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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (72623)	8/19/2003 8:17:40 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 82486

I don't support strong legal penalties simply because of the cost of enforcing them. Whatever penalties they have now are probably fine- but the grading has become lax. If you think back to the grading in the early years, it was much different than it is now- and, imo, it is way TOO different. American Pie and American Wedding, for example, should be NC17. They were merely R. Now I, as an adult, saw them and thought they were very funny. But I do NOT think I want my teenage daughter seeing the heroine of a movie giving a blow job under the table of a public restaurant. After all, she is supposed to IDENTIFY with this girl, and quite frankly I don't know many parents who want their daughters identifying with that.

To: TimF who wrote (72623)	8/20/2003 11:25:35 AM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

I am not comfortable with kids watching explicitly sex and graphic violence but on I also don't like any severe penalties against a theater that lets a 16 year old in to an R rated movie. If I don't support strong legal penalties then there is slap on the wrist penalties which probably would not do much or that is active political protest but I'm not much of an activist. Then there is always chatting about it on SI but somehow I don't think that will have much effect... My opinion on this issue is not wholly formed yet. If you're like me, part of your concern is with the institutional approval of the evisceration of parental responsibility. Rather than taking all these steps at the end point of the system -- the kid walking into a theater without his parents -- we should be addressing the front end -- why is society not helping parents exert parental responsiblity and control? It's well known that people generally live up to the expectations we hold for them. By making clear that the movie industry has taken over responsibility for what chileren are allowed to watch, we are making clear to parents that we neither expect nor trust them to exert control. So of course many of they won't. Our institutions have greatly diminished, if not abandoned, the concept that raising children is primarily the parent's job. Pro-gay posters in school are part of this; it's a statement by the school that it doesn't trust or expect parents to choose the moral teaching their children should be following, but that the school is going to take it over with a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all indoctrination that makes the Hitler Youth movement look tame -- after all, membership in the HY was voluntary, but going to school for your indoctrination is mandatory. Back to the discussion Karen and I were having, I would add that one aspect of family values principles is societal respect and support for parents and an expectation that they will do their jobs and not have their jobs taken over by public institutions.