Issues Tearing Our Nation's Fabric The Center for Reclaiming America

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Pornography
Chapter Seventeen

We have been invaded by an enemy more insidious than any we have fought in Vietnam, Korea, World Wars I and II, the Civil War, the American Revolution, or any other battle in the history of the nation. The enemy? Pornography. It is a cancer eating away at the souls of millions of men, women, and children at this very hour. Unless this virulent disease can be stopped and defeated once and for all, it will lead this nation into a moral disaster from which we may never recover.

The words on the cover of the February 10, 1997, edition of U.S. News & World Report provide a glimpse of the problem: "America is by far the world’s leading producer of porn, churning out hard-core videos at the astonishing rate of about 150 new titles per week." The accompanying cover story, compiled by reporter Eric Schlosser, reveals the outlines of an industry that is massive, well financed, and predatory.

Just 25 years ago, according to one government report, the pornography industry in America generated less than $10 million annually. Today, however, pornography brings in at least $8 billion per year, and potentially much more in hidden and illegal profits. Rentals of hard-core videos raked in $665 million in 1996, and pay-per-view videos added another $150 million. Across the nation there are some 900 urban and suburban theaters showing NC-17 films, thousands that specialize in R- and X-rated films, and some 15,000 adult bookstores which sell pornographic magazines, books, films, videos, as well as other functions from peep booths to "personal services."

Sadly, most Christians have only a vague notion about the scope and the dangers of the sex industry in America. But anyone who believes that pornography is "nobody’s business" or who thinks it’s simply a matter of "personal choice," has no grasp of how deep the tentacles of the porn business have penetrated into the heart of the nation over the past two decades. On the strength of profits from hard-core videos, peep shows, live sex acts, adult cable programming, sexual devices, computer porn, and sex magazines, the porn industry has surpassed total Hollywood revenues for all domestic box office receipts and earns more each year than all the revenues from the sale of rock or country music.

A sociologist quoted in the U.S. News report says the sexual content of American culture has changed more in the last two decades than in the previous two centuries. What was once considered outrageous and extreme is now commonplace. The days of fresh-faced all-American girls in skimpy bathing suits are long gone. The material that fuels the pumps of today’s porn industry is coarse, brutal, and depraved, featuring multiple-partner sex acts, bestiality, sadomasochism, rape, incest, and even murder. No sane person could condone the sewage that is pouring, without restriction, into the minds of people all across this nation.

Degrading Images

One of the most extensive studies of the pornography industry ever produced was conducted by the U.S. Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography under the authority of Attorney General Edwin Meese during the mid-1980s. Panel members found that sexually explicit material can be extremely harmful and often leads to radical changes in personality and behavior. Repeated exposure to pornography has been shown to be a factor in behaviors that endanger not only the individuals involved, but those with whom they are in contact.

As awful as they may be to hear, the confessions of men convicted of predatory sexual crimes offer a stark confirmation of the truth of the Attorney General’s report. A 53-year-old male convicted of third-degree sodomy of children offered this confession:

What I would like to contribute is the fact that pornography played a primary role in my seduction of young children. Over a 15- to 20-year period, I used what I consider dirty and filthy material to arouse young boys and girls. Things or materials I used consisted of magazines, snapshots, and 8 mm movies. I found that magazines such as Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler worked very well for my devious seduction of young children. Also, I found this same material would arouse and stimulate myself.

The summary remarks prepared by the California Attorney General’s Advisory Committee on Obscenity and Pornography, and included in the Meese Report, state that: "In interviews with a great many police officers, the Committee was frequently told, ‘I never a child molester who did not have pornography in his possession. . . .’" In an investigation of more than 40 cases of child molestation by the Los Angeles Police Department, including interviews with more than 100 victims and suspects, officers found that pornography was a factor in every single case.

Pornography defenders often claim that so-called "gentlemen’s magazines" are in a separate category and should not be considered vulgar or obscene. But this is false. After police in South Florida captured the man known as the "pillowcase rapist" in the mid-1980s, researchers at the FBI Academy prepared a five-page psychological profile of the criminal which states, "He collected Playboy and Penthouse magazines. . . and dreamed of rape. Then he slipped over the threshold of fantasy into the realm of sexual assault."

In the hours just prior to his execution for the murder of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, Ted Bundy, who confessed to 24 rape homicides, spoke with Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family and revealed that the root of his problems was pornography.

This is the message I want to get across: As a young boy, and I mean a boy of 12 or 13, I encountered . . . in the local grocery store, in the local drugstore, the soft-core pornography that people call soft porn. . . . Once you become addicted to pornography, and this is a kind of addiction, I would keep looking for more potent, more explicit material, more graphic kinds of material. . . .

With the video camera rolling Bundy said,

You begin to wonder if maybe actually doing it would give you that which is beyond just reading it or looking at it . . . I’ve lived in prison for a long time now and I’ve met a lot of men who are motivated to violence just like me. And without exception, every one of them was deeply involved with pornography—without exception, without exception—deeply influenced and consumed by an addiction. The FBI’s own study on serial homicide shows that the most common interest among serial killers is pornography.

The Glorification of Sin

Despite the confession of Ted Bundy and the testimonies of men whose lives have been destroyed by this vice, Hollywood, the mass media, and the civil liberties community continue to glorify and defend the rights of those who indulge in pornography. Men like Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, and Larry Flynt, founder of the even more lurid and vulgar Hustler magazine, are commonly hailed as heroes of the battle for "free speech" rights, and warriors in the struggle against the evil "religious right."

Writing in American Enterprise magazine, Dave Geisler comments,

Critics are lining up to worship the new film The People v. Larry Flynt, many of them treating it as a wonderful civics lesson on the First Amendment. Produced by Oliver Stone [who also made the films Nixon and JFK], the film has already received several prizes, including two Golden Globes (where the script-writer publicly thanked "Larry Flynt for living the life"), and will come up for Academy Awards as well.

Stone’s treatment here (as in all his films) plays fast and loose with history and buffs the degraded reality of Flynt’s life and work to a golden hue. In this film he is a genius fighting for liberty and "free expression" against persecution by born-again Christians, as well as an assassination attempt by the federal government to silence him and stop him from offering a million-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest of the real killer of President John Kennedy.

The film is cleverly crafted to make the audience feel claustrophobia when Flynt is in jail and being hounded by Christians; but in the trial scene, when he wins vindication and is exonerated by the Supreme Court, Geisler writes, "The background music swells to a crescendo of heavenly orchestration in a moment intended to make audiences feel proud."

This is Hollywood’s spin. This is the truth of the moment. And this is the value system of the media elites, trumpeting their own degraded morals and then daring anyone to speak up or to say that Larry Flynt is an immoral psychopath or that pornography is a sin.

But Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). And even as Larry Flynt and Oliver Stone and others in Hollywood are relishing their "statement," Flynt’s daughter, Tonya Flynt-Vega, a born-again Christian, has come forward to set the record straight:

What my father does is not about beauty, it’s about degrading women. My father loves to degrade women. . . . When my sister and I used to visit him, he would have us dress up in strippers’ clothes and dance for him. And when I was ten years old, my father committed sexual acts on me.

A Time of Awakening

If a filmmaker with real convictions were to tell Tonya’s story, maybe a few more people would find it harder to swallow the deception of Stone’s tribute to Flynt. If a major publisher were to give her a book contract so Tonya could tell the whole story, maybe the world would see a different Larry Flynt and recognize the wickedness of pornography for what it is.

The challenge for Christians in this area is as great as any we’ve ever faced. For Satan, the father of lies and the destroyer of human souls, has guided and shaped this evil scheme from the start. To confront men like Flynt and Hefner and their defenders is to do battle with the arch destroyer himself; and only the whole armor of God can equip us for warfare in this arena.

To join this battle, prepare yourself with fervent prayer. Examine the books, articles, and resources you can find from dozens of Christian organizations, so that you can understand the scope of the problem before becoming engaged. Interestingly enough, the secular feminist movement is becoming alarmed by the messages of the pro-pornography crowd, and some on the Left are beginning to join the resistance with potential litigation against some of the prime movers of the pornography industry. At least in this we can find common cause.

Once you are well informed, you may want to join those organizations leading the fight to stop the purveyors of filth. Subscribe to the newsletters and magazines that will help you stay ahead of the issues. Then lend your voice, your vote, and your personal resources whenever you are able. Only a full mounted attack can repel the forces of evil and restore sound judgment on this issue.

You can contact these organizations:

Enough is Enough!
P.O. Box 888
Fairfax, Virginia 22030
(703) 278-8343

National Coalition Against Pornography
800 Compton Rd.
Cincinnati, Ohio 45231
(513) 521-6227

For further reading:

Laurie Hall. An Affair of the Mind. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Focus on the Family, 1996.
Judith Reisman. "Soft Porn" Plays Hardball: Its Tragic Effects on Women, Children & the Family. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House, 1991.

On the World Wide Web:

Morality in Media: http://pw2.netcom.com/~mimnyc/index.html
American Family Association: http://www.afa.net
Leadership University: http://www.leaderu.com

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Copyright 1997, Coral Ridge Ministries. All rights reserved.