Blackout Tells Cable To Stop The Tease It’s A Good Idea Scrambled Moans Are Just A Come-On For Filth Channels.

Penny Lancaster is right. Tune your television to channel 78 any time of day. You’ll hear sultry music and an occasional moan; you’ll be able to make out a breast here, a sexual act there among the squiggly lines meant to obscure the picture.

And Lancaster - an activist who has made it her mission to clean up Spokane - makes a good point: Wouldn’t it be best to simply black out the picture and the sound? Wouldn’t it be best to make the programming available to the people who want to pay for it but spare the majority of the population who prefers not to have such programs in its homes?

Why not? Oh, you’ll hear cries of censorship or protests that this remedy is simply too expensive or cumbersome. But the truth is: Cable companies don’t want to black out the channel because it’s great advertising for the filth channels they make available. What better way to sell pornography than give viewers a little taste now and then?

The reasons for blacking out the channels are plentiful. Primarily, people who don’t want to be greeted by intercourse on their TV sets shouldn’t have to be. Parents shouldn’t have to worry that their children’s first glimpse of sexual relations between two people (or three or four) will be on television.

Yes, it’s currently possible for people to call the cable company and ask it to block the channel on their television sets, but that won’t stop kids from having a little fun by gathering at houses that do get the partially obscured channel. And it doesn’t speak to the larger question of what Spokane as a community wants to say about pornography and the ease of seeing or hearing it in your home.

We could live without it. Children should learn about intercourse in an environment that speaks of love between two people. It should be accompanied by lessons on sexual responsibility and avoiding unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

Instead, Spice and the Playboy channel serve up a 24-hour smorgasbord of garbage. It devalues relationships and people - particularly women. The message is clear: You have no identity, no worth as a person. You’re simply a collection of appealing body parts.

Spokane can send a better message to its children, to the community at large.requiring the city’s cable provider - whoever it is - to black out porn channels, the City Council can make a statement and protect children at the same time.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view see headline: Cable customers have control

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