Rick Santorum did not actually say that he saw ‘eye to eye’ with the Taliban, however he has been outspoken on pornography on many occasions and his website featured the following view on the subject;

“America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography. A wealth of research is now available demonstrating that pornography causes profound brain changes in both children and adults, resulting in widespread negative consequences. Addiction to pornography is now common for adults and even for some children. The average age of first exposure to hard-core, Internet pornography is now 11. Pornography is toxic to marriages and relationships. It contributes to misogyny and violence against women. It is a contributing factor to prostitution and sex trafficking.”

Personally I have been reading and watching pornography for decades without any ‘snuff’ tendencies against women.

Early in the summer of 1965 I was coming home from buying the newest Rolling Stones LP in Mattapan Square. A green paperback lay atop a trash can at the Lower Mills trolley station.

It was THE ITCH by Steven Hammer.

Books by Olympia Press were not on the summer reading list for thirteen year-old boys, but I opened the book and my eyes scanned the pages. I found the word ‘fuck’ twice on the same page. The author had meshed them with an assortment of sexual terms and my face flushed red with embarrassment.

THE ITCH was pornography.

I looked over my shoulder.

No one was watching me.

I stuck the paperback into the bag with OUT OF OUR HEADS and walked home two miles through the deep woods surrounding my suburban neighborhood south of Boston. Twice I stopped to read pages 121-126.

The men in the book did everything to each other and women.

Reaching our split-level ranchhouse I hid in the attic and devoured the book three times within two hours.

I was a fast reader.

I found other books, but between the 1965 and 1969 I must have read THE ITCH more than 3000 times. The author’s blue tales of trisexual liasions between aristocrats seduced my tender libido and I succumbed to the rages of onanism without any hope of stopping my hands from touching myself over and over and over.

My girlfriend never knew about my betrayal and my parents were ignorant of my sin.

Even my older brother was excluded from the secret.

It was THE ITCH and me.

We were made for each other.

Here’s a passage from that great tome.

She doesn’t know what she says, her warm fingers along my thigh.

“We could escape,” he said. “There’s still a lot of that fifty grand.”

“Where would we go?” she whispered. “The Magnums have armies.”

“Besides,” she went on, “you know how you are. You’d tire of me after another week of this connubial bliss. We both have this drive.”

“Itch,” he corrected. “The retarded child’s itch for self-destruction.”

“A lovely way to die,” she said, turning to kiss him closely.

When they broke apart, his head seemed to have cleared.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll go through with it. But we’ll have to live together, always. The rest will be sorties. We’ll be gods who land occasionally to copulate with the mortals. After all,” he said, “we’re strong and beautiful.”

She laughed. “Yes,” she said, and recited it after him like a spell, “we’re strong and beautiful. It should be a full year.”

These books were supposedly written by famous authors down on their luck.

They were very good and as Gore vidal said, “The reading of pornography only leads to the reading of more pornography.

The old queer certainly had it right at least in my case.

Which is why Rick Santorum is on my case.

I’m a bad man.