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The Victims of Porn &#0151 White Ribbon against Pornography Week

Written by

Charles Colson

in

Note: The following commentary contains information that may not be suitable for children.

A teenage girl was recalling what her childhood had been like — a childhood marred by porn. "When I was eight years old," she wrote, "my father made me look at [pornographic] pictures" involving sex acts he wanted her to perform. "I went along with him, not knowing any better," she said.

For years this girl's father raped her while using these pictures — and at age 16, she had a sexually transmitted disease. "I may die of this disease," she wrote sadly. "Pornography has ruined my life."

So much for the claim — often made by porn advocates — that pornography is a victimless crime. This week is White Ribbon against Pornography Week — a good time to remind ourselves of how destructive porn is.

The numbers are staggering. Porn is a $10-billion-a-year industry. One study revealed that more than 32 million individuals visited an internet porn site in just one month. Some 800 million pornographic DVDs are rented each month. Other surveys reveal that one in five children on the Internet receives a sexual solicitation.

Christians are not immune to the siren call of porn. A Focus on the Family poll found that 17% of Christian adults have visited sexually oriented sites.

There is no longer any doubt that pornography inspires crime. Most child molesters admit that they consume hard-core porn on a regular basis.

And those who create porn are now victimizing even the youngest children. Police who seize pornographic films and pictures note that they are seeing X-rated images of toddlers and even babies — this is sickening.

As surprising as it may seem, sexual addiction — like all addictions — represents a deep hunger for God. In their book, The Sacred Romance, Brent Curtis and John Eldredge point out that humans are designed for intimacy with God. Sometimes we allow the world, however, to drown out God's voice. But our need for communion with Him never goes away. Instead of seeking fulfillment in Christ, the addict tries to fill the emptiness with other things: pornography, an affair, or a fantasy life.

As the authors put it, "We put our hope in… some form of immediate gratification, some taste of transcendence that will place a drop of water on our parched tongue." And they add that "this taste of transcendence, coming as it does from an obsession with… pornography… has the same effect on our souls as crack cocaine." The addiction "attaches itself to our desire [for God] with chains that render us captive."

That's why addiction expert Gerald May calls addiction "the most powerful psychic enemy of humanity's desire for God." And nothing can free the captives of addiction except God.

If you or someone you know is struggling with porn, a website called PureIntimacy.org, run by Focus on the Family, may help. And if you go to the BreakPoint website, you will find ways to participate in the White Ribbon against Pornography campaign this week — ways you can help shut down illegal, hard-core porn in your own town. Get your church involved, as well.

Those white ribbons we wear this week are a public witness that we refuse to accept the crack cocaine of porn in our society — porn that destroys the lives of all it touches.

Comments

  1. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    All the efforts to curb porn are good and necessary as a reaction against the saturation of this scourge on our society. I'm certain however that they will do next to nothing in stopping this industry at which a lot of us wink or grin. It's part of our social, economic and cultural fabric. Its how the West satisfies its mystical longing for God as the article says. It's how the West defines itself.The democratic West is THE single largest purveyor and consumer of this trash. You would think that the godless Communists would use this tool to demoralize and subjugate the populace. They did not, they banned it everywhere. Prague and Budapest were clean, now that they have opened their societies they are porn magnets like Denmark and Amsterdam.

    This is an industry that is unstoppable without censorship. There, I've said it. Is it going to happen in my lifetime? I doubt it. The only thing that strikes more terror into the hearts and minds of the west is a stock market crash. The "C" word has the same status publicly as the "N" word. One would be labeled a communist suggesting it and as I've stated, the Communists were smart enough to realize that a porn saturated, pleasure seeking society is useless even for a totalitarian government.

    We've taken care of smoking and put it in its place. How did we do it? Not with an information campaign or gray ribbons. The heavy hand of the law accomplished that. Was smoking victimizing as many people as porn does? Not even close. Is the tobacco industry as base and destructive with empty profits as the porn industry? Emphatically, no! So why do we tolerate it? Because it's the sister of contraception and we know where that leads. It's the brother of obscene profits and we know that's what capitalism craves. It's also the first cousin of liberals and non-believers and we know who has a strangle hold on the vital institutions in this country.

    If you want to wear a white ribbon and protest then you should do it but it's going to scare this "goodies" dispenser about as much as the little monsters are going to scare me at the door tomorrow night.  

  2. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    Goral:

    Communists are also "smart enough" to forbid God, forbid any real freedom of religion, instead promoting worship of the State (talk about scary!). Maybe if, as you say, we would approach porn as we do smoking – by taxing it out of existence, or at least making it less profitable – we would make some progress. The problem with that is there is so much porn thrown into our faces every day on television, in movies, in magazines, in books, the internet, on and on. It is an emotional addiction most aggressively aimed at men. There used to be in this country a Christ centered society that would not tolerate open porn (it was hidden in the sleazy shops and parlors) and any "respectable" woman would not want to even hint at any association with it in her appearance, actions or manner or speech. Now it is rampant and woman talk, walk and act like the media around them. I am not ready, though, to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire and embrace the tactics of the "godless Communists" (which I know you are not suggesting). What has become more and more Godless is now in our society, our public schools, our colleges. What is missing is God and in Him all that brings up a moral man and woman. When you take God out of everything you are left with evil… that is what is happening, that is why we see the crumbling of the family, abortion, rampant immorality, and we see it more all over the world (and spewing out of the world, not just the US)

  3. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    One thing that would really help to curb the porn industry is if it became easier to hit the pornographers with civil lawsuits in cases of rape, child molestation, etc that have a proven correlation to porn (which I'm sure most of them do).

  4. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    Two comments folks:

    1. bkeebler, when you were harkening back to the days of yore when we had a Christ-centered society, please realize that it WAS censorship that stopped pornography. Our Christian society did something that the godless Communists did. Have you ever heard of "Blue Laws"? Just to enlighten you, Blue Laws are a form of CENSORSHIP with a MORAL PURPOSE. To stand there and say that we good Christians would never do anything like Communists would do is to stick your head in the proverbial sand.

    The funny thing is that our legal system is designed for censorship with a moral purpose. The Constitution itself identifies that States possess Police Powers. Police Powers are those powers of a State to protect its people's Health, Safety, Welfare and Morals. Yes, MORALS. Unfortunately, States no longer seek to flex their Police Powers. Even the US Supreme Court regularly upholds a State's Police Powers (with some exceptions).

    2. Claire, your idea is lovely and totally unworkable. Considering that there are tens of thousands producers of pornography, it would be typically impossible to find the single or group of pornographers who are liable for a rapist's actions.

    Good first try. No one else came up with the idea. Don't stop thinking about it.

  5. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    twheeler:

     I don't think you fully understand communist censorship, if you did you would not think it so wonderful… the people have no say, no choice, no voice. They are told what to think, what to say, and when to say it, with unhappy consequences if they do not cooperate (and that is what I was responding to). I am all for censorship under our form of "capitalism craves" (quoting goral) government, in fact I think it is necessary, but it has to be because the people want it enough to make it happen (censorship will never work if the people don't want it, see prohibition of alcohol, Dry Law – 1920's). And without God put back into our schools, our families, our society, it is all for not.

     

    You see, if you do not get to the root of the problem, you can not stop it from coming back, no matter how many times you cut off its branches… if you do not dig up the roots, it will come back. So what is the root of the problem here? It is that God and all He gives us in His infinite Wisdom has been systematically replaced with garbage like porn. What do we have in our schools? Our children can not say a prayer, can not bring up Christ at their own graduations, but they are taught graphically how to use a condom (birth control pills to 11 yr. olds?!) and that is just the beginning of the sex education and really just the tip of the iceberg as to what our children are exposed to in a society where God is being continually pushed out. The result is a society that has no moral guidelines. We need God, we need Christ back in our society.

  6. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    To goral: don't be so quick to dismiss the little white ribbons.  The pornographers have been flying high believing that they are untouchable.  Perhaps the sight of many, many chests supporting white ribbons might give them something to think about (even fear?).  Hey, it's worth a shot.  I'll have mine on tomorrow!  How about you?

  7. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    That's right twheeler, we had censorship at a time when our society was more Christ centered and now that we're more godless we don't need censorship anymore. What kind of logic is that? Censorship is the only thing that works. There are Christ centered environments like seminaries and Catholic schools that have the same issues because the stuff is so readily available. Sex is too powerful of a force to be left to the workings of the marketplace and the interests of individuals under the guise of personal freedoms. We have the BATF who control the related  substances and their distribution. There is no control over porn now- NONE. And I'm not talking about the calendar girl pinups that were done with artistic taste. I'm talking hard core, repulsive, degrading and child exploitive sewage. There are laws on the books against some of that and nothing is enforced.

    I made reference to communists because they're smarter about this. Their system needs useful idiots to function. When a person is hooked on porn he becomes a useless idiot. For some reason the marketplace is comfortable with the useless idiot.

  8. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    I tell you what, let the people vote on it. Put censorship of porn on the ballot and while you are at it put abortion, euthanasia, prayer in schools, smoking, and the like. I think some would be surprised how many states would go for strict censorship, for prayer and religious freedoms in schools, against abortion, against euthanasia, etc (oh yeah, and for a nativity scene and a tablet of the ten commandments on the court house lawn). We need more of the voice of the people, not less… let them vote directly on these issues! and vote! and vote! I'm sick of hearing about how people don't really know what is best for them, what they want and need. 

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