Posted on 08/20/2015 1:31:19 PM PDT by robowombat
Pornography and the Decline of a Culture
John Stonestreet | BreakPoint | Friday, August 07, 2015
In June, I told you about the dangers of unfettered Internet use for kids over the summer. The damage to young minds from pornography is long-lasting and measurable. But a recent gathering of experts pointed out that the harms from pornography are far worse than they’ve ever been, and the damage is not just impacting children, but spilling into all of society.
Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in mid-July, Dr. Gail Dines dispelled the myth that pornography today is like the pin-up of yesteryear. Rather, today’s mainstream pornography is unbelievably dehumanizing, degrading, and violent. She cited a peer-reviewed study that found that 88 percent of the scenes in the 50 most popular porn films involved violence against women. Pornography is not about sex, she said, but about “making hate to women.”
Dines shared how one pornography producer explained that the girls now arrive on the sets “porn-ready.” As she said, “We are part of a culture that hyper-sexualizes girls from a very young age and forces them into an inauthentic, formulaic, plasticized sexuality that is from the porn culture and not of their own making.”
Most of Dr. Dines’ presentation is too graphic to say here, which is important for all of us to understand. For too long, we’ve refused to look behind First Amendment smokescreens to understand pornography’s true nature.
Speaking at the same event, Cordelia Anderson called our culture’s widespread pornography use “the largest unregulated social experiment ever.” Having studied the impact of sexual abuse and pornography for decades, Anderson explained that pornography is a quantifiable public health crisis.
Anderson pointed to research indicating that nearly all young boys have been exposed to pornography. It isn’t enough to protect your own children any longer when their peers have had violent pornography normalized in their minds. The impact has become public, and its damage has seeped everywhere.
Anderson believes change requires a broad public strategy of education, law enforcement, business pressure, and a revitalized media culture. As she so aptly put it, “No mass social disorder has ever come under control just by treating the individual.”
Dines and Anderson were just two of nearly a dozen speakers discussing the public health hazards of pornography at the Capitol event. Dr. Donald Hilton explained how pornography changes brain chemistry. Dr. Melissa Farley examined the link between pornography, prostitution and sex trafficking. And Ed Smart, whose daughter Elizabeth made national news when she was abducted in 2002, explained how pornography played a role in his daughter’s enslavement and sexual torture.
Although not addressed in the Capitol symposium, I’d like to point out the role pornography has played in another recent social crisis: the acceptance of same-sex marriage. In his "Relationships in America" survey released last year, Mark Regnerus found that among church-going Christians who did not support same-sex marriage, only 4.6 percent felt that using pornography was okay. Among church-going Christians who supported same-sex marriage, however, 33 percent also agreed that viewing pornography was fine.
Although not claiming a causal link between the two, Regnerus did suggest that “our moral systems concerning sex and sexuality tend rather to resemble personalized ‘tool kits’ ” that are greatly influenced by social reference points. Looking at the sexual mores of today, there’s no doubt that pornography has become the significant social reference point doing untold damage to children, families, and all of society.
There’s so much to do. Please come to BreakPoint.org and we’ll link you to the video presentations that we’ve mentioned. They’re hard to watch, but we can’t look away any longer. Our culture won’t let us.
BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.
John Stonestreet, the host of The Point, a daily national radio program, provides thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
Publication date: August 7, 2015
Never let them out of your site unless it’s a conservative Christian family that you’ve been going to church with for years.
Well I don’t know about that. Lately I have been thinking that they are just as bad. The Duggars proved that.....as did quite a few Conservative families over the years. I am so disappointed in the Duggar’s. I used to fight and argue with people on Facebook and others about how awesome a family they are and that all families should be like them. Wow....what a creep I was to stick up for them. Makes me look foolish and the conservative family value brand.
Not Mavis Beacon! I'm dashed.
The huge, ugly tattoos repulsed me away before I could see any of that. Some of these women have tats that would make a merchant sailor cringe. No thanks.
You should research gloria steinem thoroughly when you have some time.
*Yu can thank feminism and womens lib,for that. There is no upside for husband lovers when everything is stscked against them and divorce is soceasy to lose half,of evrythjng and be treated as both slave and criminal until kids are grown. Sometimes you even have to pay for kids that arent yours, its that bad.*
As a woman I completely agree with you. It’s not fair to make this about all men are pigs. I detest that mindset and it’s straight out of the women’s lib movement. I’m 43, and very old fashioned. My husband is and always has been a gentlemen. I like having doors opened for me, I don’t find that sexist, I find it refreshing. I have 2 boys and a girl, and my boys have been raised to treat women with respect, not just in word but by example by how their father treats me. And neither one of them will waste their time on a flussie or someone who doesn’t appreciate there belief in being a gentleman.
My daughter is 15, I tell her all the time If you don’t meet a boy that treats you as well as your brothers, don’t waist your time. Not to mention they are VERY protective of her, so whenever she is allowed to date, they will have to pass the 2 older brothers, father and mother test. It won’t be easy. But she has also been raised to behave like a lady. This girl won’t even wear a sleeveless shirt/ tank top around the house. She’s modest on her own, but she wouldn’t be allowed to dress like a tramp anyway.
I detest feminist. They have ruined it for us who like to be treated like ladies.
Yes my daughter only stayed with mine or my husband’s parents when they were alive. Now there is one person she is allowed to stay with and that is my sister n law. I trust no one outside our small family.
Yep. That is good. My kids stay with very few and that includes family but very rarely. My wife and I would rather just take the kids with us anyway.
False.
Typing up?
True
One word answers without a position are pointless.
Remember the old saw "When men were men and women loved them"? That's been rendered non operative now by the left for decades, generations, now.
And i will state of course there are guys not worth being around as well, there are losers aplenty on both sides. However there is no upside at all for men to be married give how the system is today.
typo in your post
Did not use the phrase “typing up” or anything like it, in my post. Not a big deal. You must have got me mixed up with somebody else.
I sort of have. What is your point?
You know who bankrolled her and who she actually worked for?
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