The PTC Thinks TV Will Turn Your Kids Into Sex Freaks

Bad news for all those parents out there who were kinda counting on TV to raise their kids for them: Parents Television Council -- the conservative watchdog group most notable for inundating the FCC with complaints about curse words and boobs -- has just released a study that finds prime-time television "actively" denigrates marriage while glorifying sex outside of it. Even worse, according to the report, is the television depiction of "outre sexual expression" such as " ... masturbation, pornography, sex toys, and kinky and fetishistic behaviors."

The snappily titled "Happily Never After: How Hollywood Favors Adultery and Promiscuity Over Marital Intimacy on Prime Time Broadcast Television" contains such alarming news as:

• Across the broadcast networks, references to adultery outnumbered references to marital sex 2:1.
• Although the networks shied away from talking about sex in the context of marriage, they did not shy away from discussions of masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, manual stimulation, sex toys, bondage or kinky or fetishistic sex -- there were 74 such references during the study period.
• Visual references to voyeurism (a third party present, watching or taping while sex takes place), transvestites/transexuals, threesomes, kinky sex, bondage and sadomasochism, and prostitution outnumbered visual reference to sex in marriage by a ratio of 2:7:1.

Based on these and similar findings the report concludes that today's prime time television:

... seems to be actively seeking to undermine marriage by painting it in a negative light ... sex in the context of marriage is either non-existent on prime-time television, or is depicted as burdensome rather than as an expression of love and commitment. By contrast, extra-marital or adulterous sexual relationships are depicted with greater frequency and overwhelmingly, as a positive experience.

Behaviors that were once seen as fringe, immoral or socially destructive have been given the imprimatuer of acceptability by the television industry -- and children are absorbing those messages and judging from a recent survey, imitating that behavior.