tangents

news & views

by dal mcintire

PIOUS VOICES have been much ablabber denouncing "obscenity," mostly for its alleged demoralizing effect on the tender young. Along with election year blat about religion in politics, went some steamy attacks on Vatican role in censorship drives. Truth is, Protestant groups are fully as zealous as RC's about censoring national reading habits, tho more Protestants (a minority in either case) may publicly defend the right to read . . . Unitarian Dan Lacy, in the weekly CHRISTIAN CENTURY, expressed doubt there was really any relative growth of "hard-core" pornography, questioned bloated statistics. about big-biz aspects of pornography and noted that experts disagree about its alleged effect on children-"a very few even see possible indirect benefits from obscene materials that can divert into fantasy certain drives that might otherwise be expressed in anti-social acts... Life itself is often shocking, beset with temptation, surrounded with sordidness

Frightened ignorance is no preparation" for life's ills. Youngsters prepared by honesty for these shocks have "little to fear from their encounters with the pages of any book."... As the man said, "A little good honest porn never hurt nobody."

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NEW YORK CITY: In a bit o' tiff over whether unwed priests are qualified as marriage counsellors, the V. Rev. Msgr. George Kelly of NY Family Life Bureau said most parents are poor guides to their own children in sexual-moral problems, tho they do a bit the better by their daughters. Only 1/3 of the youngsters the Bureau interviewed got any parental sex instruction. "Modern parents need to be more articulate with their children," he said. "Good example is no longer enough.'

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Gen. Bd. of Nat'l. Council of Churches, meeting in NY, scored film and TV preoccupation with sex, violence and competitive spirit, urged Churchmen to exercise a little muscle nudging industry along more moral paths. . . .

Valerie Goldstein, who teaches religion at Hobart and Wm. Smith colleges in Geneva, NY, said in JOURNAL OF RELIGION that modern theology should be labelled "for men only," being dominated by problems that relate especially to male psychology and by male modes of thinking, by anxieties less typical of women-an important distinction, she feels, in society rapidly becoming feminized. . .

Sadly unable to impose stiffer rap, Judge Chas. Marks gave Jesus Reyes, 27, of Brooklyn, 5 yrs. for attacking officer John Gleason. Reyes

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