DEFINING DEVIANCY DOWN AND UP

Here’s an electoral item indicative of the morally confused thought process now employed by many Americans, especially Californians.

The Adult Film Workplace Condom Initiative recently gathered enough signatures to be placed on a ballot for Los Angeles voters. This proposal, backed by more than 70,000 hyper-conscientious Angelenos, would require adult film companies to use condoms in their productions as a precondition for receiving film permits. 

The proposal also calls for industry fees to fund inspectors (condom-cops?) who will make sure smut-peddlers comply with the prophylactic terms of their permits.

To modify a mantra from the “Occupy” crowd: Is this now what democracy looks like?

Naturally, the measure is embroiled in a legal challenge. L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich contends that the initiative is a “needless and wasteful expenditure of public resources made in connection with a measure which the voters have no power to adopt.”

Of course “needless and wasteful expenditures” are the mother’s milk of government. Witness the half-billion dollars blown on Obama’s pals at Solyndra.

Trutanich might more persuasively argue that if voters in the state of California don’t have the authority to adopt a law defining marriage the way it’s been viewed for millennia, then residents of Los Angeles don’t have the power to stipulate the “technical” conditions under which pornography is produced.

But that would be a losing argument given the moral myopia of Americans who, to borrow a biblical phrase, “strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.”

The mainstreaming of porn is a prime example of camel-swallowing. Another exhibit is the shameless sexualizing of childhood by commercial maggots like those at MTV. Consider also the abysmal vulgarity of much rap music, a commodity often deemed an authentic ethnic art form.

Many progressives turn a blind eye to these hugely corrosive elements within the culture. They compensate for this fashionable cowardice, however, by focusing obsessively on gnatish matters like requiring condoms for porn actors, banning plastic grocery bags, protecting endangered minnows, and denouncing second-hand smoke.

The same folks who frequently wink at grotesque vulgarity and rampant illegitimacy exhibit absurd hypersensitivity when it comes to language they consider politically incorrect—especially comments about favored ethnic groups and non-conservative females.

Porn isn’t a problem, but sex without a condom is a no-no. A million-plus abortions annually aren’t noteworthy, but smoking around a child is big news. Crude musical misogyny is excused, but the use of traditional, gender-insensitive grammar (“his” versus “their”) becomes an ego-crushing insult to womanhood.

In short, the common left-coast response to increasing depravity is to downplay or ignore real decadence while exaggerating and tirelessly condemning faux-deviancy.

A related link:

http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2011/12/condoms-in-porn-what-should-we-do.html