Capital Video calls itself "the largest adult retail chain in the nation." It does business as or is affiliated with Met-Cap Management. Amazing net and Metro Interactive. Headquartered in Cranston. Rhode Island. Capital Video reported $25,000,000 in sales in 2006. The company was incorporated in 1979 by. Dennis Nichols is the current President-CEO. Capital Video has over 20 "branches" in the US primarily in New England. These stores typically appear under the name and sell adult movies,magazines and sexual paraphernalia. Many also have porn viewing booths. Stores close to Northampton include and. Capital Video recently lost a battle with to keep its viewing booths private even in the face ofstrong evidence that people were having unsafe sex in them. The Springfield store recently had its viewing booths shut down for Kenneth Guarino has been convicted of conspiracy to evade taxes alsodescribe how he paid at least $1.7 million in cash to Natale Richichi a capo in the Gambino family. "to fend off extortion attempts and to assist Guarino with other business matters where Richichi'sinfluence as a capo might benefit Guarino." A July 2006 Dun & Bradstreet report says that Guarino owns 100% of the capital stock. However a June 2007 Dun & Bradstreet report says that Nichols owns 100% of the capital stock. While it'spossible that Guarino sold the company to Nichols we have no information that confirms this. We have asked D&B to investigate the discrepancy. We are waiting for their reply. Read this account of at Capital Video headquarters.
We distinguish porn which is generally harmful from erotica which can be harmless or even beneficial. The distinction is not absolute but we suggest that erotica is that which supports love () and porn is that which destroys love (). "While erotica has also been defined as literature or art intended to arouse sexual desire it is distinguished from pornography in that it is void of violence illegal portrayals (e g. children) sexism racism and homophobia and is respectful of the human beings involved."An article in suggests that porn is much more about power and domination than erotica is. An article in suggests that porn is about masturbation while erotica is about "sexual journeys ripe with character development" argues that porn is about having shallow experiences with lots of people while eros is about having deep experiences with the same person. Here are some characteristics we associate with porn:mechanicalmindlessuncaringexploitativeimbalance of powerlack of consenttaking without permissionselfishcarelessheedlesssimplisticshallowobjectifyingdeceptivecheatingviolatingroughharshinflicting paindegradinghumiliatingunlovingactors not proud of productactors disdain audienceHere are some characteristics we associate with erotica:humanemindfulcaringrespectfulcommunicativelisteningconsensualbalance of powermutual pleasureintegritywholenesssharingthoughtfuldeep feelingslovingactors proud of productactors respect audienceA complex work of art may have characteristics from both groups. It might be hard to apply a simple label to it. However most porn is not that complex. You will not find much Henry Miller or Anais Nin in your typical porn shop. While erotica may empower women porn disempowers them. This is easy to see in the workplace where porn has been used to female coworkers. Ultimately the biggest difference between porn and erotica has to do with the long-term effect on the viewer as well as the under which the entertainment was made. By educating people as to the potential harms of adult materials we hope they can look inside themselves to judge the healthiness of their media diet. The following might be signs of unhealthy consumption of porn:You feel guilty ashamed alienated sad confused unsatisfied or angry after viewing porn. You generally. You're afraid other people might discover what you're watching. You experience negative consequences at work from your consumption of porn or you fear possible consequences. You start looking at pretty people purely as sex objects that you'd like to possess. You treat people the way you see people in pornography treated. You become more hostile or aggressive toward other people in your life. You find that you are becoming increasingly critical of other people's physical imperfections. You find it stimulating when porn performers appear to be experiencing pain or are crying. You notice your relationships particularly your intimate ones becoming unstable coarse and conflict-ridden. You become dissatisfied with how your partner expresses himself or herself sexually. You need to remember images or scenes from pornography in order to have sex with someone. When you are having sex with someone images or scenes you've seen in pornography "get in the way"--they come into your mind and won't go away even if you want them to. You find that you prefer spending time alone with porn rather than engaging with a companion or attempting to find one. You sense that you are not growing emotionally as time passes that you are stuck in habits that are not very satisfying. You find that you have to consume more and more porn or more explicit and violent porn to become stimulated.[Some of the above appears in
above). Theseregulations are no more strict than those found elsewhere in America. Capital Video and the porn industry as a whole have left a highly visible in their wake. Must we repeat the miserable experience of other people and other towns with regulations that aretoo lax? Some people argue that the reasonable regulation of an activity is tantamount to banning it. This is absurd. The government including. The government regulates the gasoline you canput in your car. Does that mean it really wants to ban gasoline or the act of driving? It regulates the disposal of toxic waste. Does that mean it wants to ban toxic waste or all the activities thatproduce it? It regulates the time place and manner in which businesses may serve alcohol. Does that mean it wants to ban drinking?Nadine Strossen president of the American Civil Liberties Union has been at the forefront of those who equate anti-pornography with censorship. Diana Russell rebuts Strossen's arguments. You just want to roll society back to the way things were in the 1950s or maybe the 1650s don't you? No. The sexual revolution and other developments since the 1950s have brought important gains such as more opportunities for women and more rights and respect for the GLBT community. At the sametime today's society has problems are persistently high with troubling are "amajor public health challenge". About one-half of all pregnancies are. Rates of and are high. Domestic violence and sex crimes go on a large scale. We don't want to roll back the clock and give up the changes that were good. We want to preserve these gains while moving forward to address the current problems. Porn is part of what's holding oursociety back. It portrays sexuality in a way that generally the problems and risks oreven. The messages ofporn can and should be with more complete and accurate information aboutsexuality and relationships. We appreciate that there is a long-standing that if we canonly dispense with all 'unnatural' social restraints a sexual utopia will envelop the world. Unfortunately the reality is when you dispense with all restraints the strong come to oppress the weak. This is exactly what we're witnessing between between and between. The wisdom lies in deciding which social restraints to loosen which to leave alone and which to strengthen not in abandoning them altogether. By the way. Northampton's Puritans had than you might think. Some women watch or make porn. Doesn't that mean that porn is harmless to women or even liberating? Being stimulated by or profiting from the subjection of others is a common human failing and some women are by it for example have been around for a long time. Other women believe that acallous attitude shows that they are as tough as men that they can in a man's world. This phenomenon isexplored in
That said the substantial majority of today's porn viewers are. 36.9 percent of the respondents to a BallState University survey (2004-2005) acknowledged visiting a porn site within the last month or more frequently. The percentages were 49 percent among men and only 17 percent among women finds that of the 10% of adults who admit to Internet sexual addiction only 28% of these are women. A 2005 article from elaborates on the size and composition of the online audience for porn. While we agree it is possible to make today's porn is overwhelmingly about even when the director is female. The target of this abuse is usually awoman. Read about one woman's out of watching porn as she realized it was a cheap way ofmaking herself feel good at the expense of others. The First Amendment has only three exceptions: obscenity libel and speech that causes immediate harm. Any other restriction on speech no matter how slight is impermissible censorship isit not? The First Amendment is worthy of high respect but the courts recognize many more exceptions than is commonly realized. For example many regulations cover there are rules governing where you can"electioneer" on Election Day and it is illegal to possess child porn. In the latter case the Supreme Court holds that the value of child porn is so small and the benefits of suppressing it are sogreat that it is acceptable to censor it. Even the ACLU supports this position at least when actual children are involved. We encourage you to read the court's. What do you have to say to claims that porn is cathartic that it actually reduces the incidence of rape?The balance of the evidence (scientific studies personal testimony) suggests to us that porn in fact stimulates rape and about what's acceptable behavior (such as whether to take nofor an answer during sex). We explore these issues in greater detail. The harms of porn are illusory. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say the harm stems from the stigma and shame surrounding porn?Sometimes shame and stigma are unwarranted and toxic but sometimes they are valuable signals that. The stigma surrounding porn reflects people's understandableaversion to the that are associated with porn and adult enterprises. The key is assigning shame and stigmato where they belong--the oppressor not the victim. In 1983. Robin Morgan that "[T]he work of Dr. NatalieShainess (psychiatrist of New York) and Dr. Frank Osanka [sic] (psychologist and child-abuse specialist. Chicago) show that convicted rapists who even five to seven years ago expressed remorseabout their acts of violence recently show no such remorse and often cite as a reason for their guiltlessness that 'everyone knows women want to be raped; all the porn stuff proves that.'" When shame and stigma restrain someone from harming another that strikes us as healthy and appropriate. It is dangerous for porn to erode the sense of shame felt by abusers and sexual predators. Examples of this at work are the which frame abuse as entertainment something not to be taken seriously. You say porn harms but are you really just saying porn offends you? The harm is real whether or not a particular person finds porn offensive. Rebecca Whisnant clarifies the distinction between offensiveness and harm in "Confronting pornography: Some conceptualbasics" (p.22 see our of this article): Offense we have repeatedly stressed is a way of feeling bad which can usually be avoided or ended by avoiding the stimulus that triggers the bad feeling... Harm is different. It is an objectivecondition not a way of feeling; to be harmed is to have one's interests set back to be made worse off... Whether a person is harmed or not does not depend on how she feels. In fact she can beharmed without even knowing about it--say by having vicious lies about her spread behind her back thus damaging her reputation and diminishing her opportunities. In contrast no one can be offendedwithout knowing about it because offense is something that happens in one's head. Feminists have claimed that the mass production and consumption of pornography harms women in general--by contributing to violence and discrimination against women and by conditioning its users torespond sexually to women as inferiorized fetishized objects who crave humiliation and degradation. We have also claimed that the pornography industry harms many if not all of the women whoparticipate in it. Coercion and abuse [are] rampant in this industry--from the literal enslavement often associated with international sex trafficking to women and girls who get filmed without theirknowledge... Being stimulated by porn comes naturally to many people so why fight it?It's true that humans are naturally endowed with plenty of 'animal' instincts. Of course in the animal world some species. In others the dominant male so he can monopolize multiple females. Humans are not animals. They can choose other values. David Mura. "Except when the term enters debates among Marxists. 'natural' is invariablyused to preclude any investigation of whether or not people in other societies or in other times may have behaved differently. In addition it discourages any examination of whether or not certainbehavior is learned. In such instances 'natural' is not a step-by-step reasoned argument it is an ideology. It is used to justify whatever is customary in a given society to blind criticaldiscourse. "In this particular case the argument that pornography is 'natural' ignores the fact that there are men who have given up their obsession with pornography and who have not died." Much of your evidence against porn and adult enterprises is based on correlation. How does that prove that they cause the ills you describe? Wikipedia discusses the relation of at some length. It is true that some correlations areillogical and false. Example: My failure to take an umbrella to work on cloudy days always causes rain. However our opposition generally raises this issue as a to avoid engaging with the we present. Edward Tufte an expert in statistics and information design puts it this way. "Correlation is not causation but it sure is a hint." There is substantial evidence that and stimulate anti-social behavior especially in children (see for example and ). However our opposition simply refuses to accept that that movies like might lead to sexual callousness despitenumerous that show this is exactlywhat happens for a significant number of viewers. The connection is logical the experiments repeatable but our opposition keeps insisting that porn is just harmless fantasy. At this point the onus is on our opposition to suggest alternate explanations for the and the of adult enterprises and to back this up with evidence and not. It would give them credibility to acknowledge that neighborhood blight and are serious problems and even if they are not ready to concede that porn is a cause of abusive behaviors that porn is of them. All too often we simply sense from the other side that things can be made better. Not everyone who smokes will get lung cancer but today most people accept that smoking is a cause of lung cancer despite decades of denials by cigarette manufacturers. In this light consider thewords of researcher : "The relationship between particularly sexually violent images in the media and subsequent aggression.. ismuch stronger statistically than the relationship between smoking and lung cancer." A mark of being human is having some free will and unpredictability so theories about human behavior will never be as tightly provable as propositions in geometry. There will always be outliers andexceptions. However this does not mean we should abandon the as useless. Thestories we tell each other. Porn has. We have. Ours arebetter. The goal is to search for stories that are ever more true not to abandon the search because we'll never achieve 100% certainty. Porn makes money because people want it. Why shouldn't we leave porn merchants alone? They are just meeting public demand. We believe many people consume porn because they are as to what will makethem happy and fail to appreciate the amount of involved in the making and selling of porn. We have also seenrecent studies suggesting porn has implying that porn consumers losethe ability to make wise choices. The danger of making uninformed decisions is especially high for the many people addicted to porn as children and teens when their knowledge judgment and experience are limited. Plenty of high-risk high-social cost enterprises make money. Why we could open up a brothel or a crack den at 135 King Street [or if you prefer absurd but legal examples substitute "bombingrange" and "toxic waste dump"]. These other uses might be even more profitable than a porn shop. But elevating money to be the only important value doesn't seem very "Northampton" does it? Porn shows actions between consenting adults. Do you have a right to criticize them?There is evidence that porn can be and but let's go further. Let's look at yourassumption of "consensual behaviors". Today's pornographers seem to have less and less use for this convenient screen around their activities: Martin Amis. : A single issue of Adult Video News (April 2000) yields the following. Last October porno star Vivian Valentine attended the XXX-Treme Adults Only vacation in Mexico sporting the black eye she coppedfrom Jon Dough on Rough Sex (Anabolic Video). "I have no regrets or bad feelings about it," she said. Regan Starr who worked on the second film in this "line". Rough Sex 2 had a different take. "I got the s**t kicked out of me," she said. "Iwas told before the video--and they said this very proudly mind you--that in this line most of the girls start crying because they're hurting so bad.... I couldn't breathe. I was being hit andchoked. I was really upset and they didn't stop. They kept filming. You can hear me say. 'Turn the f***ing camera off' and they kept going." Northampton is famous for its tolerance. How does that square with your goals?We agree that tolerance is an important value. However the making and viewing of porn cause suffering and porn shops bring suffering to their neighborhoods. Tolerance in this case is callousness. That conflicts with other important Northampton among them respect for women and compassion forall. Arguments for and against porn are just matters of opinion. Why force your opinion on others?Porn and adult businesses have on the real world that have been extensively studied. That changes thematter from an academic debate about opinions to confirmed facts that people need to act on. The notion that people freeing themselves from self-restraint would lead to a sexual utopia might have been plausible in the 60s but it's now. Marriage is an so there's no harm in Capital Video promoting in their films is there?" The harmlessness of marriage-free living would certainly be news to many children of divorce. Barbara Whitehead presents excellent analyses of this issue in The Atlantic: "The Love Family ideology has no theory of permanence or binding obligation. It is oriented to adults' interests and satisfactions because it emphasizes freedom of individual choice. You can pick theone you love and ditch the one you no longer love without a backward glance. That's great for adults but children don't have the same freedom of choice or the same enthusiasm about moving on. From achild's standpoint the Love Family ideology is inadequate because it offers no basis for permanence in family bonds and commitments. When these bonds are lost children suffer emotionally especiallyin their ability to trust. We've set up a failure-to-commit factor for the next generation." --Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. The Atlantic. February 1997 (may require a paid subscription) "According to a growing body of social-scientific evidence children in families disrupted by divorce and out-of-wedlock birth do worse than children in intact families on several measures ofwell-being. Children in single-parent families are six times as likely to be poor. They are also likely to stay poor longer. Twenty-two percent of children in one-parent families will experiencepoverty during childhood for seven years or more as compared with only two percent of children in two parent families. A 1988 survey by the National Center for Health Statistics found that childrenin single-parent families are two to three times as likely as children in two-parent families to have emotional and behavioral problems. They are also more likely to drop out of high school to getpregnant as teenagers to abuse drugs and to be in trouble with the law. Compared with children in intact families children from disrupted families are at a much higher risk for physical or sexualabuse. "Contrary to popular belief many children do not 'bounce back' after divorce or remarriage. Difficulties that are associated with family breakup often persist into adulthood. Children who grow upin single-parent or stepparent families are less successful as adults particularly in the two domains of life--love and work--that are most essential to happiness. Needless to say not all childrenexperience such negative effects. However research shows that many children from disrupted families have a harder time achieving intimacy in a relationship forming a stable marriage or evenholding a steady job."--Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. The Atlantic. April 1993 reprinted at the Catholic EducationResource CenterBeing anti-porn really means you are anti-sex does it not?We are not against sex. We are against mindless sex sex without regard for issues like love. ,commitment pregnancy and. This of 50 of today's top selling porn films shows how limited andloveless porn's vision of sex generally is. Porn is harmless entertainment. Why blame it for social ills?You are denying that people are influenced by what they read or view. We like how Dr. Victor Cline responds to this argument in : .. for someone to suggest that pornography cannot have an effect on you is to deny the whole notion of education or to suggest that people are not affected by what they read and see. If you believethat a pornographic book or film cannot affect you then you must also say that Karl Marx's
or the Bible or the Koran or advertising have no effect on their readers orviewers. Astute businessmen do not spend billions of dollars a year on advertising if their visual and verbal messages and imagery did not motivate people to buy deodorant or diapers or automobiles. In 2007 the American Psychological Association issued a on the sexualization of girls by American media and marketers. Far from being impact-free this sexualization has been linked to "three of the most common mental health problems of girlsand women: eating disorders low self-esteem and depression."Porn represents an yet form of this sexualization. If this entertainment is so harmless or even empowering why does the desire of women to have daughters after they view porn?It's unfair and inaccurate to claim that all porn viewers are immoral deviants is it not?We agree this would be unreasonable so we don't make this claim. We do show that porn can degrade people's and that it's a factor in many. Not everyone who drinksbecomes an alcoholic but drinking and porn viewing both have dangers that people should be aware of. We believe that many porn viewers on hearing the facts and looking inside themselves will reduce their consumption of porn on their own accord. A whole separate issue is porn's effect on people who are actual or who have sexual illnesses. Theseeffects are indeed of concern to. Is not your opposition to a porn shop just a manifestation of an anti-business attitude?On the contrary we want to see businesses thrive on King Street. One of our concerns about the porn shop is that it will scare pedestrians and shoppers away from surrounding businesses. A in New York concluded that "business locations with adult-oriented businesses hada significant loss of sales tax collections (42%) as compared to control areas." In Blaine. Washington residents and local officials went to (ultimately successful) to relocate an adult business from their downtown. "We've been hearing the community say get rid of it," said community development director Terry Galvin. "Thiscity is right on the edge of a growth spurt. Cities have windows of opportunity and this is it. We've got a problem in that the adult entertainment business acts as a kind of anti-gravity force." Thetown succeeded only after "years of frustration and community heartache for many local residents," according to a local newspaper. We'd rather not repeat this experience of frustration and heartachein Northampton. King Street is a write-off and. The neighborhoods around 135 King Street are a run-down collection ofmulti-family homes who shouldn't expect better. Northampton has had mob-associated businesses before. Porn is everywhere. In short why bother to oppose the porn shop planned for 135 KingStreet?We reject this defeatist attitude. As Sojourner Truth. Sophia Smith and other famous Northampton residents have shown a handful of determined people can have a major impact on the course of events. We're sorry some people have such low expectations for our city. It's absurd to argue that because we can't make everything perfect we should accept decline. Should we abolish the police because they can't catch every criminal? Never correct children because wedon't see every bad thing they might do? Give up on ourselves because we've made mistakes in the past? We have singled out Capital Video and its plans for 135 King Street for special attentionbecause they appear to specialize in despairing their track record is bad(just ask ) and because this location--surrounded by homes schools churches and counseling centers--isespecially inappropriate for any kind of porn shop. We hope other sellers of porn take note of our campaign and reconsider what they're doing. It's just a porn shop. Why are you so excited? Shouldn't you devote your attention to more important issues such as homelessness. AIDS and war?We feel that. We feel the are important. We are concerned about the phenomenon of where the victim seeks more and more porn even to the point of loss offamily and problems with the law in some cases. We also feel that in an age when close to half of American marriages end in divorce with that the in Capital Video films merits concern. As for our wars securing the rights of women in Afghanistan and appears to be a point of pride for George Bush. Hespecifically criticizes the Taliban for. Does this really sound so different from theBondage. Domination and Gangbang categories at the Capital Video-affiliated site. ? Or consider these from magazines sold by Capital Video including one captioned. "Tied to the post. Tracytakes a fearful whipping." Ironic that we might effectively lose at home what we fight for abroad. Businesspeople have the right to do whatever they want as long as the law does not expressly forbid it. If the people oppose a porn shop why didn't they get a law passedearlier?The City of Northampton can't legislate everything. A quality democracy has to depend heavily on the good judgment of all the people. The law can have a hard time distinguishing between Oh My andCapital Video but your average citizen can make the easily. In general we prefer to see fewer laws enacted rather than more but this increases the people's reliance on the judgment of landlords and other businesspeople in the community. If businesspeoplefail to exercise good judgment the people are justified in regulating them. See for an example of good judgment in action. There are many cities in America that have all grown in accordance with the law yet they are not as livable walkable or as Northampton is. We are benefiting from the wise decisions of many people who havegone before us. We've all heard from businesspeople and real estate developers in particular that New England has too much regulation and it's impeding growth. However when businesspeople the reasonable concerns of the community the people's mistrust ofbusiness grows encouraging the regulations that business finds onerous. What's the big deal? All businesses have their flaws. Why don't you protest Dunkin' Donuts or Wal-Mart?This argument only makes sense if you consider a woman to be equivalent to a sugary treat or a case of toilet paper. One can only imagine the public outcry if Dunkin' Donuts or Wal-Mart beganreferring to women as "sluts". "whores" or "a nasty bitch" in their sales literature all terms found at one time or another on Capital Video's website. It is plausible to argue that the benefits of a Dunkin' Donuts or a Wal-Mart outweigh their problems. This is much more difficult in the case of a CapitalVideo porn shop. We also observe that Dunkin' Donuts and Wal-Mart are much more responsive to public concerns than Capital Video is. See for example their PR pages: . . Lots of people use porn. Major corporations transmit it and profit from it. That means it's normal and mainstream so why criticize it?In America not so long ago the majority of "normal good people" either owned slaves benefited from the slave economy or didn't oppose slavery. George Washington was a slaveowner. So was ThomasJefferson. In hindsight we see that that didn't make slavery right. Similarly the fact that many people accept profit from or use porn doesn't mean porn is beyond reproach. The evidence for the keeps piling up and it's time for us to grapple with it. Women enter the porn industry of their free will and are well-compensated. Why criticize their choice?We would argue that many women who enter the porn industry do so without appreciating their of a positive outcome. Others have their judgment clouded by drugs sexual abuse and our pornified culture. STDs are endemic to the industry and most porn actresses certainly exit the businessquickly enough. As for the supposed rich pay this is enjoyed. U. S. News reports (2/10/97): "There is a constant demand for new talent and few actresses last more than a year or two... Checks sometimes bounce. The borderline legal status of the industry makes performers reluctant to seekredress in court... The highest-paid performers the actresses with exclusive contracts earn between $80,000 and $100,000 a year for doing about 20 sex scenes and making a dozen or so personalappearances. Only a handful of actresses--perhaps 10 to 15--are signed to such contracts. Other leading stars are paid roughly $1,000 per scene. The vast majority of porn actresses are "B girls," whoearn about $300 a scene. They typically try to do two scenes a day four or five times a week. At the moment there is an oversupply of women in Southern California hoping to enter the porn industry. Overtime is a thing of the past and some newcomers will work for $150 a scene." When you reproduce pornographic material for analysis and criticism are you not exploiting the people depicted? In a sense this is true and unfortunate. It's the case anytime one holds up another's work for critical examination but sometimes there's no other way to make a point but to show a picture. Describing scenes of torture and misery with words is one thing. Pictures are more compelling less mediated. It was the photographs from Abu Ghraib that made it such a scandal. Pictures are important part of how porn works. Countless images from porn show abusers what to do and help them believe abuse is normal. Pornographic pictures are also used to seasonvictims--especially. We want people to see the raw truth and judge forthemselves. Examining pornography and pro-porn arguments is critical to understanding how porn is harmful its addictive qualities and the toxic narrow version of sexuality it sells. We appreciate that pornadvocates may be or embarrassed by having their materials used in thisway but their interests must be balanced against the the sex industry imposes on third parties and its ownparticipants. We will not refrain from using the industry's copious amounts of against it. Thisincludes cases of a far less defensible act than referencing material to make a political argument. Some adult websites expressly forbid making any public use of their materials without permission. When you quote from them are you breaking the law? No not as long as we stay within the bounds of. Federal case law overrides any claims pornographers might make that their material can't bereproduced for public purposes. The courts give broad protection even to parodies and critical commentaries that copy the "heart" of the original work because the public's interest in debate trumpscommercial considerations. The adult industry is famous for supporting robust free speech protection even for works that some may find damaging offensive or embarrassing. We are claiming our rightto the same protections. Some of your data dates from the 1980s. Is it still valid?We've seen nothing to indicate that the older studies are no longer valid. If anything porn in America has become more violent degraded and pervasive over time so there's no reason to believe itsharmful effects have lessened. Our ever-growing category cites many recent studies as well as the olderones. The fact that many studies over a wide span of time find problems with porn supports our case. Certain kinds of controlled experiments on the impact of porn are no longer allowed by ethics panels because the past results were so disturbing. See the discussion of the Zillmann-Bryant study inour of
You haven't proven beyond all possible doubt that porn harms people and communities. Unless you do why should I support you?100% certainty is probably unachievable in any social science. After scouring the Internet and online bookstores for months and receiving hundreds of comments from the public we have become awareof a handful of studies and papers that purport to show that porn is harmless or even beneficial. We haven't found these studies to be particularly compelling (see. ). The strong majority of the evidence is in factthat porn is harmful to people and communities. Marital counselors divorce lawyers police departments serial killers academic researchers city planners and ordinary citizens report that porn isa serious problem (see our posts in ). The evidence has certainly been enough for many US courts whichhave upheld regulation of adult businesses across the country. See the case the case and this (PDF) on adultuse zoning. Your blog talks a lot about how porn hurts women but it exploits men too. Don't you care about men?Absolutely. We are concerned about everyone exploited by porn. Some of the men in Capital Video's all-male movies appear to be. On balance however women get the worst of things at Capital Video so we made that our first focus. Forexample it's far easier to find in their Wethersfield (CT) storethat involve women than those that emphasize men. Now that Capital Video has dropped the viewing booth element from its proposed porn shop have they met your concerns?Even without viewing booths we're not ready to assert a Capital Video porn shop will be harmless. Obviously for instance we believe that many of the and Capital Video sells are toxic. Capital Video and its owner Kenneth Guarino have a in the adult business,much of which gives us cause for concern. We don't trust that they care about their impact on the communities they do business in. They put up lots of resistance when asked them to clean up their viewing booths and take the doors off. Wealso note that Guarino has and has been convicted of. Aren't adult bookstores protected by the First Amendment? Obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment. Under the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Miller v. California an expressive work (such as a book or movie) may be regulated or banned if: (1)the average person applying contemporary community standards would find that the work as a whole appeals to the prurient interest; (2) the work depicts or describes in a patently offensive way,sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable ; and (3) the work taken as a whole lacks serious literary artistic,political or scientific value. Because adult book/video stores may contain some protected (non-obscene) content among their thousands of titles courts have ruled that a city cannot ban such stores outright. However to combat the negative"secondary effects" of adult businesses. These include zoning restrictions special permits and health inspections and limiting the hours that the stores may be open. In (1985) the Supreme Court upheld an ordinance that banned adultmovie theaters from locating within 1,000 feet of any residential zone single- or multiple-family dwelling church park or school. The Court found that the ordinance was a content-neutral "time,place and manner" regulation because it was designed to serve a substantial governmental interest and did not unreasonably limit alternative avenues of communication. The interests at stake were toprevent crime protect the city's retail trade maintain property values and preserve the city's general quality of life. These are the same issues that concern NoPornNorthampton. Given the wide availability of online pornography and the fact that Northampton already has a shop selling sexually oriented media andnovelties ( on Conz Street) as well as mainstream video stores with adultofferings there are ample alternative channels of communication for would-be porn consumers. Finally the First Amendment does not apply to sex toys lubricants condoms and other retail goods with no expressive content which Capital Video also plans to sell in the King Street store. Some of your allies attack porn as "hate speech". Is this not proof that NoPornNorthampton does in fact support censorship?The phrase "porn is hate speech" is indeed used by some of our allies. We share many of the same goals but our approach and reasoning are not always the same. Similarly our positions overlap withthose of some conservative religious organizations but we are not identical with those either. For example we favor gay rights and gay marriage. Porn attracts criticism from across the politicalspectrum and that's because it's broadly harmful. NoPornNorthampton cares deeply about freedom of speech and values education over censorship. We favor narrowly tailored laws acceptable to the courts to meet citizens' reasonable concerns. Our blog shows the effects of porn and adult businesses spread beyond the immediate consumer or porn worker. This takes them from the realm of private choice and makes them a public matter. With respect to your zoning proposals shouldn't we let the marketplace decide? After all if you don't like adult businesses you don't have to shop there. Zoning doesn't seek to ban adult uses but to relocate them away from vulnerable populations and reduce the secondary effects that impinge on their neighbors whether or not they shop there. Zoningrestricts where you can locate many kinds of businesses such as bars restaurants and manufacturing plants because of factors like noise traffic and pollution. We observe that Northampton lies on an interstate highway (I-91) such that even if no local residents patronize adult businesses out-of-town traffic might be enough to sustain them. The New York Times. "People do not as a rule buy pornography in their ownneighborhoods. As a result pornography and sex-aid stores tend to be near mass transit ideally as near as possible so little time is spent walking to and fro. 'This is not impulse buying,' saidCarl Weisbrod who for many years headed offices charged with the oversight and redevelopment of Times Square. 'It's people who come from wherever to make specific purchases.' As a result he added,'there's a desire in the industry to be in transit hubs.' Would it be fair to say that adult-use zoning doesn't reduce the overall harm from adult enterprises but merely shifts it from rich to poor neighborhoods? There are two major types of adult-use zoning the cluster method and the dispersal method. The cluster method aims to gather a city's adult businesses into one district. An example was Boston's. It is indeed reasonable to argue that you're more likelyto find such a district near weaker poorer neighborhoods. In recent years the dispersal method is the more commonly used. Dispersal zoning aims to put a reasonable distances between adult enterprises and homes schools and houses of worship and betweeneach adult enterprise. This is the type of zoning NoPornNorthampton advocates. Rather than directing adult enterprises to where poor people live dispersal zoning seeks to direct them to where nobodylives. This truly minimizes the impact on everyone rich and poor. There is evidence to suggest that adult enterprises impact residential areas more than commercial and industrial ones (examples: ). There is also evidence that a concentration of adult enterprises has ahigher negative impact on the surrounding communities than an area with one isolated adult enterprise (example: ). From a real-world standpoint adult enterprises like to locate near and in places where they are less likely to get. This means they frequently seek out neighborhoodswhich they perceive to be 'weak' economically and politically. Working-class people busy making ends meet are less likely to have the time resources expertise or connections to give an adultenterprise major resistance (example: ). Dispersal zoning empowers
neighborhoods to reduce the harm of adult enterprises. Is there really evidence that porn increases crime? I thought they hadn't proven a link between watching porn and violent acts. While the causal connection between media consumption and behavior is complex government researchers have shown that the presence of adult businesses increases the crime rate in a neighborhood. One of the most comprehensive studies on the subject is the Report of the Minnesota Attorney General's Working Group on the Regulation of Sexually Oriented Businesses. According to the statisticalanalysis conducted in the Minneapolis study the addition of one sexually oriented business to a census tract area will cause an increase in the overall crime rate index in that area by 9.15 crimesper thousand people per year even if all other social factors remain unchanged. Be aware that adult trade associations have begun commissioning their own "secondary effects" studies. Their interest is to portray porn shops as harmless to the community. Won't the regulation of adult businesses put us on a slippery slope to censorship?Most of our laws and regulations represent a compromise between competing interests. In this case we are trying to strike a balance between the value of free expression and the health and safety ofadult business patrons and neighbors. One could make a slippery slope argument on just about any issue. "If we allow local bars to stay open one hour later soon we'll let them stay open all night.""If we reject this property tax override the city will suffer a continuing erosion of its tax base and go bankrupt." Our proposed regulations aim to mitigate the severe often hard-to-reverseeffects of adult theaters seen in many other towns and cities. If over time these regulations are seen to need adjustment the people can adjust them. Northampton has a well-educated populace (25%with graduate degrees) and a strong tradition of caring for the vulnerable and tolerance for minority viewpoints. It seems unlikely that the voters will support unreasonable restrictions onexpression. We are not advocating censorship but mindfulness about porn and a few modest zoning and health regulations to address local residents' legimate well-documented concerns. Experience has shown theseregulations can be enacted without excessively infringing on free speech. Librarians in Western Massachusetts for example report following the enactment of adult-use zoning intheir locales. Slippery slope arguments cut both ways. As "Lou" writes in a recent comment on the blog. "How about location--can they open a porn shop right next [to] the Bridge School? How about renting rooms inthe High School? I think that there is a limit as to location--and I think that a dense residential neighborhood is not appropriate."Doesn't your campaign smack of elitism?Why no the reverse is true. The most visible porn advocates have been saying that freedom of speech is so important it trumps all other things people might value such as a safe neighborhood onethat's comfortable to walk around in economically prosperous where people won't be harassed or solicited for sex. Porn advocates appear to be indifferent to the suffering of ordinary people whether it's or cities whose due to the presence of an adult business. Despite mountingevidence of the the porn advocates assert they simply know better what's good for America and thatthe people can't be trusted to impose the slightest regulation on adult businesses or soon we'll all be. There's no evidence that adult-use regulations in Hollywood. New York or Bostonhave led to censorship but the real world seems to matter little to porn advocates. That's elitism. We can also look at this from a power perspective. Who has access to millions of dollars expensive lawyers and ? The porn merchants. On the other side. Who are the elite inthis situation?You are Nazis. Fascists. Puritans left-wing zealots right-wing zealots andprobably sex offenders so why should we listen to you?Yes the other side has been doing a lot of and on public streets other websites in comments to this blog public forums like the one at and in emails to us. We're sorry many porn advocates prefer these lazy schoolyard tactics to actually engaging with us on the facts. We are amused that people have called us both left-wing
right-wing extremists. There are indeed arguments to be made against porn and porn shops from across the political spectrum. Tous that underscores how broadly harmful porn is. There is a serious consequence to the atmosphere of and personal attacksfostered by the opposition. Women who have spoken out against porn have been and. A large representative of Capital Videorecently at a citizen at a public hearingin Northampton. In hostile environments like these many citizens from public debates. Some fearfor their personal safety. This does not serve the interests of free speech. Some of your facts and arguments come from controversial sources like the Meese Commission or Andrea Dworkin. Do you endorse everything they did or wrote?Not necessarily. We have selected out facts and arguments from many sources when we feel they have merit. These sources may present other facts and arguments elsewhere that we might question ordisagree with. This doesn't mean the facts we do cite on our blog are invalid or can be conveniently ignored. The founders of NoPornNorthampton haven't lived here for a long time. Are they qualified to speak on this issue?It is true that we are relative newcomers to Northampton. We moved here in 2003. If the depth of local ties confers legitimacy we note that Capital Video Corporation is a chain headquartered inCranston. Rhode Island. The profits from the King Street porn shop will flow south to owner Kenneth Guarino while any ill effects will stay with us. Many Northampton residents more established thanourselves have expressed concern. We quote from the Gazette's June 30 article. :"'We're furious,' said Summer Street resident Mike Kirby a former city councilor who with his wife. Lu Stone have lived in their home for 25 years... 'We've put all this effort into our house andgarden and now this happens,' he said. 'We're shocked.'"... "'I have mixed feelings about it,' said Joshua Miller who has lived at 33 Summer St for 21 years. 'I'm for free speech. I'm for freedom of expression and I'm against censorship. What I'm worriedabout is how pornography exploits women.'"... "Mary Ellen Walsh who said she has owned her Summer Street home for 30 years admitted that she would 'really rather it not' be located near her home... And she added the establishment 'has a rightto exercise free speech but I'm going to exercise mine too.'"Is NoPornNorthampton anti-gay? And how does religion fit into this?We are not anti-gay. We understand there is a diversity of opinion about sexuality within both the religious community and Northampton at large. Our campaign is focused on preventing the objectivesecondary effects of certain kinds of adult businesses such as crime sexual harassment neighborhood deterioration and spread of sexually transmitted diseases. We would also like to raiseawareness about how porn is made and the harmful effects of porn on many people. While our spiritual beliefs inform our opinion that porn often promotes a degraded and commodified vision of intimaterelationships we aim to present evidence that will persuade people that careful judgment and some regulation are needed regardless of religious affiliation or sexual orientation. Your mass-mailed open letter to the Goldbergs could be viewed as offensive itself. What were your motivations?This mailed to voters in Northampton and Longmeadow on 9/27/06,describes the crime and blight known to attend sexually oriented businesses and describes some of the movies sold at Capital Video's websites. Many readers will find this material offensive anddisturbing. So do we. We take no pleasure in publicizing it. We do this only so the public will know the nature of what Capital Video sells and understand why we are so concerned about it. We are not trying to profit from offensive materials. We are asking businesspeople to have care for Northampton and important social values. We cite offensive documentation only the extent necessaryto support our case and hope to have to do this as little as possible. The fact that many people find it unpleasant to investigate or discuss the nature of today's pornography helps enable porn merchants to slip into towns like ours without sufficient debate. Aftercareful consideration we decided that holding some of Capital Video's wares up to public view would help people understand what's at stake and how toxic porn has become today. Activists have found that presenting today's porn in an unfiltered fashion is. We have seen our opposition claim that we should go easy on porn because it's a form of that it or that today's porn is no more harmful than or. We feel the best counter to these arguments is to show people what today's porn. You appear to be recommending that people contact the Goldbergs (the owners of 135 King Street) at their. Is that fair?All the contact information posted on our site derives from public sources especially documents submitted to the City of Northampton. We prefer to publish people's business addresses but in thecase of the Goldbergs the only address available and the one on their does appear to be their homeaddress. The Goldbergs have made no complaint to us and if they would rather we provide a different contact address for them we will. We encourage people to use the information on this site responsibly. We don't condone harassment for any purpose. What did the Massachusetts Attorney General ask NoPornNorthampton to do?On October 3 the attorney general's office wrote to NoPornNorthampton and asked us to register as a charity before proceeding with further fundraising efforts. NPN both advocates for locallegislation and aims to increase public awareness about porn. The attorney general's office decided the latter activity is a charitable educational mission. We applied for a and received it on October 20. We are nowfree to receive donations and the matter has been resolved. We keep all funds raised separate from our personal accounts draw no salaries from NoPornNorthampton and document all our expenses. We have no intention or expectation of making a profit from ouractivism. How can I send you a comment? Please email your comments to. Indicate if your comments should be kept private. How come you turned off the standard commenting mechanism for this blog? Under our host's standard system the primary method of accountability is the IP address. Those who heckled harassed or otherwise abused their commenting privileges had their IP address blocked. Unfortunately some members of the opposition found and publicized a way to this system. By restricting comments to email we are hoping to achieve the same level of accountability that many other blogs enjoy. As always we reserve the right not to publish any comment. This aligns with our overall position that private actors should think hard before publishing or profiting from meritless or harmfulspeech.
More than 1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the United States last year — the most ever reported for a sexually transmitted disease federal health officials said Tuesday... In 2004 the nation's gonorrhea rate fell to 112.4 cases per 100,000 people in 2004 the lowest level since the government started tracking cases in 1941. But since then health officials have seen two consecutive years of increases. The 2006 rate — about 121 per 100,000 — represents a 5.5 percent increase from 2005... Syphilis a potentially deadly disease that first shows up as genital sores has become relatively rare in the United States. About 9,800 cases of the most contagious forms or syphilis were reported in 2006 up from about 8,700 in 2005. The rate rose from 2.9 cases per 100,000 people to 3.3 a 14 percent increase.
This acclaimed and controversial book by gay activist and journalist Gabriel Rotello examines why the AIDS epidemic hit the gay male community and why it persists 20 years after its causes and prevention strategies were discovered. Rotello's study is useful to the antipornography movement in several ways. First it shows how malleable and culturally determined our sexual behaviors are as opposed to porn defenders who represent certain sex acts as what all people "naturally" crave...".. when it comes to issues like the impact of commercial sex businesses on the epidemic most AIDS organizations still operate on the pre-1962 logic arguing that it is up to society to prove that a venue is dangerous not for entrepreneurs to prove it is safe. Based on the evidence. I have no doubt that if owners of commercial sex establishments had to file 'epidemiological impact statements' proving that they would not harm gay sexual ecology before they could get or renew their licenses very few would be allowed to operate." (p.199).. the number of partners practising unprotected anogenital sex was highest in (semi) public venues... commercial sex venues are one of the focal points of syphilis and HIV transmission and acquisition. A U. S study of public sex environments (PSEs) -- parks beaches public bathrooms truck stops etc. -- and commercial sex environments (CSEs) -- bars bathhouses sex clubs etc. -- found that half of the HIV-positive MSM [men who have sex with men] surveyed had visited a PSE (50%) or a CSE (41%) in the previous three months with 24% going to both. Interestingly. MSM who visited PSEs did not engage in more unprotected sexual activities than did those who did not visit PSEs while visitors to CSEs had significantly more unprotected sex than non-visitors. Based on the evidence presented this store caters to a group of people who are reckless about personal health and by inference the health of their sexual partners and Capital Video's blind eye to this activity encourages promiscuity on its premises. Such conduct has been recognized in other Massachusetts case law as a cause of HIV infection... From size location and height of the holes the discarded paper tissues/towels and stains depicted the odors emanating from the booths over a period of several months and the attempts to cover the holes without success it is apparent that customers used the holes with reckless disregard of conditions in plain view and smell of any human being. Further from the evidence of drug sales and prostitution in the vicinity of the store the cooperation between Amazing net employees and a known prostitute and the testimony of a neighborhood resident that this location is the "epicenter" of problems in the neighborhood together with the likely health risks posed as to HIV infection it is evident that revocation of the 2007 Entertainment License to operate the booths is the only remedy to bring about the ending of the open and notorious conditions which constitute lewd and lascivious behavior and nuisance. During the hearing. Nota himself said one of the holes in the Springfield viewing booths had been made with a drill something that we presume would make a lot of noise. More generally. Internet comments from patrons suggest that Capital Video's stores in and can be popular places for people to meet up for sex at least when the store management chooses to be lax. And being lax is profitable. As one patron puts it.
On Squirt org. Capital Video’s Apremont Triangle store gets the most of any location in Springfield. It is plausible that it is one of the leading centers for HIV transmission in the region... The inclination of Capital Video clerks to 'look the other way' is legendary... Police Chief Strong said he believed the collection of material they made along with the lab results showed beyond a reasonable doubt that there were body fluids being exchanged or deposited that other people were exposed to...[Video X-tra Adult Superstore]--the town's only adult video store featuring closet-sized video “preview viewing” rooms--has become an indoor meeting spot for men seeking sex with other men a Sunday Enterprise investigation has shown... with anonymous sexual activity comes increased health and safety risks including the spread of sexually transmitted diseases experts say. I've had wives call me and say. "I'm reading the credit card bill and there's all these strange expenses on it places I've never heard of." Well those places are the cover organizations for the clubs or the massage parlors or lingerie services that their husbands have been frequenting. The next question I get is. "Well do you think I need to get a physical check-up?" And I say. "Yes you do." I can't tell you how many of them call me back and say they have turned up positive for an STD. I also want to tell you about these 39 women that we have helped to get out of the industry. Out of that number of 39 women only 6% were married. 90% were single moms trying to support their kids... 75% of them had STD's when we took them in for their medical check-ups. 16% had felony records that they were working with and 25% had misdemeanors. 95% of them were using drugs and alcohol and three of them had addictions so severe that we had to put them in long term rehab programs."In any sexual interaction where condoms are used consumers tend to drift from that," said Graham Travis head of production at Elegant Angel Video a production company that turns out as many as eight new releases a month. "What the consumers want to see is performers without condoms something that's as real and intimate as possible..."Sharon Mitchell a former adult-film actress who earned a Ph. D in human sexuality before co-founding the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation said on Monday that condom use in the industry had gone up after the H. I. V outbreak to 23 percent from 17 percent and that it was now back to about 17.5 percent. Los Angeles Times: The Adult Industry Medical HealthCare Foundation (AIM) an industry- backed clinic in Sherman Oaks administered voluntary tests to a group consisting primarily of adult film workers. Of 483 people tested between October 2001 and March 2002 about 40% had at least one disease. Nearly 17% tested positive for chlamydia. 13% for gonorrhea and 10% for hepatitis B and C according to Sharon Mitchell a former adult actress who founded AIM... The list of STDS on the AIM handout includes: "HIV. Chlamydia. Gonorrhea. Syphillis. Hepatitis. A,B,C. Herpes. Genital Warts. Molluscum Contagiosum. Crabs. Trichomonis. Bacterial Vaginosis. Rectal Chlamydia and Gonorrhea. Gonorrhea of the throat."One of the newer crazes in porn is a genre called. In a typical scenario a man has anal sex with a woman then puts his penis into her mouth..."I have herpes," said [porn actress] Chloe as she drove me to a smoker-friendly bar. "After you've been in this business for a while you have herpes. Everyone has herpes.... My movies are all-condom but condoms won't protect you from herpes. They don't cover the base. Sometimes when you're doing girl-girl you'll say. 'Honey. I think you should go and see someone.' It can be a very stinky scene down there...."As good a job as porn has tried to do in preventing its No. 1 occupational hazard it falls short for a reason that should be instructive to everyone. Its antipathy to condoms puts performers at risk pure and simple... Why do we still have to say this. 20 years later? It is as basic to HIV education as anything yet denial and resistance (not to mention inadequate sex education) impede our understanding. Perhaps in the next 20 years the porn film industry will stop being a poster child of heterosexual transmission and become part of the solution.
Related article:
http://nopornnorthampton.org/2007/12/01/springfield-republican-cities-challenged-to-fight-aids.aspx
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