Our congresscritters have been regaled this week with tales of the New Enemy, PORNOGRAPHY, which is apparently a HUGE threat to our country now (and never you mind terrorism, the economy, the deficit, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, etc.; we’re now threatened by HARD CORE FUCKIN’). Wired News’ coverage seems to be the best account. One witness famously described the porn plague as worse than crack or heroin (we suppose we’ve just missed the ravaged inner cities and rampant violence associated with porn).

The best part of the story is the demand by one particularly uptight group (California Protective Parents Association, in the person of Judith Reisman) that we fund research into “erototoxins,” which are produced when we view arousing pornography:

Pornography triggers myriad kinds of internal, natural drugs that mimic the “high” from a street drug. Addiction to pornography is addiction to what I dub erototoxins — mind-altering drugs produced by the viewerÕs own brain. […] A basic science research team employing a cautiously protective methodology should study erototoxins and the brain/body. State-of-the-art brain scanning studies should answer these questions with hard, replicable data. As with the tobacco suits, these data could be helpful in litigation and in affecting legal change. […] An offensive strategy should be planned, mandating law enforcement collection of all pornography data at crime sites and judges, police, lawyers and law schools should receive training in the hard data of sexology fraud and erototoxins as changing brains absent informed consent. Congress should end all Federal funding of educational institutions that train students with bogus Kinseyan academic pornography and/or that teach pornography as harmless. Congress should also remove the authority of so-called sexology institutes–most of whom are pornography grantees–to confer professional credentials and serve as expert witnesses. Cite

Of course, the thoroughly debunked ex-gay movement has its say, too, through Jerry Satinover:

Pornography really does, unlike other addictions, biologically cause direct release of the most perfect addictive substance,” Satinover said. “That is, it causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can’t do, in effect.”

Could these people be more hysterical? “Erototoxins“? We wonder how these porn-induced erototoxins differ from the changes in our brains due to arousal from, say, normal human sexual activity. Smart money says “not at all,” and once you realize that, you realize that these people are threatened by sexuality, not pornography.

Of course, with the religious right calling the tune, this may not matter; their hostility to any sort of discussion of sexuality — let alone actual material designed to be arousing, sex toys, and erotic literature — is well documented, and this puritannical strain of American culture desperately wants to force its values on the rest of us. And with this administration, they have more influence than ever before. Pay attention.