While atheist at the University of Texas in San Antonio are using porn to lure Christians, believers are also making their presence felt in the pornography industry.
A former stripper, Heather Veitch has founded JC’s Girls, a ministry reaching out to strippers, porn actors and addicts. Veitch and a group of female believers go into strip clubs to witness to dancers. XXXchurch, another ministry dealing with pornography, has launched The Trinity Project, designed to raise money to help porn stars leave the industry. XXXchurch also buys booths at porn conventions to minister to those on the inside. With ministries like these and others, when does “in the world” become “of the world?”
*I wish the title was mine, but several places (including World) have used it in relation to several of these stories.
Is porn that big of a deal? Why not ministers that go to the homes of abused children and confront their parents…
Many ministers do work with and for abused children. I'm sure many confront or report abusive parents, but regardless of those facts porn is a big deal.
Besides the exploitation of women (an area where feminists and Christians agree), it harms the men who get addicted to it. For many it leads to worse things down the road – a dehumanization of woman, leading to psychological issues that in some cases promotes rape and murder.
Now the extreme ends are definitely not true for all, but to some extent it does harm everyone connected with it. Men who may not go out and rape someone still begin to view women more as objects than as individuals. It harms relationships as men begin to expect women to confirm to the fantasy world of the magazines and videos.
Not to even mention the huge child porn industry that encompasses both issues.
I don't know Aaron. Almost everything can lead to horrible consequences down the road, especially when abused. I've always thought that the war on pornography was a war on a representation of practices that those individuals weren't comfortable with.
Of course I believe in helping the victimized, but sometimes the Christian right clearly goes far beyond having any interest in victims, instead prefering to keep reasonable people away from anything that offends them. In other words, if I enjoy pornography in my own home – and I'm not a rapist – I should have every right to indulge my legal desires, right?
Or no?
I guess questions like those split conservatives and liberatrians (I have strong streaks of both, so I am torn). It's kind of like drugs. Sure someone smoking pot at home might not harm anyone else and they might never do anything worse. But some people smoke pot, then they do crack or meth and it gets worse and has a huge negative impact on the person and society.
I'm not sure if I was in control what I would do about pornography. I would certainly try to limit it, but I don't know if I would outlaw it for private home use. Having said that, i don't think you can deny the testimonies of numerous mass murderers and rapist who said they got their start with porn. It was the trigger that started them down that road.
We need a good philosophy of which "bad" things to legislate about, and how to do it.
For example, currently:
– drugs are illegal
– porno, alcohol, and cigarettes are regulated
– fast food is unregulated
Anyone got any good guidelines? When does a "personal freedom" become a "social problem" that requires legislation, and how do we decide to regulate and restrict v. criminalize something?
And we need to remember, no system of laws can bring order to a society of people lacking personal virtue – if people lie, steal, indulge in selfishness, laws will be useless. At some level, we need to say "legislation can't fix this, it can only play a supporting role." When it comes to public morality, we need education and moral preaching to change people's minds and hearts.
Seeker,
We definitely DON'T need moral preaching for the most obvious of reasons: you and Aaron are both squeemish about pornography. I am not. I couldn't care less if the guys and gals down the street want to use it. And furthermore, who are any of us to judge the consensual sexual decisions made by other Americans?
If anything, we as a culture should preach moderation. Preaching anything else seems dangerous in the extreme, if only because certain people (SEEKER) wouldn't stand for a public preaching of anything but his own morals. Which I don't want to hear.
Finally Aaron, if we start down a path stating that "porn" got people started – which I hardly believe; abuse is more often than not the beginning – then can't we cite almost anything as a trigger and work to make it illegal? I mean, if I started killing Christians, and I said, "well, their constant judging of other peoples got me angry," we certainly wouldn't want to ban Christianity would we? We'd want to deal with the individual with the problem. Right?
Ted Bundy said that his addiction to porn was the launching pad for his rampage. Those are his words, not something I made up.
There is a balance to be had there. I'm not sure where the line should be drawn. I'm sure you would want the line drawn more toward completely open society than I would.
My argument is not to say that people can defend rape by saying, "Porn made me do it." Each person has their own personal responsibility to the actions they committ. What I am saying is that if we find something has a tendency to cause some people to act in a way deemed unacceptable (rape, murder, etc.) then we should carefully evaluate whatever that is. Doesn't mean we outlaw it automatically, it just means it is deserving of more scrutiny than other innocuous things.
Ted Bundy was a lying socipathic killer. Why would anyone believe anything he said? (I can just hear it: "Porn made me do it." Kind of like in the movie "Chicago": "Jazz and liquor.")
The problem with "drawing lines" when it comes to these moral choices is that it tends to drive the outlawed behavior underground and into the hands of criminals. Witness alchohol prohibition and, now, drug prohibition. During Victorian times, there were more prostitutes in London than single men. And has anyone not heard that the best way to make someone do something they shouldn't is to tell them they can't do it? It seems to me that we create more problems than we solve by these prohibitionist solutions to private sins. seeker is on the right track by advocating "virtue," but I most heartily doubt that, observing mankind's tendencies, such a thing will ever occur outside the dreams of moralists and philosophers.
Ted Bundy was a lying socipathic killer. Why would anyone believe anything he said? (I can just hear it: “Porn made me do it.” Kind of like in the movie “Chicago”: “Jazz and liquor.”)
The problem with “drawing lines” when it comes to these moral choices is that it tends to drive the outlawed behavior underground and into the hands of criminals. Witness alchohol prohibition and, now, drug prohibition. During Victorian times, there were more prostitutes in London than single men. And has anyone not heard that the best way to make someone do something they shouldn’t is to tell them they can’t do it? It seems to me that we create more problems than we solve by these prohibitionist solutions to private sins. seeker is on the right track by advocating “virtue,” but I most heartily doubt that, observing mankind’s tendencies, such a thing will ever occur outside the dreams of moralists and philosophers.
(Comments are so SCREWY around here. I think you guys have stumbled into something bad about whatever software you're using.)
I agree with Louis – Bundy diagnosing himself seems suspect, at best, and his choice of pornography seems more than convenient. Imagine if he had replaced pornography with Catholicism? Would anybody be seriously suggesting that Catholicism be restricted.
However, Aaron, I want to put this out there. Even though I don't think you'd drink a beer, I'd have fun drinking a beer with you, because you read what I write and you respond. We have conversations with one another than never end in victories – just a sharing of information and opinions that rarely sync up. But we're both at peace with that.
1. How not to argue
Well Sam, thanks for more pejorative, ad-hominem attacks in lieu of real arguments. I give an open-ended invitation to dialogue, and get a diatribe that sounds like one extremist calling everyone else (or just me) black. Again, you make assumptions about my stance on something ("squeamish"??) without any data whatsoever. Nice use of stereoptyping.
2. Data on Porno's Affects on Society
Regarding data, some sites like Solomon's Porch cite studies showing that the availability of porn is actually good for a society. More objective reports, like this literature review of the dangers of pornography, more honestly conclude that we see conflicting evidence, since, like trying to determine the affect of violent tv or video games, it is hard to filter out other factors when doing sociologic studies.
3. Stupidity of Dismissing "Inconclusive" Data
However inconclusive, we should not dismiss the studies that indicate the role of porno in sexual aggression,
desensitization, attitudes towards women, decline in family values, rape, and it's ideological effects on other important issues like infidelity, domestic violence and children's rights.
A good example is the legalization of prostitution. Sam might argue that since there are only consenting adults involved, there are no victims (his definition of victim isn't clear to me yet). But does legalized protistution help drive the illegal trade in women and children? It quite possibly may. And does our laissez fair attitude towards porno play into our views on prostitution, thereby playing into tacet support of the sex trades? I am not arguing that people who support free speech and porno support the illegal sex trade, but to say that these things are not related, without actually looking into it, is irresponsible, if not willfully ingnorant.
4. The Need for First Principles
Libertarians might argue, from principle, that none of these questionable activities should be regulated or made illegal. If people choose to be addicted to heroin or smoke pot, why make it illegal to pedal it on school playgrounds?
Or perhaps a more progressive (liberal) stance might be to protect our children, but not our adults. If adults want to kill themselves with (drugs, alcohol, tobacco, french fries), why not let them?
A conservative might say that drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and french fries are not all alike. Some should be illegal, some regulated, and some should be unregulated. My questions stands. What makes the difference? Currently, porno is regulated, but not outlawed. Is that a good stance? Should it be illegal, or less regulated? What about selling it to minors?
We must develop principles for making such decisions, and try to agree upon those, rather than getting involved in arguments about implementation first.
5. On Moral Preaching
The reasoning behind moral preaching is twofold. First, we have freedom of speech, and if we squelch the preaching of morality, we are basically saying that we don't want/need a social conscience to help us as a culture do what is right. I guess Martin Luther King Jr. would have to be silenced in his nonsensical talk about justice and moral uprightness.
Second, education addresses the mind, but not the spirit or heart of a person. We absolutely need people to warn us that "the wages of sin is death." This is not the government's role, but the role of the church, being "salt and light." Paul said that people hate this kind of preaching because "they love darkness rather than light, and want to keep their deeds hidden." Despite abuses of this type of preaching, the compassionate, honest preaching of morality by truly moral people is still needed for a society to succeed.