I'd counter your argument thusly: porn may very well help some marriages, in that porn might inspire them to be more creative in their sexual relationship, leading to more excitement, and more satisfaction, and thereby strengthening the marital bond.
And I find your example very interesting: above, you say that "anything designed to deliberately arouse sexual desire other than the arousal you experience with your spouse, is destructive." Now, you said you included the erotic parts because it was the only vehicle by which you could convey what certain characters thought, or how they reacted. Yet some people who read the piece found your eroticism pornographic, even though that was not your intent. Does it bother you, as an artist, that there are those who'd seek to censor and prohibit your work based on their interpretation of it as pornographic, when creating a pornographic work was not your artistic intent?
Interesting point.
I don't know of anyone who would seek to censor or prohibit my work. It is far (REALLY far) from what anybody would call legally pornographic.
I myself would not want it in a high school library, though, and that still causes me some consternation.
At present, the novel is only available as a read-only CD, distributed by me. So I've been able to control its distribution myself. I want to get myself organized enough to sell CD's via magazine ads and eBay, and use the money to fund an interactive website --- but then how would I discourage teenagers (for instance, my two young adolescent boys) from accessing it?
Only by the way I market it, I suppose. If I don't advertise in teenage venues, and the introduction has a fair warning of (mild) sexual content, I think I've done my duty.
Flannery O'Connor --- whose novels and short stories some people found disturbing --- was told by her confessor that she had no moral obligation to limit her writing to the level appropriate for 15-year-old girls.
O'Connor also says that if the writer has good previewers who will vet the unpublished work --- and has satisfied herself that the writing has moral integrity --- she is not responsible for the reactions of every imaginable (possibly emotionally unbalanced) reader.
If that were the case, no writing --- in fact, no communication --- would be possible.
If someone wants to ban my CD from their high school, though: quite frankly, I wish they would.
No. One of the major (and, no matter what your age, ongoing) projects of sexual maturity is to direct and channel your sometimes anarchic sexual appetite toward your spouse and nobody else. Porn, by definition, gets you buzzing over a print image or a written description or a video image of somebody other than your spouse. That's a problem in itself --- a misdirection of the drive.
I sometimes wonder about people who are already somewhat damaged by pornography before they get married, and then as a consequence find they can't get very excited about sex with their spouse. One could ask: what if they're already so porn-addicted that they need regular doses of it to get set up for marital sex?
Sad case. I'd say no, this person needs a patient spouse who will start all over with him from the beginning. I daresay marital satisfaction doesn't need more creativeness (defined as what? Different positions? Orifices? Devices? Costumes?) as much as it needs more focused attentiveness towards EACH OTHER, and more mutual trust.
It's precisely that --- focused attention and trust --- that's directly undermined by pornography.
There have been several fairly big surveys that showed that sexual satisfaction correlates positively with marriage and religious belief/practice. It's interesting to ask why. Couple-to-Couple League (Natural Family Planning group, overwhelmingly married and substantially religious) reports a divorce rate of around 2%. It's interesting to ask why there, too.
I'm fairly sure the divorce (and thus overall dissatisfaction) rate of pornography users is somewhat higher than that.