We're living in a sex-saturated society. Even the popular culture is often pulsing to a pornographic beat. Clothing that you would have only seen in porn magazines decades ago, now drapes some of our most celebrated pop icons and can be seen in store windows. Almost anything and everything today is sold by sex, from soft drinks to clothes. It’s sex, sex, sex; as if it is the center and most important part of live and our existence.
Now they are making moves on TV that once would have only been found in a strip joint.
Ron Jeremy, the real-life star of some 1,700 porn films, is now headlining a prime-time, mainstream reality series. Once, being a porno star was nothing to brag about and society looked at such as low class people, not someone to look up to.
You can now see XXX movies right on cable TV that used to be available only in seedy porn shops. And the same type of photos are now easily available on the privacy of your own computer screen. What’s worse is that there is nothing to protect children from seeing such, as some pornographers send out spam e-mail with pornographic pictures or a link that opens up to XXX video and pictures and the Supreme Court has again recently helped the pornographers keep their smut in front of our children, calling it Constitutionally protected speech.
Since when is pornography or any pictures, speech? Today almost anything can be protected by calling it speech, in some form or fashion. So, men can burn the American flag and get by with it, because it protected speech. Speech, my foot. Since when is a fire considered speech. Back to the main theme.
More than 260 million Internet pages are pornographic, an increase of 1,800 percent in just five years. Also, pornographers on the internet bring in more money than any other business. We can blame a lusty young publisher, a rebellious preachers kid for starting this whole trend.
Fifty years ago, Hugh Hefner with Playboy magazine made the salacious seem urbane, sophisticated and acceptable and started this trend toward greater and greater filth. Also, he deliberately picked wholesome-looking, girl-next-door types for his centerfolds. Then he constantly pumped his Playboy philosophy into the culture's itching ears -- "If it feels good, do it." "If it doesn't hurt anyone, it can't be wrong." Gradually, he and his philosophy and his ‘bunny’ girls became more and more accepted.
People started to say that porn and the loose sexual behavior it promoted were victimless crimes if they were crimes at all. Who is hurt, by a man indulging his fleshly lusts in a way God never intended? But there are many thousands of victims of pornography and it has led to families and marriages being ruined, financial ruin and much more. Lives are destroyed by pornography as much as other sins, as taking drugs or alcoholism.
Dr. Mark Laaser said, "I first saw a pornographic magazine that was explicitly pornographic when I was 11 years old." Laaser was hooked for the next 25 years.
He said, "It almost destroyed my marriage. It was basically only due to the strength of my wife that we're still married."
A woman named Sandra said, "When I was four years old until I was 15, I was taken to people's houses as a child prostitute." Sandra was also used in child porn. She said, "I clearly remember standing cold, naked and exposed to all, while someone would tell me how to pose."
In 2002, we visited some mothers who were shocked at the unlimited access to Internet porn in public libraries.
"Ed" almost committed suicide over his lifelong porn addiction. He said, "I was flawed to the point where there was nothing that could be done about me. And so the only alternative was to end my life."
Science is finding that porn users release chemicals in their own brains that are as powerfully addictive as cocaine or alcohol, and the Internet makes feeding this addiction irresistibly easy for the vulnerable. This is a fact! Pornography becomes an addiction that those caught up in its web find just as hard to break as a drug addict.
Mark Kastleman, who has written a book on Internet porn, warning it's "The Drug of the New Millennium," said, "You hit a button and you're instantly there..."
He added, "...And it's anonymous. The anonymity is the real key, especially with religious people. They can do it without anyone knowing."
Pat Trueman, a former porn prosecutor, said, "Men who wouldn't think of getting a subscription to Playboy magazine or wouldn't go into a store and buy it, or certainly wouldn't go to a porn shop, now can get it in their home."
Trueman started prosecuting illegal porn when he served in the Reagan Justice Department. He is worried about the effect the flood of porn is having even on religious believers. He said, "No man can have a decent spiritual life and be involved in pornography."
One of the biggest concerns is what this will do to the next generation, to children. Already, one in four has had unwanted exposure to naked people or people having sex online. One in five has been propositioned sexually online.
Wendy Wright, of Concerned Women for America, said, "The average age of a child's first exposure to hardcore pornography is eight years old." This is insane, that young innocent children should have to endure such. It affects their emotions and their emotional growth and maturity. It is a bad influence to anyone, of any age, but it is a crime to allow a child to see such.
Most kids see some 14,000 references to sex on TV each year. What has all this led to? Six out of 10 high school seniors have had sex, and one out of four sexually active teens will get a sexually transmitted disease this year.
Some feel the courts are not doing enough to stem the pornographic tide. Even the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the pornographers in the last two out of three porn cases it considered.
In one ruling, the court refused to outlaw virtual porn, where computer-generated children, indistinguishable from real kids, can be put into virtually any and all kinds of X-rated situations.
Trueman said, "The court, I think quite foolishly, in a divided opinion, said 'No, if it's not real, it's not prosecutable.'" Why not? We are loosing all common sense and all decency and America is following the path of the Roman Empire and we are self destructing from within because of our immorality.
And with last year's ruling that wiped out all sodomy laws, the high court basically said, when it comes to sex, just about anything goes.
It reminds us of a warning. That is, citizens will often indulge in the immoral behaviors their courts refuse to outlaw. That is truly happening in America more and more. That which become legal, becomes acceptable.
