Porn as a Public Health Menace

Here are a couple of articles from last spring collaborating with a recent report from the Witherspoon Institute's recent study on the social effects of pornography.

An anonymous woman writes about her own experience in the National Review Online:

"Imagine a drug so powerful it can destroy a family simply by distorting a man’s perception of his wife. Picture an addiction so lethal it has the potential to render an entire generation incapable of forming lasting marriages and so widespread that it produces more annual revenue — $97 billion worldwide in 2006 — than all of the leading technology companies combined. Consider a narcotic so insidious that it evades serious scientific study and legislative action for decades, thriving instead under the ever-expanding banner of the First Amendment."

You can read the rest of her piece here.

While she will conclude with suggestions for government studies and health care provisions for this "drug abuse," which I'm skeptical of, the overall thrust is a broad ranging acknowledgment of what the Bible has said all along.

You can't have a society of men acting like beasts and that not have enormous ramifications for the society. Proverbs says that lusting after the seductress reduces a man to a crust of bread, it burns him, and it will ultimately kill him.

"Do not lust after the her beauty in your heart, nor let her allure you with her eyelids. For by means of a harlot a man is reduced to a crust of bread; and an adulteress will prey upon his precious life. Can a man take fire to his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot colas, and his feet not be seared?" (Prov. 6:25-28)

"Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways, do not stray into her paths; for she has cast down many wounded, and all who were slain by her were strong men. Her house is the way to hell, descending to the chambers of death." (Prov. 7:25-27)

Katherine Kersten also has an article summarizing a number of the broad effects of porn on our society:

"Pornography is seeping into our society at every level. It plays a role in many divorces, according to a recent survey of family lawyers. It has spilled into popular culture through songs, movies and music videos. The number of TV sex scenes nearly doubled between 1998 and 2005. Porn may even have influenced rogue American soldiers' abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The acts they perpetrated included weird elements of sexual humiliation."

You can read the rest of her article here.