All Worked Up About The Porn Menace
by J.T. Benjamin

Not even they knew how bad it truly is.

Pornography is one of the favorite bug-a-boos of the Holy Terrors. Porn, they argue, is a "cancerous infection" which corrodes family relationships, leads to sexual addictions, and desensitizes and corrupts sexuality itself.

One of the most insidious things about porn is how it’s so pervasive. Nobody is safe from exposure and corruption.

ChristiaNet.com, which calls itself the world’s most visited Christian portal, last month announced the results of a survey the website conducted in partnership with Second Glance Ministries. According to ChristiaNet’s news release, no one is immunized against the vice-grip clutches of sexual addictive behaviors. The people who struggle with the repeated pursuit of sexual gratification include church members, deacons, staff, and yes, even clergy. And, to the surprise of many, a large number of women in the church have become victim to this widespread problem."

The poll results indicate that 50% of all Christian men and 20% of all Christian women are addicted to pornography,’ said Clay Jones, founder and President of Second Glance Ministries…60% of the women who answered the survey admitted to having significant struggles with lust, 40% admitted to being involved in sexual sin in the past year, and 20% of the church-going female participants struggle with looking at pornography on an ongoing basis."

No wonder the Holy Terrors are up in arms. If this many true believers are in the sway of porn’s insidious clutches, we must be in the grip of a porn pandemic.

But wait a minute. Don’t saddle up the Four Horsemen just yet.

A closer look at the press release reveals the study and its conclusions may not be all they’re cracked up to be. In the first place, it appears no attempt was made to ensure that the survey’s participants were a random sampling, either of evangelicals or even of visitors to the website. Visitors to the website were invited to participate, and if they had five minutes to kill, they did it. That makes the survey about as scientific as a Ouija board.

Secondly, the survey consisted only of eleven questions. The conclusions that ChristiaNet and Second Glance Ministries drew from the answers are….creative.

Question #7: Is looking at pornography a sin in God’s eyes? Of 970 surveyed, 901 said yes. No surprise. Question #8: Have you ever struggled with pornography? 100 women said "yes" of 507 questioned, and 229 men of 463 questioned also said "yes." By answering "yes," the survey-takers were concluded to be addicted to pornography, according to ChristiaNet and Second Glance Ministries. No questions about how much money was spent annually on porn, no questions about how many times a week a participant looked at porn, nothing.

But wait. It gets better.

Question #3. Is masturbation a sin in God’s eyes? 744 of 970 participants (male and female) said yes. Question #4: Is masturbation a part of your life? 127 women of 507 surveyed said "yes," and 190 men of 463 surveyed said, "yes." (One of the things this response told me is that 273 of the men surveyed were lying on this question).

Then we get to Question #6. "Have you ever taken part in a sexual activity that is sin?" 263 women, more than half, and 304 men, about two thirds, answered yes" to that question. Sounds like most of those polled have serious problems, right? Hide your daughters and your barnyard animals, America.

But wait a minute. The overwhelming majority of those polled consider masturbation and pornography to be a sin, so it’s possible that simply jacking (or jilling) off to a dirty magazine is all it takes to condemn all these people to Hell, right?

Right?

The ultimate point of ChristiaNet’s dingy little rest stop on the information superhighway is to drive home one all-pervading, familiar theme.

Pornography is bad.

Never mind all the evidence to the contrary.

From the time the first Cro-magnon man painted something on the walls of the cave and the first Cro-magnon self-appointed moral arbiter looked over his shoulder and said, "Hey! Those look like boobs," the Powers That Be have been trying to abolish porn as the cause of all evil in the world.

And yet, despite their efforts, the evidence that porn is actually harmful is surprisingly slim.

In 1970, the "Nixon" Commission, first appointed by Lyndon Johnson and then carried on by the Nixon Administration, announced the results of a two-year study of the possible harmful effects of pornography. The commission’s conclusion? "In sum, empirical research designed to clarify the question has found no evidence to date that exposure to explicit sexual materials plays a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior among youth or adults. The Commission cannot conclude that exposure to erotic materials is a factor in the causation of sex crime or sex delinquency (pp. 27)."

As soon as the report came out, President Nixon denounced its findings and launched plans to crack down on the immoral scourge.

Sixteen years later, President Ronald Reagan put together another commission on pornography, dubbed the Meese Commission," after then-Attorney General Edwin Meese, who chaired it. Six of the commission’s eleven members had been known as anti-porn advocates. The best thing that can be said about the commission is that they knew which side their bread was buttered on. According to the Meese Commission, exposure to pornographic images had a clear causal relationship to sexual violence. What made the Meese Commission’s scientific conclusions so profound is that the Commission drew those conclusions without eliciting scientific testimony or examining scientific evidence. They might as well have surveyed people on an internet website.

So, despite all the political spinning of wheels, what adverse effects might porn generate? In 1995, Berl Kuchinsky of the University of Copenhagen published the results of his study of the effects of pornography on the crime rates of four industrialized nations. Three of those nations had liberal laws regarding access to porn, and the fourth was the United States.

Dr. Kuchinsky’s findings are startling. In the three nations with liberal porn laws, the Federal Republic of Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, after ruling out all other potential factors, over time there were dramatic DECREASES in the rates of sex crimes over the course of more than two decades. In the U.S., with relatively strict anti-porn laws, the rate of sex crimes was substantially higher.

Similar conclusions were drawn by comparing the porn-and-sex-crime rates between the U.S. and Japan, a nation known for easy access to extremely graphic and sometimes cruelly misogynistic porn: The effects of Pornography: An International Perspective

Just for kicks, I "googled" the terms "pornography" and "harmful effects" and got more than two and a half million hits. I reviewed some of the available online literature, being as carefully scientific as ChristiaNet’s survey had been.

My conclusion? The evidence of porn’s harmful effects appears to be virtually entirely anecdotal. People tell stories about how porn ruined their lives, and the stories are accepted as valid evidence.

Okay, I can play that game. My own conclusions? After having spent most of my adult life watching, reviewing, critiquing and studying porn, not to mention sharing it with my Lovely Wife, it’s turned us both into adventurous, enthusiastic, passionate, slightly kinky sex-crazed maniacs.

But I consider that a good thing.

Yay, porn!

J.T. Benjamin
September 2006
jtbenjamin.blogspot

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"All Worked Up" © 2006 J.T. Benjamin. All rights reserved.

About the Author:  J.T.Benjamin says, "I'm a generalist. I write about what interests me, which is just about everything." His resume reflects the diversity of his interests. He's been a disk jockey, insurance salesman, private investigator, journalist, college professor, child advocate, political activist, truckdriver, thief,...doctor, lawyer, Indian Chief. He's currently trying to start a hippie commune in the Denver/Boulder area.
Email:  J.T. Benjamin

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