Ethical Houston

Protect our children

Shortly after 9/11 our church embarked on a program to have meetings with Muslims in our community.  The purpose was to learn more about Islam and to see our Muslim brothers and sisters as individuals as opposed to being a monolithic group of fanatics.  For about a year we met numerous times in small groups and during that time I had the privilege of meeting some very fine people who were saddened and outraged by the acts of the few who had destroyed the Trade Center.  One of the men who I came to know and respect was an engineer and a Shiah Muslim.  One day we were having lunch and talking about our hopes and dreams for our children and grandchildren and he said, “I am worried that Jinn will invade my home and will take over my children”.  (a paraphrase).  I inquired about this term and after some struggling with the language he interpreted it as “demons”.  Still not understanding, I inquired further and he said that they were everywhere and all around us.  It was only then that I realized that his explanation was more than a mythical concept.  In fact, these Jinn were real.  They come through the television, on the air waves, in our media, in the internet and throughout our culture.  As we continued to talk, I realized that he and I both wanted the same things for our children and grandchildren—to be safe and hopefully to embrace our faith tradition.

 Last week, my wife and I got our weekly Netflix video, a cable series called Weeds.  It’s about a suburban housewife whose husband died from a heart attack early in his forties.  In order to maintain their lifestyle she became a drug dealer, selling Marijuana to all her suburban middle class adult friends.  In the series, Eight and nine year olds used language that even ten years ago would have been banned on TV and would be given a film an “R” rating.  Today, even on network TV the boundaries on language, sexuality and violence have been pushed back to levels that just a few years ago would have been considered unacceptable.  My wife only stayed for a few minutes, stating that the program was gross and she refused too see the whole series, but as I watched the program, I thought that if the life depicted in the series was anywhere near real life, then we have truly been invaded by Jinn.   

 If this program was an isolated incident, it might not be something to be concerned about.  But unfortunately it has become the norm.  More and more boundaries are being pushed back and we seem helpless to do anything about it.  Over the last weekend my wife and I stayed in a La Quinta in San Antonio.  We looked to see what was showing on the hotel TV.  I was surprised to see that there was a whole section of adult films.  Ten years ago that would never have been the case.  I was amused that there was a disclaimer that you had to be eighteen to view films on those channels.  I wondered who monitored the monitor.  Sex, violence and destruction are so prevalent in the media we have become anesthetized to it.  Or maybe that shouldn’t be the word. By seeing these depictions in the media our children and we, come to see these behaviors as acceptable and those behaviors are reinforced. They become what is known as a “community standard”.   I realize that my concern is one that has been debated and fought for centuries.  Can we censure free speech in some of its forms for the sake of preserving other moral and ethical standards?  The supreme court has often ruled on issues of free speech from whether someone can yell fire in a crowed theatre to Larry Flint and his magazine Hustler.  One of the current standards is “community standards”.  In 1973 a supreme court case established the Miller test concerning pornography.  It stated that there were three criteria establishing what was considered pornographic. In order for something to be considered pornographic all three criteria had to satisfied.  They were, that it appealed to prurient interests, that it was patiently offensives, and lacked serious literary, artistic, and political or scientific value.  This according to the court would be based on local standards so that something in Jackson Mississippi would have a different interpretation than what was the community standard in New York City.  As you well might guess the ruling did little to clarify the issue.  And as we have seen, little by little the media has been chipping away at what is considered as community standards and has done so on a national level.  Only periodically do citizens rise up and protest and then at great expense and personal stress.

 This article is not just about standards as they apply to pornography.  It also is about protecting children and giving other persons protection from offensive material being allowed in their homes.  It’s not enough to tell a parent just to monitor what their children watch on TV or at the movies or to install the V chip in their TV.  One of my sons does not have cable TV but both of his children go to friends houses that do have cable.  Then their’s the influence of the internet and other media.  Why should parents have to go to the extent that they have to in order to protect their children against what I have come to believe is home invasion from what my Muslim friend called Jinn.  Why should we be assaulted by internet material that is harmful to a person’s health. 

 It seems inconsistent that we are so concerned about lead paint on toys and protecting children from faulty car seats and seem so cavalier about what they are exposed to on TV or the internet.  Using the logic that it is a matter of parental responsibility of what children see or consume in the media, we would have to say that parents should be solely responsible for testing all toys for faulty and harmful construction of products used by children or for dangerous chemical additives in children’s food.  These are issues about morality but they’re also about ethics, because the attitude that seems to be prevalent is that anything goes and it’s an infringement on other person’s rights to have both strong moral and ethical community standards.  Our culture has long decided that the protection of our children is a primary concern of our society.  Whether it’s having laws about child labor or laws against abuse, even by parents or having laws protecting children as end user consumers, or education and healthcare for children, we know that our children need to be protected and are our future.  Because of the complexity of society, it is not possible for parents to know every harmful situation or to be in all places that children are exposed.

 It’s not enough to put some bogus disclaimer on an internet porn site or say that parents should use the V chip on their TV to block certain programs (the last time I saw anything about the V chip was from Bill Clinton).  And it’s not enough to just say that parents are the ones responsible for protecting their children.  It’s inconsistent with standards of morality, ethics and law that we have declared are sacred. 

It’s time that Christians, Jews, and Muslims and others concerned about children unite around the safety of our children.  Don’t let the Jinns around us fragment us in what we all want for our families—a safe place for our children to grow up to be what God has intended them to be.