Stopping Pornography from Destroying Lives

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[Salvation]

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Stopping Pornography from Destroying Lives

 

There's a great piece in the National Catholic Register on the fight against pornography. The story focuses on Matthew Fradd. Fradd himself was addicted to porn before being freed from his addiction by the grace of God. He is now helping others. . .

OTTAWA, Ontario — After successfully battling an addiction to pornography, Matthew Fradd has dedicated himself to helping others.

“Porn is not just naughty — it’s evil,” said Fradd, a 27-year-old Australian living in Ottawa, Ontario. “It emasculates men, degrades women and destroys marriages.”

Fradd has begun his second year operating his anti-pornography website, ThePornEffect.com . He launched it on Aug. 14, 2009, on the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, patron of addicts, using $12,000 in seed money donated to him by a priest-friend.

Fradd’s is a lonely voice going against the culture on the issue, especially considering that nearly 25 million websites (12% of all websites) and 25% of all daily search-engine requests are pornography-related.

In addition, a surprising number of women are regular viewers of pornography. A third of those Americans regularly visiting porn websites are women.

A variety of polls have revealed that those active in Christian churches have difficulties with porn. Promise Keepers, one of the largest Christian men’s conferences in the United States, asked men at their 2008 conferences in anonymous polls if they had viewed porn in the last week; 53% of the nearly 10,000 who responded admitted that they had.

Pornography is hard on marriages, too. In a 2002 survey of 350 members of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, an association of divorce attorneys, for example, 56% said “obsessive interest in pornographic sites” was a factor leading to marital breakups.

Fradd’s site features information about how pornography affects men, women and marriages, inspirational stories of individuals who have become porn-free, information on how to beat porn addictions, videos, and opportunities to offer support to those who want to be free of porn. Fradd launched the site, he explained, because while there are millions of websites that feature pornography, “there’s not a lot out there for men and women who are struggling to be free from porn.”

‘Hooked’ at 8

Fradd, who is from southern Australia, got “hooked” on pornography at the age of 8 when he found some in his grandfather’s shed. By age 12, he was stealing porn from neighborhood stores, and in his teen years, he had acquired a vast collection.

“No one had to tell me it was a bad thing,” he said. “I knew it was shameful. I was hoping I’d grow out of it.”

Here's the rest.

 

Posted by Michael Barber at 8:13 AM

[Legatus]

Unfortunately, many wives these days are disgustingly overweight and have a terrible attitude.

Is it any wonder their husbands shun them?

I don't want to take anyone to task here, but I want to make certain I understand some of the sentiments that are being expressed.

We aren't actually saying that men succumb to sexual perversion because their wives are fat are we? I present for your consideration the case of one Tiger "Idiot" Woods.

Pornography is just as much a perversion of the proper use of sex as any other sexual sin and suggesting that since men are allegedly more visually stimulated it's somehow a corollary of the "no fat chicks" rule is not acceptable. We're still doing this after all this time: "And Adam said: The woman, whom thou gavest me to be my companion, gave me of the tree, and I did eat." Blaming our women for our own faults. In the sanitized words of Richard Pryor "How long, O Lord! How long will this 'nonsense' go on?" Marriage isn't the cohabitation of two people, marriage is the union of two halves of a whole. That's why homosexuals can't do it at all and the rest of us can't do it serially.

If your definition of marriage stops at cohabitation for mutual benefit then ok, good luck with your civilization collapsing around your ears.

There can be no such thing as "pornography use", there is only "pornography abuse". It's not like alcohol, or food, or television, or computer games or anything else that can either be used or abused. Therefore there is nothing that justifies or mitigates its abuse.

"I'm hungry" ok eat.
"I'm tired" ok sleep.
"I'm bored" ok play.
"I'm thirsty" ok drink.
"My wife is a land whale"... ok Lesbian Spank Inferno?

Jill: How could you possibly enjoy a film like that?

Steve: Because it's got naked women in it. Look, I like naked women. I'm a bloke. I'm supposed to like them. We're born like that. We like naked women as soon as we're pulled out of one. Halfway down the birth canal we're already enjoying the view. Look, it is the four pillars of the male heterosexual psyche. We like naked women, stockings, lesbians, and Sean Connery best as James Bond. Because that is what being a boy is. And if you don't like it darling, join a film collective. Look, I want to spend the rest of my life with the woman at the end of that table there. But that does not stop me wanting to see several thousand more naked bottoms before I die. Because that's what being a bloke is. When man invented fire, he didn't say, "Hey, let's cook." He said, "Great! Now we can see naked bottoms in the dark. As soon as Gutenberg invented the printing press, we were using it to make pictures of, hey, naked bottoms. We've turned the Internet into an enormous international database of naked bottoms. So, you see, the story of male achievement through the ages, feeble though it may have been, has been the story of our struggle to get a better look at your bottoms. Frankly, girls, I'm not sure how insulted you really ought to be.

That may be hilarious social commentary... come to think of it, it might even be true, but it's fundamentally wrong.

[valkyry1]

Me? I was in the major airlines for 25 years and I did many different things there, but my fallback position was always aircraft/engine inspector, on any aircraft, any engine, all systems.

I am on recall status right now, but I might try and look for something new for a challenge.

[A.A. Cunningham]

Breaking Free

[Salvation]

**One’s husband was a deacon in his church.**

This is so sad. May the Lord lead him to abandoning the pornography.

[wardaddy]

typical canard from the Godless...I don’t buy that at all

for the record I don’t care about naked women...in fact I like them.. but much porn is extremely demeaning to the sick women who do it for money

we have fallen way down a rat hole from when I was a kid about this stuff..back when it was more private

i don’t buy the addiction angle...

nor do I buy disease as a rationale for drink or dope

the internet has obliterated the local standards regarding obscenity in our culture

for the worse...much worse

[wardaddy]

btw...given how computer addicted many freepers are I would venture that aside from the granny demographic that dominates FR that the second biggest demographic...the lonely got no girlfriend males 18-60 group

watch porn...

just a hunch..lol

[Salvation]

I have seen that booklet at my church. BTTT!

[wardaddy]

any sound advice hoss?

[wardaddy]

Folks had a lot more children.

and women were skinnier

[ArrogantBustard]

I heard that most porn is used by FReepers who don’t post profile pages ... don’t know how accurate that is.

[wardaddy]

[Marie]

I have a friend who’d drop-dead gorgeous. About 15 years into her marriage, her husband became addicted to porn. He started pressuring her into weird sex. The he started ignoring her. Finally he had an affair with a woman who would amuse his fantisies.

Yes, porn destroys marriages.

My husband is a prude when it comes to porn and I am so grateful for that! (Whenever he sees a “girls gone wild” commercial he thinks about our daughter doing these things and gets sick.)

Last winter I became very ill. I ended up gaining 30 pounds (on top of the 30 I was already overpacking). As sick as I was, it was the weight that I felt the most horrible about. It’s taken me six months to take off that last 30 and I’m still working on it.

Never once did my husband make me feel “less”. Not once did he make me feel unattractive. Knowing that I was always beautiful in his eyes gave me the strength to get my weight and health under control. There is no better motivation than feeling loved.

Had my husband become accustomed to only “reacting” to young, thin women, I don’t think our marriage would’ve survived. Heck, I wouldn’t have survived if he turned me away when I was doing my best. I needed loving comfort and acceptance when my body was falling apart.

[don-o]

Cute. And typical of a reaction that deals with any “calling down” for bad language as silly prudes.

[NavyCanDo]

Like in the movie “Fireproof”, the majority of marriages including good Christian marriages suffer with a little or a lot of the issues that couple had, including the husbands addiction to internet porn. That is why the movie was so good, because it spoke to all of us, convicted all of us, and showed us there is a way out. Almost all of us can find themselves in some of those same situations in our marriages. I know I do.