Someone -- a detective, a policewoman, an unsuspecting visitor to someone else's home -- comes across a collection of porn (usually in the form of XXX videotapes, sometimes commercially produced, sometimes homemade). The finder's inevitable, automatic response: shock and disgust. The owner's status immediate status change: from whatever he was -- it's almost always a he -- to lowlife, suspect, and pervert. The change in attitude of the script thenceforth toward said owner: to loathing and disdain, occasionally leavened by pathos.

Here are some U.S. stats on this subject:

The average household income of visitors to adult sites, as of August 2003:
Under $15k -- 6.23%
$15-$25k -- 6.59%
$25-$35k -- 9.55%
$35-$50k -- 16.75%
$50-$75k -- 25.58%
Above $75k -- 35.30%

The age range of said visitors:
18-24 -- 13.61%
25-34 -- 19.90%
35-44 -- 25.50%
45-54 -- 20.67%
55+ -- 20.32%

40 million Americans are regular visitors to internet porn sites.

Men accessing internet porn at work:
20%

Women accessing internet porn at work:
13%

Revenues from the U.S. porn industry (all forms, including internet):
$12 billion per year.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of this date the country's population numbers 292,717,747. Which means that roughly one out of every seven American regularly visits internet porn sites. And that these visitors are distributed approximately evenly across the age brackets, with a lower frequency among those 18-24. And that the numbers increase as income level (which presumably functions as an index of educational level also) rises. And that a large number of these consumers are women.

Not all Americans have internet access, and not all those who do actually use it. So if we add to this set of numbers the other forms in which whatever we define as "porn" gets delivered -- magazines, books, audiotapes, videotapes, CD-ROMs, DVDs, cable TV, triple-X movie theaters -- it seems realistic to assume that one in five Americans regularly consumes sexually explicit material.

In what other area of our cultural life does twenty percent of the population find itself without exception treated with revulsion, and portrayed as if its appetite is shameful?

Even the severely overweight get more respect. Obesity is widely acknowledged as a serious medical problem that has reached epidemic proportions in this country. And fat people find themselves the butt of all kinds of jokes and slurs. Yet there's always been a counterbalancing icon, whether it's Rex Stout's enormous 1950s detective, Nero Wolfe, or today's Eleanor Frutt of ABC-TV's "The Practice" (played by Camryn Manheim): a vast array of dynamic, benevolent, responsible, artistic fat men and women -- Orson Welles, Marlon Brando, Alfred Hitchcock, Rosie O'Donnell, Kathy Bates, John Candy, Luther Vandross, Kirsty Alley (not to mention Santa Claus) -- to contrast with the malevolent Sidney Greenstreet/Jabba the Hutt types. Name me one -- just one -- porn consumer portrayed as simply a decent human being with a particular characteristic about which judgment is suspended.

Why do we tolerate this? I say we because I consume sexually explicit material and, in addition, generate it. And I'm suddenly wondering why 60 million of us, men and women of all ages and all economic levels, tolerate this unmitigated hostility and insult and deprecation. Gives a whole new meaning to the term guilty pleasures.

Something needs to be done about this. I'm working on a plan.

To be continued . . .