent solution on both ends might be to wage a similar campaign against pornography. Sure it might be cheesy, but we ought to be consistent in our cheesiness, right? Why not broadcast testimonials against pornography? At minimum, let former porn stars tell the story of what it’s really like in there. Let men whose lives have been ruined tell their story. And to make sure we have just enough cheesiness, stick Pete the Porno Puppet in there, too.

Note: This post is edited from its original form due to the YouTube embedding messing up the layout of the page.