Porn Not a Topic for College Study

Richard Burt (Commentary, Sept. 2) seems to present studying pornography in college as being as normal as studying math or history. He proposes that by studying pornography we can learn more about our society. I think we know enough about our society by knowing about the $14 billion a year that porn generates. I wonder if that includes child porn.

Whoever got this through the college magisterium has some leverage in the plan to completely destroy the minds and values of the people of this country. The panel that approved this must be composed of very ignorant people. Haven’t they noticed that pornography is being taught widely by media, television, movies and magazines? One doesn’t need to go to college to learn about pornography. Here is something to study in college: how to stop the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.

Alethea Guthrie

Malibu

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Burt’s article would be laughable except that I suspect he believes what he says is fact. He tries to paint porn as a political right-versus-left issue, which implies that liberals have no concern about morality. This is a frequent mistake of secularists who inhabit universities and seldom mingle with the common folk. He would find that there are millions of liberals who regularly attend religious services and find pornography offensive and of no redeeming social value. To advocate a need to study it as part of some new or unique cultural phenomenon is simply self-serving. Pornography has been with us for millenniums, and the Internet is simply a new delivery system.

Donald J. Prado

Valencia

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To see an example of the rot that infects university humanities departments today one need look no further than Burt’s commentary.

The first of the howlers he submits as wisdom is his statement that “cultural conservatives and their low-brow counterparts--talk-show hosts--believe porn is not a fit topic for the classroom.” I hope that most of the adult population believes this as well. Then he mentions “right-wing feminists,” an oxymoron if there ever was one.

When I was an English literature major in the 1950s we were expected to read Shakespeare. I can’t recall anyone wanting to spend time watching Shakespeare on film, at least in class.

The fact that Americans spend $14 billion a year on pornography, a figure probably grossly exaggerated, does not make it literature. A major problem in American society today is the low literacy level, even among college graduates. Burt is doing his part to add to the problem by titillating undergraduates with pseudo-intellectual justification for a natural desire to view pornographic movies. Maybe he should be trying to teach his students to read and write the language.

Michael T. Kennedy

Mission Viejo