Basic HTML Version
16
The
PLAIN TRUTH
December 1970
major cities than in the cities themselves. Most of the new
suburbanites are whites.
Because of declining tax base and the loss of the most
productive residents, the cities are growing relatively poorer.
Insolvency looms for many in the near future.
The trend is foreboding. Despite massive efforts to coun–
ter the decay of the central cities - including over $8,000,-
000,000 in Federal urban renewal funds in the past two
decades - slum life is actually deterioratiog.
President Nixon in his State of the Union Address sum–
marized the growing urban crisis: "The violent and decayed
central cities of our great metropolitan complexes are the
most conspicuous area of failure in American life."
George Romney, U. S. Secretary of Housing and Urban
Development, adds: "This confrontation is divisive. It is
explosive.
It
is smoldering. It must be resolved."
* * * * *
•
Public Health Hazard No. 1
CAUTION: Your environment is hazardous to your
health.
Perhaps these words should appear on every water glass
and be written by skywriters in the smoggy atmosphere above
every large city.
New evidence indicates that every city dweller over the
age of
12
has emphysema to one degree or another as a result
of air pollution. The disease continues to be the fastest-rising
cause of death in the United States.
Study after study has shown that air pollution levels cor–
relate directly with an increase in acute infections of the
upper respiratory tract. Even on an apparently clear, sunny
day, invisible air pollutants can contribute to headache, diz–
ziness, chronic nervousness, confusion, irritability and
quarrelsomeness.
The main health hazard of air pollution, however, is
the aggravation of existing diseases and the weakening of the
body's capacity to combat infection. The "privilege" of living
in a city costs each resident hours to days of additional sick–
ness every year. And air pollution is by no means the only
environmental health hazard.
Thirty million Americans drink water which contains an
excessive amount of bacteria, chemical wastes and other pol–
lutants. And this is a conservative estímate.
Weedkillers, pesticides, fungicides, phosphates, nitrates,
acids from mine drainage, assorted antibiotics and hormones
- these are sorne of the pollutants now increasingly
found in the nation's water supply.
The most publicized pollutant of late has been mercury.
Methyl mercury, a compound 100 times more powerful than
pure mercury, is seeping ominously into the streams, rivers
and lakes of Canada and the United States. The fish popula–
tions of entire lakes have been placed "off limits" for human
consumption.
Large doses of mercury poison can be fatal. Smaller
doses can result in brain, nerve and kidney damage, diarrhea,
tremors, dizziness, irritability, and depression.
*
* *
*
*
•
Pornographys "Magna Carta
11
"Pornography
is
a symptom of decadence. This is not an
opinion- this is the judgment of history
!"
So said U. S. Postmaster General Winton M. Blount on
October
l.
Yet, only the day before, American public
morality - what remains of it - received another telling
blow when the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography
revealed the conclusions of its three-year study.
l ts recommendations stunned Congressional leaders
who originally ordained the Commission panelists to recom–
mend legal steps to stem the onrushing tide of pornography.
Instead, the Commission recommended that "federal, state and
local legislation prohibiting the sale, exhibition, or distribu–
tion of sexual materials to consenting adults should be
repealed."
Congress flatly rejected the Commission's recommenda–
tions. President Nixon and other leading officials publicly
denounced the findings. But the results of the Commission's
investigations revealed a startlingly permissive approach
toward the whole question of obscenity - an attitude which
appears to be growing nationwide.
After an expenditure of
$2
million over three years' time
- conducting surveys and hearings and presumably poring
over a mountain of "smut" - the report concluded that
explicit sexual materials play no significant role in the causes
of crime, delinquency, sexual or non-sexual deviancy.
Rather, exposurc to pornography appeared to the 15
majority members on the 18-man panel to be a "harmless
part of the process of growing up."
Pornography's impact upon the nation's morals was dis–
counted. There is no evidence, they claimed, that "exposure
to explicit sexual materials adversely affects character or moral
attitudes regarding sex and sexual conduct."
A minority summary from the three dissenting committee
members attacked the report's "scanty and manipulated evi–
dence" and labeled it a "Magna Carta for the pornographer."
For the nation to follow its recommendations, they asserted,
would turn the U. S. into another Denmark, where pornog–
raphy has free legal rein.
J
•
•
In a separate d1ssent, comm1ttee member Charles H.
Keatíng said the report, if accepted by Congress, would
amount to "a blank check for the pornographers to flood our
country with every variety of filth and perversion."
He scathingly labeled the Commission's recommendations
for the repeal of obscenity laws a "declaration of moral
bankruptcy."
Despite Congressional disapproval of the Commission's
findings, the legal battle against pornography appears to be a
losing one. Law enforcement officials are hamstrung by court
decisions and imprecise legal definition of obscenity.
In seven short years, the state of California has run the
gamut from topless to bottomless to simulated on-stage sex to
actual performance of the sex act in theaters and beer parlors.
The next step, admit insiders, is bestiality. Laws seem power–
less to halt the moral tobogganslide.