On this page, I dissect a February 1999 CBN article to expose some of the typical argumentative patterns and strategies used by the Religious Right Media to distort reality. The original article is given in blue.

How safe are your children in cyberspace?

Parents do you know where your children are? If they’re on the Internet, they could be just a click away from the red-light district on-line. John Duley is a parent.

"We’re not talking about kids here that are looking for it, are predisposed to it. This can happen purely by accident."

Predisposed? What does that mean? I suppose it is a reference to the fact that, yes, adolesents do have a sex drive, even though religious zealots (for whom the sex drive mysteriously kicks in on the day you get married) are in denial of that basic fact. It follows that all children are "predisposed", and that the distinction does not make sense. It is revealing of christian fundamentalist attitudes towards sexuality that adolescent sexuality is considered an "accident".

"In a split second your child or adult can have access to the most depraved material," says Bob Flores, Senior Counsel at the National Law Center for Children and Families. "

Adult? I thought the issue was how to protect children from online pornography. Of course, that is only part of the plan. Evidently, the emotionally charged issue of child safety is just a tool to promote a much larger agenda - to deny access to pornography to adults as well.

And if a parent walks into a room or enters a bedroom, with a click of a key, they could be back to their math homework, or writing an essay or working on another problem."

The internet has become the number one channel for distributing child pornography worldwide. Unrestricted adult sites generate an estimated $1 billion dollars annually. Recent studies suggest 11-percent of children ages 2 and 11, and 25 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 visit web sites containing nudity each month.

Religious Right Strategy #17a: Confuse the issues as much as possible. In this instance, we are lead to believe that pornography accessed by children is really child pornography, and by association, that it is child pornography which generates an estimated $1 Billion annually.

In reality, this mention of child pornography is totally out of context, since most pornography available on the net or elsewhere is legal, produced by and for adults, and only accessible for people with credit cards (e.g. adults), not child pornography (which is illegal under existing laws). It is exceedingly unlikely that children who access sexual materials on the net will stumble across child pornography, since only a very small percentage of sexual materials available online fall into that category.

The claim that the internet has become the number one channel for distributing child pornography worldwise is completely ficticious. The bulk of child pornography is distributed on videotape by mail. Anyone who has the faintest idea of how the internet works knows that the bandwith required to exchange video is not available to most internet users.

Observe that the statistical claim about the number of children visiting web sites that contain nudity is only backed up by a vague reference to "recent studies". It should also be pointed out that "nudity" is not necessarily pornography.

Flores says, "pornographers are out to make money

.. which is exactly why most online pornography is not freely available, contrary to what the previous paragraph suggests.

and they really don’t care how they hurt, who they hurt, or who they exploit." He says obscenity laws aren’t being enforced to protect children from on-line predators.

Once again, the issues are purposely confused. Are we talking about producers of commercial pornography (who have no interest whatsoever in targeting children since children cannot pay for their products), or about child molesters who prey on children in chatrooms (on whom obscenity laws have no bearing and whose activity is already a crime under existing laws)?

That’s why parents like John Duley are turning to internet services like Integrity Online that block-out pornographic sites. But Flores says that even cannot protect his kids from what they learn from other kids at school.

"Erin was telling me last year, they were developing a directory and passing around sites…addresses where you can access it," says John Duley.

Here is where the article debunks itself, where reality catches up with right-wing fiction. In the introduction, we are told that "we’re not talking about kids here that are looking for it, are predisposed to it." But obviously, that is precisely what is going on. The next paragraph further elaborates on that embarrasing truth:

But service providers and filtering softwares aren’t always foolproof. A student who uses the Internet said, "there’s always ways to get around it. I have friends who rebuilt computers. They build their own programs. They tell you they found this new way to…get around this certain block by doing this."

So, parents beware. Until laws are passed to protect children online, it’s up to you to be sure our children are surfing safe.

A blatant non sequitur. A few lines above, the article argues that the problem is that obscenity laws are not being enforced. So why would we need new laws? If parents can make sure that their children are "surfing safe", why the need for more laws? How could laws (which would only apply to American sites anyways) possibly replace parental supervision, since evidently kids have an interest in sexual material, and will go to great lengths to access it?

Another great example of "arriving at the desired conclusion regardless of the evidence".