‘Penthouse’ campaigner and ‘positive virtues’

Press, 28 August 1980, Page 17

‘Penthouse’ campaigner and ‘positive virtues’

By

BRIAR WHITEHEAD

Dail Jones, the National M.P. for Helensville, does not have one reason why he wants “Penthouse" magazine banned in New Zealand; he has several, starting from his childhood.

The campaign in which he has been involved in recent months, and has made him a national figure, has something to do with his upbringing as a child of a broken marriage; something to do with his practice as a lawyer;, a bit to do with 11 years in church schools; and a bit to do with data collected by morals campaigners overseas. As a child of a solo mother, he says, he learned the importance of a united home; as a lawyer he saw the fastest way into financial difficulties was through marriage break-up; as a student in church schools he absorbed a Biblical perspective on morality; and as a repository of campaigners’ data he found' the cases supported his theories.

As a lawyer and a politician he respects, laws based on “hundreds of years of experience.” If they outlaw incest, sodomy, and masochism, they do it for a reason, he says. He is also an opponent of undisciplined living, whinging, and bludging.

In all this, he adds, “Penthouse” is a negative factor. It denigrates women, social responsibilities, and. the kind of positive virtues that build family life and prosperous Habits,’ • *. ‘ •

There were other negative catalysts, too — excessive drinking, abortion on demand. “Penthouse" was an arbitrary starting point.

His campaign to. get the Indecent Publications Tribunal to revoke its present “18 and over” classification and ban “Penthouse” altogether, started when he was challenged to put spurs into his “Address and Reply" speech in whch he lauded family life, and commended Patricia Bartlet’s campaign to protect it. The secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards was not slow to respond. She duly arrived in the member’s office with a pile of annotated “Pent-

houses,” and suggested Mr Jones might profitably occupy himself on behalf of the family by keeping what was inside them out of New Zealand.

“At that stage I had reached a point where I had discovered it was all very easy in this life to drift along with the tide and say nothing; to leave it. to the Prime Minister to win the election for you,” Mr Jones says. “I had got a little impatient with just drifting, and it was clear to me that, social issues were just as important as economic ones, I had discovered an area in' which I could make a contribution that perhaps someone else was not making.” His campaign is apolitical, he says. ■lt transcends party lines. Support and reaction have come from National, Labour, and Social .Credit supporters, -

Asked if he would continue the campaign if it affected his political chances in 1981, Mr Jones says that seats are won and lost in the last three months of a term, not in the middle of it.

He would probably discontinue the campaign in the last three months because poll analysts said that social issues receded before economic issues at voting time. He would concentrate then on answering questions uppermost in voters’ minds. Mr Jones has been criticised for not producing the hard data proving direct causal connections between pornography and sexual violence, crime, and social disintegration. He says that statistics of this

nature are not available. However, he adds, research in the field-by the Psychology Department of Flinders University, Australia, shows that countries allowing sale of hard porn have a higher incidence of rape than those countries selling only soft porn. Where, hard porn is banned, governments also have a strong concept of the family. His mail, he says, has given him overwhelming support. Eighty per cent of the 800 letters received since his campaign began, congratulated him. The remaining 20 per cent are evenly divided between those who do not. get the magazine but support free-, dom to read it, and those who subscribe to it.

The general'tone of the letters from subscribers confirm his 1 opinion that “poor character and ‘Penthouse’ seem to reinforce each other,” • - • -