• There are more outlets selling and renting pornographic videos than there
are McDonald’s restaurants.
• X-rated videos account for over 14% of the video rental market and 25%
of video sales. The pornography industry has become an $8 billion a year
industry in the United States.
The main argument given in favor of pornography is that it is a
"victimless crime" -- that it does not hurt anyone. However, research
done by professors from Indiana University, the University of Kentucky, and the
University of Houston was summarized by psychotherapist David A. Scott to give
these nine warnings:
• Pornography leads to a devaluation and depreciation of the importance
of monogamy, and a lack of confidence in marriage as a viable institution.
• Porn leads to a increased acceptance of premarital and extramarital
sexuality, and increased distrust among sexually intimate partners, both
married and single.
• Pornography makes people twice as likely to believe that children are a
liability and a handicap, especially female children.
• Porn leads to diminished satisfaction with the physical appearance and
sexual performance of intimate partners.
• Porn leads to an enhanced sense of importance of sex without emotional
involvement.
• Porn creates an appetite for more unusual and bizarre materials such as
those depicting sadomasochism and sexual violence.
• Initial repulsion and boredom toward porn is overridden by engaging in
increasingly bizarre sex acts with a greater variety of sexual partners.
Such behavior is soon perceived as normal.
• Porn leads to insensitivity towards victims of sexual violence. Exposure
to porn soon leads to a belief that such materials do not harm even
children.
• Porn is used by pedophiles [child molesters] to lower children’s
inhibitions to initiate them into specific sexual practices. Adolescents
who were sexually molested as children often begin sexually molesting
children as young as two or three years of age.
Dr. James Dobson gives these eight warnings about the dangers of pornography:
• Depictions of violence against women are related to violence against
women everywhere. The most cursory examination of the material being
marketed today makes it clear why that is true. I could not describe the
offensiveness of these publications without being pornographic even in
this context.
• The use of pornography seems to be addictive and progressive in nature.
That is, those who get hooked on sexually explicit material tend to
become obsessed by their need. It also interferes with the normal sexual
relationship between husbands and wives.
• The river of obscenity which floods our homes has reached the eyes and
ears of children! Boys and girls are finding and viewing their parents’
X-rated videos and magazines. They are also being bombarded by vile
lyrics in rock music on radio, television, and videos. Their morals are
being corrupted by R-rated movies which dangerously link sex and
violence. They are being shocked and titillated by obscenity on dial-a-porn
phone lines. And on and on it goes. As a direct consequence,
psychotherapists are seeing increasing numbers of disturbed young
patients who may never enjoy healthy attitudes about sex.
• Pornography is degrading and humiliating to women [who are] deprived
of dignity and modesty. Men and boys are the purchasers of this
material. The entire female gender has reason to feel used and abused
by this industry.
• Pornography is often used by pedophiles to soften children’s defenses
against sexual exploitation. They are stripped of innocence and
subjected to brutalities that will be remembered for a lifetime.
• Outlets for obscenity are magnets for sex-related crimes. When an adult
bookstore moves into a neighborhood, an array of "support
services" typically develops around it. Prostitution, narcotics, and
street crime proliferate. Ask anyone who lives near a sex shop. You will
hear an immediate protest.
• So-called adult bookstores often become cesspools of disease and
homosexual activity. In this day of concern over AIDS and other STD’s, it
is difficult to understand why local health departments have refused to
close down these foul businesses.
• Finally, pornography is damaging to the family in countless ways. We are
sexual creatures, and the physical attraction between males and females
provides the basis for every dimension of marriage and parenthood.
Thus, anything that interjects itself into that relationship must be
embraced with great caution.
According to an F.B.I. study, 81% of sex murderers said their biggest sexual
interest was pornography (1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography).
According to the March, 1995 Psychology of Living, 82% of all child molesters
admit to trying out of imitating behavior that they saw depicted in pornography.
The 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography warned that:
. . . A certain percentage of adolescents whose first sexual experiences
are triggered by pornography of violent sex, will develop a fetish, a
condition, that will associate violence with sex. We are training rapists and
murderers with pornography.
This concern is further explained in the Commission report:
The commission heard testimony in Houston for Dr. Victor Cline, Professor
of Psychology at the University of Utah, who also cites the work of Dr. James
McGaugh at the University of California, Irvine, on memory. The "research
suggests that experiences at times of emotional (or sexual) arousal get locked
in the brain by the chemical epinephrine and become virtually impossible to
erase. These memories, very vivid and graphic in nature, keep intruding
themselves back on he mind’s memory screen serving to stimulate and arouse
the viewer," he said. "This may help explain pornography’s
addicting effect. These powerfully sexually arousing experiences become vivid
memories which the mind ‘replays’ stimulating the child again and again
suggesting the need for further stimulation . . . Most evidence suggests that
all sexual deviations and their variations are learned behavior. I know of no
good evidence anywhere suggesting genetic transmission of sexual
pathology."
Medical doctor Elizabeth Holland warns about the relationship between
pornography and child molestation:
There exist in our nation . . . those men and women who have been abused,
who have been damaged for life by those who feed oh pornography . . . who have
a sickness, who need to feed on dirty pictures and pornography, And when
touching pictures and fantasizing and looking no longer satisfies these
people’s insatiable appetites, they move. And they move to live children. I
know because I treat these children.
In his book Exploding the Myths That Could Destroy America Dr. Irwin Lutzer,
pastor, makes this statement about the influence of pornography on marriage:
Those who are addicted to pornography soon find that the normal
relationship between a man and a woman in marriage loses its appeal. The only
way the marriage can be sustained, if at all, is through bizarre forms of
sexuality, often against the objections of one of the partners. Even then one
must move on to multiple sexual partners to continue the wild goose chase that
inevitably ends in the wilderness of guilt, frustration, and emptiness. As
John Drakeford wrote in an article entitled "The Sexual Mirage,"
pornography has "strained the traditional relationship between husband
and wife. Pornography presents an unreal view of human sexuality. It is an
exaggerated, fantasized view. If a husband or wife see this perspective as the
norm, it is going to do a great deal of damage to the sexual
relationship."
One-half of all divorces take place because of adultery; often the adultery
was encouraged by pornography.
God is very careful to warn His children about moral purity. Matthew 5:27-28
says, "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not
commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust
after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." I
Thessalonians 4:3-7 reads:
3 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye would
abstain from fornication;
4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in
sanctification and honour;
5 Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not
God:
6 The no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that
the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and
testified.
7 For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.
Finally, II Timothy 2:22, instructs, "Flee also youthful lusts: but
follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out
of a pure heart."
The importance of moral purity is why the patriarch Job said, "I made a
covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?"
In addition, to God’s instructions, His judgments are also very evident. It
is interesting to note how the 1993 California earthquake hit the pornography
industry. The epicenter of the earthquake was in the northern San Fernando
Valley. In this valley are the communities of Chatsworth, Northridge, and Canoga
Park. There were more than 70 pornography companies in this area. They produce
more than 95% of the pornographic videos made in the United States every year.
Every one of them was damaged.
Dr. Phil Stringer is Executive Vice President of Landmark Baptist College,
Haines City, Florida
