Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard that the Supreme Court of the United States ruled this week that gay marriage is now legal in all 50 states. You would have had to have been living under said rock for a very, very long time to be unaware of what church leaders think about gay marriage (spoiler: they aren’t big fans). But just in case there are any 20-year rock under-dwellers, the church is having a very special sharing time this Sunday, to re-hash what we already all know.
My wife pointed out how shallow this re-emphasis feels when more black churches are burning every day, and yet our church leaders (self-styled stalwarts of religious freedom) are utterly and astonishingly silent. Rather than decry the most horrific bigotry imaginable, they are spending part of our Sabbath worship schedule asking people to stop calling them bigots for well, perpetuating a culture of bigotry.
Which brings me to the subject of porn. (I’ll get to the relevance of my abrupt sanguine in a bit.)
I guess I should start by explaining that I don’t actually know much about porn. The lessons I was taught in Sunday School, Seminary, and Young Men’s about the evils of pornography actually sunk in more or less. Other than one particularly awkward peer-pressure moment between several of my friends, I have not willingly engaged with pornography with any regularity. It was not until my mission that I realized just how many of my peers struggled with porn and masturbation. Of my 11 companions, 8 had what could only be characterized as significant challenges with pornography.
The church has adopted the premise of addiction in addressing pornography more frequently in recent years. This increased focus on pornography as an addiction coincides with a similar focus prevalent in American evangelical churches, and it emerged at the same time. While it might be helpful for a few people to engage a problematic relationship with pornography by thinking of it as an addiction; the science just isn’t there. Numerous studies have concluded that while these behaviors can interfere with a person’s life and health in real and alarming ways, it simply doesn’t manifest neurologically as an addiction. Addicts’ brains behave in a very consistent and predictable way. Habitual porn users aren’t neurochemical response addicts. They’re just habitual.
I have realized in adulthood, that what my missionary companions broke down in tears about wasn’t the consequences of their sinful acts. More often, the tears came with the pervading sense of guilt and frustration that comes with constant failure to live up. One of them once literally prostrated himself before our mission president, and asked him, if it was so hard for him to meet this one low standard of righteousness, how he could ever hope to enter the Celestial Kingdom? And while I know he was comforted with our president’s witness of Christ and His atonement, I don’t think he was told that what he tortured himself about failing to live up to, was actually a HIGH standard… incredibly, ridiculously high. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if you told me that 98% of 19 year olds in the world masturbate multiple times a day, and use pornography most of the times they masturbate.
Now, I’m not saying the church should oust the law of chastity, or ignore pornography use by its youth… quite the opposite. In fact, I think it’s time for the church to get serious about it. Pornography is in fact, a great evil in the world. But the evil is not in seeing naked bodies having sex. We even have a supposedly doctrinal statement that teaches that God, in fact, designed sex.
Like conventional forms of media, the pornography industry is lucrative because people look at it. Billions of people watch porn every day. In purely macro-economic terms, it’s not going away. Thanks to the Internet, it is easier to access and freer than ever. And even if all the porn on the Internet were free, making it would remain a lucrative venture, because advertisers will always pay to be placed in the vicinity of human eyes.
The real evil of porn is in the objectification and victimization of human beings, primarily women. Pornography is one of the principle drivers of human trafficking and slavery and pornographers are among the chief perpetrators of these crimes. Consuming porn in a completely responsible way is almost impossible. When you watch porn, it is easy to believe that the people involved are willing and eager participants. But you have virtually no way of knowing whether that assumption is true. Even among actors who have left the porn industry, reports of coercion and blackmail are common, as are experiences of threats and violence, and that is only considering people with the power to leave. There is certainly evil in porn, but it’s hiding beneath the surface.
That’s where porn “addiction” and the church’s reaction to the SCOTUS ruling are just too bizarre for me…
It’s all the outrage for all of the wrong reasons.
If I had known even half of those realities as a youth, I would’ve steered even clearer of pornographic material than I already did from just the usual dose of fear and guilt. And in the long run, I don’t think fear or guilt are very productive motivators at all. At least I don’t think they hold up as well as truth. I think our youth in the church are smart enough to see the real harms that pornography is doing in the world, and to understand why being part of the problem is what really cankers your soul.
Teary pleas from Elder Scott and the fiery rhetoric of President Packer aren’t working. What is really going to help our youth make the right kinds of choices? That’s a big question, but I think the truth is a really good place to start.
I like this sentiment a lot. Being opposed to gay marriage means you’re a bigot, and there can be no more arguments. The Supreme Court has done God’s work. Watching people have sex is okay with the Lord, so long as you don’t objectify the woman. This is a good start.
My hope and prayer is that the prophets will become more enlightened so that NAMBLA isn’t seen as evil either. They’re just misunderstood, their relationships are no different than those between a man and a woman and calling it wrong is bigotry.
Justin Bailey,
Nice troll, a-hole. Everything is wrong with NAMBLA and comparing homosexuals to child molesters is the very definition of bigoted.
“Everything’s wrong” with it? That’s the very definition of bigotry, actually. You don’t choose who you love and you can’t ask them to be someone they’re not.
I like that there are continued studies being made into the effects of pornography on the brain, as well as the quality of life for people involved. Having seen the effects extreme viewing habits have had on loved ones and families, and the very low success rate of helping and treating it as an addiction I really hope we can further our understanding to help people in the proper way, and in ways that will last. I also like the progress they have been making at Utah State University with researching better “treatment” methods. Our first step to solving problems, is really understanding them.
Having spent much of my life working with youth, and in answer to your question, what I think will really help youth make the right decisions is understanding and trust. Trusting them with the truth, and giving them the opportunity to understand things for themselves (and also letting them know that hey, there are many things we are still figuring out and working on.) Fear and guilt are actually really powerful motivators for a lot of people, especially youth, but they also come with a very large risk of backlash when they stop working, and that backlash can be very harmful with lasting long term negative effects/reactions. Truth, love, and understanding sometimes come with an upfront negative reaction, but rarely is that negative lasting and long term. Love and honesty seems to be the better method of approaching things, but it does require more patience and effort.
Amen to the evils of porn. Objectification & exploitation are bad.
Dusty,
Agreed. One of the studies I referenced actually made some inferences about the “lack of neurological activity” that occurs when pornography is viewed by problem users and posited it for further study. I think the U is doing a fantastic job of investigating better methods for dealing with it than the re-packaged 12-step program.
Pornography and LGBT issues are simply created devils by churches in order to justify their existence and rally the “faithful.”
I’ve also read that up to 90% of all actors in porn were sexually abused and that the porn industry is just another way that these victims in our society are continued to be victimized.
In straight porn, i think it’s easy to see that women are being exploited by men. These lines are much blurrier when it comes to gay porn. I don’t know what the answer is to that issue.
Great post. I would love to see more discussion of abuse and exploitation as reasons to avoid porn.
Seems to me your takeaway is as long as something is “FairTrade” porn–whack at it.
When I was 14, I had a fairly progressive bishop try to explain to my Teachers Quorum that the primary evil of porn was that it objectified women. That was complete nonsense to my 14-year old brain. What I knew about porn was that it lit a flame of uncontrollable sexual urges that I was already struggling to manage at I progressed through puberty. The evil absolutely was seeing naked bodies having sex. What my dad explained to me made a lot more sense — men are built to impregnate women and God expects us to manage that — and viewing porn makes it much more difficult to manage that.
While it is tempting to apply the perspectives of college-educated adults to how children see the world, the reality is that you have to message the nuances of this issue to the audience to be effective.
MIke Maxwell,
Your dad sounds hilarious!