Moral and Religious Censorship, Family and Religious Values - Essay Example

Moral censorship” refers to the removal of materials that are obscene or otherwise morally questionable. Pornography is often censored using this rationale, especially child pornography, “which is censored in most jurisdictions in the world.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship. Censorship has been given a large amount of attention in the past decades, due to the increase of pornography and the use of foul language. Lack of modesty and the forgetting of religious teachings are the factors that lead to the increase of obscene views on public beaches, hotels and on the world wide web.

This increase has led to sorely needed strict laws that address these affronts.A personal incident has affected me. I have a nephew, who is so close to me that I think of myself as his “second father.” My nephew, being part of the new generation, uses the internet frequently for such activities as school work, playing games etc. One day, when he was on the internet and I was visiting, he asked me, pointing at the computer, “what are those two people doing?” I looked at the computer and was shocked to see a porn movie playing.

I rushed instantly towards the computer and switched it off. I told him that this is adult stuff that he would learn in the future. I was outraged – children should not be exposed to sex. The early years should be spent thinking of studying and the small things in life, not thinking about sexual imagery.I used to believe that porn websites, magazines and movies were far from the reach of children, but my thoughts have changed as a result of this incident. After seeing a ten-year-old open a porn website, I realized just how easy it is for our youth to be exposed to these images.

There is a clear lack of mortal censorship in today’s society. Most of our recently produced movies have sexual content or nude scenes, while music videos that could be easily viewed on youtube and other video broadcasting websites feature ladies with about a quarter of their bodies covered. Childhood exposure to such adult imagery may lead to the increase of masturbation, voyeurism and sadism. Pornographic, indecent and obscene imagery also affects adults, as they introduce fantasies that could increase rape in our society.

“According to conservatives, the sexually explicit content of pornography is an affront to decent family and religious values and deeply offensive to a significant portion of citizens who hold these values. The consumption of pornography is bad for society. It undermines and destabilizes the moral fabric of a decent and stable society, by encouraging sexual promiscuity, deviant sexual practices and other attitudes and behavior that threaten traditional family and religious institutions, and which conservatives regard as intrinsically morally wrong.

Furthermore, pornography is bad for those who consume it, corrupting their character and preventing them from leading a good and worthwhile life in accordance with family and religious values.” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pornography-censorship/.Moral and religious censorship should be strict, as it could lead to societal corruption. However, other types of censorship, such as corporate censorship, which is the censoring of negative information about a corporation or a business by a newspaper or news channel, and political censorship which is the censoring of important information from locals by politicians and governments, should be curtailed.