Cracking down on porn

For anyone who has been faithfully reading Jakarta's newspapers during the past few weeks, the signal is hard to miss. Pornography and prostitution, or to put it more precisely, the eradication of pornography and prostitution are now foremost on this country's social agenda.

Hardly a day goes by without some newspaper reporting a crackdown on vendors of pornographic materials or operators of prostitution houses, both in Jakarta and in other major cities on Java.

In principle, of course, any measure that is taken to curb the availability of smut in the community deserves to be lauded. And, indeed, it seems to us that the current crackdown on pornography and prostitution has come as a response to citizens' complaints about the near omnipresence of pornography around us, especially in films and on film posters, whose makers appear to have lost all regard for even the most common rules of public decorum, not to say morals.

Hence, it is easy to understand the tacit but, nevertheless, noticeable public approval given when a major high-class call- girl service operator was apprehended and the most flagrant of his operations disbanded. And surely, such support is deserved if, indeed, we are concerned about upholding our public morality, or even if we are simply concerned about promoting good taste.

Considering all that, why have a number of observers raised questions about the efficacy of the present anti-pornography and anti-prostitution campaign? Certainly, it is not because they do not find the sex trade degrading or because they endorse a free circulation of smut. Rather, it is because there are so many factors to consider, all of which contribute to the proliferation of pornography and prostitution.

There is, for example, the problem of rural poverty, which may not be the only cause of prostitution, but certainly is a major contributing factor. Then, too, there is the still widely accepted double standard, which demands virtuousness in women but condones promiscuity in men.

In the sex trade, as in any other, it has been said that as long as there are buyers, there will be sellers. And indeed, it is for that very reason that prostitution is known as the oldest profession on earth.

What we are trying to say by pointing out all of this is that to be effective, a clear concept is needed to give guidance to our anti-prostitution and anti-smut drive. That obviously may require efforts to gain a better understanding of all of the underlying factors involved -- economic, moral, religious, traditional and whatever else.

That, of course, is not to say that the authorities' present campaign is useless. Some effort is better than none. However, a word of caution seems in place: Without the guidance of a clear- cut program or concept it may be easy to overstep the boundaries of what is prudent and what is not. In a society such as ours, which is opening itself up widely to the world, especially in terms of business, overreactions of this sort could be more harmful than rewarding.