Meridian Magazine: Pornography, if it quacks like a duck…

We have a problem
Vickey Pahnke-Taylor: Pornography, if it quacks like a duck…

“We are being warned of the dangers of pornography as its pollution infests ever-growing numbers of people, but few regard it as a threat — at least until it creates havoc for them. With not enough fingers pointed in their direction, the pornography industry is making a bundle as it helps kill off morals and decay the fabric of good emotional and spiritual health.

Pornography is making a loud, quacking noise. Compiled evidence — lots of it — shows the devastating effects of this addiction on so many people. First-hand or second-hand, people are being affected, debilitated — even destroyed — by it.

The peddlers of pornography would have us believe that no harm is done- just as some peddlers of tobacco did for so many years. Data indicate a different picture:

Psychologist Edward Donnerstein, at the University of Wisconsin, conducted a study that found that even brief exposure to violent forms of pornography can lead to anti-social attitudes and behavior. Other studies back his up.

Exposure to pornography may diminish a person’s capacity for true intimacy. Researchers have found that those exposed to nonviolent pornography indicated a diminished satisfaction with their partner’s physical appearance, affection, and physical intimacy.

Nationwide studies show that where the circulation rates of pornography are up, so are the rape rates. Although rape is not usually a sexual act, but an act of violence, there is some correlation here.

Approximately 70 percent of the pornographic magazines sold end up in the hands of minors (The Pornography Plague , Kerby Anderson). Those minors cannot all be someone else’s children. Do we know what our children are experiencing — and accepting as a norm? What kind of marriages will they be able to create once their norms have shifted away from proper spiritual principles?