Opposition Urged Against Woman’s Anti-Porn Tirades

Over the last year The Spokesman-Review has run several of Penny Lancaster’s tirades against pornography. Her latest call for more regulation of “adult” business (Valley Voice, Oct. 16) reminds me that no one has dared rebut her. This is probably only because of the witch hunt atmosphere that she invokes rather than the majority of people agreeing with her.

I am offended that Lancaster can publish against free press, against free association, and against the free pursuit of happiness without opposition.

As a person who does not frequent the places that are her immediate targets, I may seem to have no self-interest. However, I see this latest article as just one more step in the relentless effort of the zealously religious to totally control everyone else’s life.

Lancaster’s latest piece in the Valley Voice claims “the health, safety and general welfare of our community…” are at risk because of a few dance clubs and peep show booths. She supports this claim with a number of false assertions. She throws in a list of seven “growing problem(s)” in Spokane that either are not actually growing, according to news coverage in your paper, or do not even involve people old enough to attend these businesses she is complaining about.

Lancaster even goes so far as to maintain that engaging in adult consensual sex “ultimately leads to” illegal sexual assault.

If you stop and think about it, she is claiming that everyone of us who has ever done anything sexual outside the bounds of marriage will become a violent criminal.

How could anyone take this lady seriously let alone knowledgeable people like our county commissioners?

Then she claims “Spokane has endured the unrestrained activities at Deja Vu.” I’d say Spokane has provided the market and Deja Vu has risen to the occasion in the best capitalist tradition, within the bounds of tight regulation.

I’d like Lancaster to explain how if “public nudity is a threat” to the family, then why cannot she show us a higher divorce rate among nudists? I’d guess spouses attending different churches is a bigger threat.

And then she says, “Men who pay women to undress and perform sexually explicit acts are devaluing themselves, the woman and weakening any bond they might have had with their own wife.”

Why wouldn’t the same be true of a man who would pay a preacher to sermonize how all natural sexual urges are unholy distractions from the pure worship of god.

Clearly, those who say sex is for procreation only are inferring that women (even wives) are unholy temptations that must be kept in their place.

I’d say the problem of disrespect for women has nothing to do with the fact that a few exhibit themselves, but rather everything to do with the Christian puritan elements of our culture.

Those elements are a minority that is at odds with the fact that we are sexual animals. Men who accept our sexual nature worship women for all the joy and mystery they bring as well as for being the source of our progeny.

Perhaps some of the men who go to Deja Vu do so because their spouses do not appreciate their worship.

I urge all you voters to tell your commissioner to disregard that negative, sex-obsessed lady and to worry instead about fixing our streets and parks!

xxxx