KC Star Letter to the Editor

I don't read the paper much, and I don't visit it online much, either... but we usually have a paper floating about the lunch tables at work and the two coworkers I was eating with today were perusing its pages. So, I was reading bits and pieces over their shoulders and those things pointed out to me.

I read a letter to the editor that made me really angry, so I pointed it out to my friends so that I wasn't the only one seething over it. They were equally as angry, because unlike the author of the letter, they were educated in this matter. (I found it for you online at http://www.kansascity.com/309/story/832962-p3.html and have copied it below.)

Sexualized culture promotes rape

The Star’s article “Motive may never be known” (9/15, Local) questioning how Edwin Hall went from juvenile delinquent to rapist and murderer turned a blind eye to the obvious.

The abduction, sexual assault and murder of Kelsey Smith is more evidence of the negative effects of a highly sexualized culture on communities. Rapes have increased in Kansas City by 45 percent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 26 percent of teenage girls have a sexually transmitted disease.

It is cause and effect: garbage in, garbage out. We can’t afford to be indifferent and dismiss as harmless fun the pervasive flood of highly sexualized commercials, videos, TV entertainment, Internet porn and sexualized music, all exacerbated by emerging handheld communication technologies. The pornification of America has changed everything.

Kelsey Smith was likely one more tragic victim of fantasy-driven criminal behavior. The public will never know? Wake up and smell the coffee. We all know. Denial and desensitization are the issues we should examine.

Phillip Cosby

Executive director, Kansas City Office

of the National Coalition for the Protection

of Children and Families

Overland Park

Really? Really Phillip Cosby? There are a million fallacies about what you have written.

I'd love to know where you got the statistic that rapes have increased in Kansas City by 45 percent. LOVE to know. Because, as one who works on these sorts of crimes, I have not seen an increase like that. Maybe you need to be more specific. Rapes have gone up 45 percent since when? The 1920s? Maybe. But you could counter argue that women just weren't reporting it back then.

Besides that one little "fact", I'd like to point something out to you regarding criminology. Rape isn't about the sexual act. It's about power and control. It's violent, not sexual. So, your argument is completely STUPID.

I banish you from writing letters to the newspaper, now and forevermore!

Secondly, I looked up the National Coalition for the blah blah blah...* of which Phillip Cosby is the Executive Director.

Do you know what their mission is? "To protect people from the harms of pornography and the sexual messages of today's culture." Oh, come on!

I for one, am sick of people not taking responsibility for their actions. Edwin Hall is a rapist and a murderer and you, Phillip Cosby, are blaming his actions on all of society. No. This is Edwin Hall's fault. There are millions of people out there right now exposed to the same horrible cell phones and television and commercials and music that he was and they seem to behave appropriately. All of society is not running amuck raping and murdering each other. This is not a cultural problem. Rapes and murders happen everywhere - even places where they don't have televisions and internet pornography.

People should hold themselves accountable for their actions. It's not a question of the "pornification of America" or what sort of pressure society is putting on the populous, but rather having good moral and ethical character to know that rape and murder are wrong and abstaining from them. Our culture has not desensitized us to that and entertainment has not brainwashed society to turn a blind eye to these actions.

If they had, Edwin Hall wouldn't be in jail for the rest of his life.

Oh no! Someone take my cell phone away from me! I'm feeling the urge to rape and murder! Is that prime time television coming on? Oh Noooooooooo!


End Blog.

*This site is uber religious. The offices are bases in Kansas. Enter at your own risk. As a gauge of how crazy they are in their religion, they have a section under their links to five different homosexuality recovery websites.