Chief Censor on "his kids" and porn watching

This was the front page headline of Canvas Magazine, an insert in this weekend’s NZ Herald Herald (13/10/07), advertising a three page Cover Story entitled “The Taste Master” by Derek Cheng on “a man who daily wades through horrific scenes of [hard-core] pornography and violence – for the public good”.

The Society believes that most decent New Zealand parents who care for the moral well-being of their children and young persons would be appalled that our “openly gay” Chief Censor has admitted that “he can’t see himself kicking up much of a fuss” if he catches “his kids” with hard-core porn or hard-core gay porn “so long as the material is legal.” (Canvas, pp. 13-14).

Most parents with a sincere and informed concern for their child’s moral welfare are aware of the morally corrupting impact, and addictive nature of hardcore pornography classified R18 as well as other porn classified R16. They would be outraged, deeply grieved and offended to have their children socialising in another family’s home (like that of Hasting’s) where the supervising adults took the same lassez-faire attitude towards hardcore porn, as he has expressed. Most want their children to have nothing whatsoever to do with porn for good reason and want their children growing up with a healthy view of sex, not the morally corrosive garbage promoted in hardcore sex videos featuring promiscuity and unhealthy sexual practices (e.g. sodomy), regularly passed by Hastings for teenagers and young adults to watch.

In a major article on its website, the Society has explained how decades of classifying degrading hard core porn, sexual violence, paedophilia and gay porn has so desensitised the Chief Censor to the toxic and morally corrosive impact of such content, that he should be replaced as soon as possible by a ‘fresh pair of eyes”. See www.spcs.org.nz

ENDS