PORNOGRAPHY – THE MOST DANGEROUS ADDICTION

february 6, 2009

Pornography, simply put, is the depiction of the human body or of sexual activity for the sole purpose of stimulating sexual arousal. Some have claimed pornography is not harmful and so should not be regulated or banned. In defense of this claim they cite a 1970 Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography which found no relationship between exposure to pornography and subsequent behavior. Many studies since then, however, have shown the opposite to be  true.

The now documented harmful effects of pornography are many. Exposure to pornography leads to an increase in illicit sexual behavior, an increase in sexually transmitted disease, a breakdown of marriage and family, multiple forms of abuse, unwanted pregnancy and abortion, and  a general degradation of public morality.

Exposure to violent forms of pornography can lead to antisocial attitudes and actions, more aggressive behavior on the part of men toward women, less sensitivity to the pain and suffering of rape victims, and increasingly distorted views of the meaning and place of sexuality and human relationships. Just as marijuana is a "gateway" drug that leads to more serious and self-destructive forms of drug addiction,  exposure to pornography arouses desires for ever more deviant materials and experiences that involve violence such as rape, sadomasochism, torture, mutilation, and murder. Not only does exposure to pornography make its viewers numb to the beauty and sacredness of sexual intimacy, but it also impels them to act out the pornographic scenes they have seen.

According to one study, 77% of molesters of minor boys and 87% of molesters of minor girls confessed that their criminal acts were inspired by pornography they had seen. Another study found that the states with the highest rape rates were also the ones that had the highest sales of pornographic literature, videos, and materials. It was also determined that approximately 50% of the rapists had viewed pornography immediately before raping their victims.

Pornography is big business, and while annual profits from the porn industry are not certainly known, $10 billion is a common estimate. Surprisingly, pornography's biggest customers are the more intelligent, well educated, and well employed members of society. Perhaps their greater intelligence is accompanied by more vivid imaginations, or perhaps their superior wealth enables them to spend more money on pornography.

The most tragic and menacing aspect of pornography is its impact on the young. In spite of its illegality, child pornography seems to be on the rise. Not only are some children exploited as objects of perverse sexual desire, but many more are robbed of their years of innocence by being exposed to sexual imagery of a pornographic nature. Over a million children are exploited annually through child pornography and prostitution, and about 70% of pornographic magazines and videos eventually wind up in the hands of minors.

The Internet has made pornography more readily accessible than ever, and  it is correspondingly more difficult than ever to shield the young from its poisonous effects. Access to pornography is the number one use for the Internet today. An estimated 50,000 sexual predators prowl the Internet for children daily. Even when parents have done all they can to block their children's access to pornography, they have to recognize that many mainstream television programs on both network or cable channels are filled with sexual innuendos, immodest dress, speech, and behavior, and the depiction of sexual content in a morally offensive and degrading way. All of this can be described as soft-core porn, and soft-core porn invariably leads to hard-core porn, and then sometimes to what is far worse.

Serial killer Ted Bundy, in an interview he gave the day before his execution, told how pornography paved the way to his killing 28 young women and girls. He said he first encountered soft porn in the local drugstore. This led him to seek and find hard-core pornography. “In the beginning," he said, "it fuels this kind of thought process... I was on the verge of acting out these kinds of thoughts... and it happened in stages... My experience with pornography that deals on a violent level with sexuality is that once you become addicted... I would keep looking for more explicit, more graphic kinds of materials... until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far... Violent pornography… is an indispensable link in the chain of behavior... the assaults, the murders and what have you... I know that I could not control it... I think people need to recognize that those of us who have been influenced by... pornographic violence are not some kind of inherent monsters, we are your sons and we are your husbands... Any pornography can reach out and snatch a kid out of any house today… I've met a lot of men (in prison) who were motivated to commit violence just like me. And without exception every one of them was deeply involved in pornography, deeply influenced by its addiction. There is no question about it. The FBI' s own study shows that the most common interest among serial killers is pornography."

Alcohol and drugs affect the body chemically, and we can free ourselves from addiction to them by getting them out of our bloodstream. But how can we ever get sexual images out of our imagination? How can we remove the sexual drive from our nature? We can't, and that is why pornography is the most dangerous addiction. Let us resolve to rid our society of pornography, before it destroys us.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 11-Jan-2010 8:22 sitemap