I was alerted this afternoon by a friend about a Fox News Story reporting Morality in Media's Dirty Dozen list and Verizon’s decision to offer incest and child-themed pornography on Video-on-Demand. I will refrain from listing titles here for risk of triggering those who read this blog.
In 20 years of practice as a Marriage and Family Therapist, 15 years with advanced clinical chemical addiction credentials, and 5 years specializing in sex addiction, I have gleaned a lot of clinical wisdom. No matter how unbiased I may try to be, biases inherently creep into my work as a clinician. We all have our blind sides. Clinicians and those in recovery live in consultation to have them in check.
I rarely have hard-lined “moral” opinions about what people report to me. I believe all behaviors are facilitative, and when they become problematic in one’s life, we have to find out what that behavior is facilitating and try to redirect it appropriately. I have strong reaction and opinion to Verizon’s decision reported in this article. I believe in freedom of speech, however, I do not believe in an industry that gains profits at the expense of the vulnerable. Freedom of speech at the exploitation of the innocent is horrifying.
I have lived on two different continents practicing as a marriage and family therapist and addiction therapist. Living on two different continents has taught me demand for substances is a function of distribution channels, and a function of supply and demand. While working in Germany we did not have a cocaine problem. We did have an ecstasy problem with 90% of the world’s Ecstasy being produced in the Netherlands and Belgium at that time. In the area where I moved back stateside, we did not have an Ecstasy problem by the numbers, but we did have a Crystal Meth Problem. Crystal Meth in our area is a function of the pipeline that is open from Mexico and a combination of the back woods areas that used to distill moonshine. When we shut the pipeline down supply, demand goes away. Is freedom of speech worth the expense of the innocent? I believe as Ari Zoldan, CEO of Quantum Networks was quoted as saying in the article:
“as Americans we believe in freedom of speech, but we also believe in protection of our children’s welfare and well-being first and foremost.”
To offer supply, or create demand, for child pornography in the name of corporate profits is disturbing.