It’s not the porn, it’s the principle
Way back in the Dark Ages of apartheid, we had in this country a strange concoction of Calvinistic Mother Grundy's called the Censor's Board. Satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys lampooned them unmercifully in most of his outrageous stage shows, and for good reason.
This murky band of self-righteous busybodies, so narrow-minded they could probably look through a keyhole with both eyes at the same time, were appointed by the government of the day, to be the moral guardians of the nation. They alone got to decide what we were allowed to look at, listen to, or read. Needless to say, they had to look at, listen to and read everything themselves, before exercising their dubious moral authority, which surely gives one pause for thought.
The origins of this bunch of holier-than-thou societal watchdogs is self-evident when you consider that although South Africa has always been a secular state, the Dutch Reformed Church exerted a great deal of influence over the ruling elite of the time, including but not limited to, fully and explicitly endorsing and justifying apartheid with substantial biblical reference. This ought to be an object lesson for those who wish to cleave church to state, not least of which are the various political parties in this country that include some or other religious affiliation in their party name, but regrettably, that hope dies stillborn.
I clearly recall buying a Playboy Magazine at Heathrow Airport in February 1990 on the way back from a business trip to the United Kingdom and America, with plans to read it, and then abandon it on the plane once we landed at Jan Smuts Airport (as it was then known). The prospect of smuggling a pornographic magazine into the country and being caught was terrifying, despite the fact that on the very day that I'd departed on the trip, February 2, FW de Klerk had shaken the world by announcing the de-facto end of apartheid, and the eventual emergence of democracy.
In 1994 democracy finally arrived, and shortly after that, so did porn. Well officially, anyway. You'd always been able to lay your hands on it if you knew the right people and were prepared to take a chance. All of a sudden Playboy and Penthouse, which hardly qualify as hardcore porn, were available on virtually every shelf, including, but not limited to most supermarket check-out aisles, and before you could say knife, Adult World and Hustler stores sprang up all over the place, along with strip joints like Teazers and Titty Twisters. We even saw an Afrikaans porn mag make its debut, our very own Loslyf, run by a female editor no less.
Predictably of course, the self-appointed moral guardians of society sprang into self-righteous action, bemoaning our collective fate, and predicting increased incidence of rape, sexual abuse, child molestation, and the disintegration of the very moral fabric of our society.
Gradually, the presence of porn mags declined, either because retailers felt threatened by the religious loonies who were protesting so volubly, or because they figured out that the demand was far smaller than originally projected. Playboy even went out of print here in South Africa at one stage, so low was the demand for the publication. Seventeen years down the track, you can still buy such magazines, but usually only at "adult stores", and the sales volumes are miniscule.
Along comes TopTV with its planned porn offering, three channels for R199 a month, and the outrage of those very same self-appointed moral guardians of our society, is once again off the righteous indignation scale. ICASA, in its pusillanimous lilly-livered dithering has already ignored a legal deadline for conducting public hearings on TopTV's application, and has resorted to wheedling out of the courts an injunction to prevent TopTV from going ahead with its plans.
Talk radio stations are flooded with the self-righteous, speculating pontifically over the nature and extent of demand for such channels, and bleating pitifully about moral decay, perversion and the threat to our children. Even left wing Cosatu has weighed in, whining about moral decay, and eventual decline of our society if the channels are aired.
There is as much evidence to support the assertion that that viewing porn leads to an increase in sexual violence and rape, as there is to support the belief that watching violence on TV, will lead to increased violence in society, which is to say, not terribly much. Nonetheless, we don't see the Mother Grundy's demanding that appallingly violent fair like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Silence of the Lambs, Seven and the Saw and Hostel movie series be banned, now do we?
The easy availability of porn, arguably of a far more graphic nature than TopTV plans to air, on the internet, presents a significantly greater challenge to parents who want to safeguard their children's morals, than does the simple expedient of PIN-protecting a TopTV porn decoder.
The argument by the Mother Grundy's that there will be little or no demand for such a service, suggests TopTV has made a poor business decision, and that airing the channels will cause existing TopTV subscribers to terminate their subscriptions in droves. Be that the case, let TopTV find out the hard way, rather than using that as a subversive argument to justify blocking the airing of the channels.
Democracy in South Africa was hard-won, but obviously not hard-won enough. It is high time that people who set themselves up to be our moral guardians, get the message that we didn't ask them to, nor do we appreciate their arrogance in doing so. If you don't like the idea of watching TopTV's three porn channels, then don't buy the decoder, and don't pay the monthly subscription. And if you're an existing TopTV subscriber, then terminate your subscription by all means. It is your democratic right to do so, just like it is the democratic right of those who want to watch porn, to do so without let or hindrance by you.
The ANC government is busy enacting legislation that will severely restrict what you may and may not read, watch and listen to, albeit in a different context. Chances are the Mother Grundy's are vehemently opposed to that legislation. What makes it okay for them to decide whether or not you can watch porn?
Written by Norman McFarlane You are reading It’s not the porn, it’s the principle articles
