LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Research by: Drew Harris

DEFINITION OF PORNOGRAPHY

“The word pornography, derived from the Greek porni (“prostitute”) and graphein (“to write”), was originally defined as any work of art or literature depicting the life of prostitutes”. [1] It has come to mean, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, “Sexually explicit writing, images, video, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.” [2]

PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS

• Pornography significantly distorts attitudes and perceptions about the nature of sexual intercourse in men and women from a young age. [3]
• Pornography is highly addictive and neurologically damaging. [4]
• Prolonged use of pornography produces habituation [5], boredom, and sexual dissatisfaction among female and male viewers. [6]
• The pornography industry continually strengthens addiction with gradually more bizarre and radical imagery. [7]
• Pornography use leads to a distortion of reality and arguable mental illness based on sexual matters. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]

DAMAGE TO RELATIONSHIPS

• Pornography use leads to dissatisfaction with mates and monogamous relationships. [15][16]
• Exposure to sexual material from the internet, magazines, and television is associated with stronger notions that women are sex objects or sexual commodities. [17][18]
• Men exposed to pornography are more likely to describe women in overtly sexual terms, rather than by other personal attributes. [19]
• Pornography use correlates to higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and out-of-wedlock pregnancies. [20][21][22]
• People who grew up in stable nuclear families are less likely to view pornography. [23]

PORNOGRAPHY IN THE HOME

Children in a home that uses pornography often suffer in various ways:

• They encounter pornographic material a parent has acquired.
• They witness and experience stress in the home caused by online sexual activities.
• There is an increased risk of the children becoming consumers of pornography themselves.
• They witness parental conflict.
• They are exposed to the commodification of human beings,
• especially women, as “sex objects.”
• Pornography users perform worse in the workplace [24], which leads to increased risk of parental job loss and financial strain.
• There is increased risk of parental separation and divorce.
• They experience decreased parental time and attention—both from the pornography-addicted parent and from the parent preoccupied with the addicted spouse. [25][26]

PORNOGRAPHY AND YOUTH

• 50% of 11- to 13-year-olds, 65% of 14- to 15-year-olds, and 78% of 16- to 17-year-olds reported having seen pornography in some way (shown/sent by someone else or searched for/stumbled upon it).
• 75% of parents believed their child would not have seen pornography online, but of those children 53% said they had in fact seen pornography.
• Of the children who admitted to intentionally searching for pornography, nearly two-thirds of them (63%) said they had done so at one point or another specifically for one or more of four reasons:
  • To get ideas for new things to try sexually.
  • To learn about sex generally.
  • Learning how to get better at sex.
  • Learning what people expect from partners sexually.
• Girls in particular mentioned using pornography to learn how to meet boys’ “expectations.”
• 41% of children who were aware of pornography agreed “watching porn makes people less respectful of the opposite sex.” [27]

BEHAVIORS AND CRIME

• Various forms of sexual behaviors outside of a committed monogamous relationship are directly linked to pornography use in the United States. [28]
• Significant percentages of sex offenders used hard-core pornography in adolescence and continued use in adulthood. [29]
• About a third of sex offenders reported using pornography as a deliberate stimulus to commit their sexual offenses. [30]
• Convicted internet sexual offenders spent 11 or more hours a week watching pornographic images of children on the internet. [31]
• Physical aggression is present in a substantial amount of pornographic material and is linked to increased aggression among users and calloused attitudes about sexual violence. [32][33]
• The moral acceptability of rape increases after prolonged exposure to pornography. [34]
• Pornography increases the demand and rate of human trafficking. [35][36]

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PORNOGRAPHY INCREASES

HUMAN TRAFFICKING.

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• Neighborhoods with sex-based businesses see more crime than non- sexually oriented nightclubs and bars. [37][38]
• A study in Adams County, Colorado found that 83 percent of crimes in a neighborhood featuring two adult businesses were connected to those Sexually oriented businesses. [39]
• Number of sex offenses was 506 percent greater in a neighborhood containing a Sexually oriented business. [40]
• The closer a property is to a sex-based businesses, the more its value depreciates. [41]
• The close proximity of sex-based businesses to neighborhoods leads to a greater exposure of children to pornographic material. [42]

TIMELINE OF LEGAL CASES

1727 - Rex v. Curl held that publication of an obscene libel was punishable as a common law libel as being "against the peace in tending to weaken the bonds of civil society, virtue, and morality.”

1815 - Commonwealth v. Sharpless found that selling of an obscene painting of a man and a woman in an ‘‘indecent posture’’ threatened the peace and dignity of all residents of Pennsylvania, and had the potential to corrupt and subvert its youth.

1821 - Commonwealth v. Holmes. ("Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure") The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that "an obscene libel was a common law offense and punishable as a crime."

1957 - Roth v. United States. Pornography, but not "obscene" material, is "speech" protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

1964 - Jacobellis v. Ohio. What counts as "obscenity" is measured by community standards.

1968 - Ginsberg v. State of New York. The law can distinguish between adults and minors using pornography. [43]

1969 - Stanley v. Georgia, holding a Georgia law to be unconstitutional which prohibited the possession of pornography. [43]

1973 - Miller v. California, holding that to be obscene, sexual material must be "patently offensive" and lack any "serious scientific, literary, artistic, or political value."

1982 - New York v. Ferber. Child pornography has no free speech protection.

1986 - Renton v. Playtime Theatres, addressed zoning for X-rated theaters.

1996 - Denver Telecommunications v. FCC, addressed X-rated cable television.

1997 - Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, addressed internet porn.

2002 - Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition. Child pornography restrictions loosened.

BIBLICAL VERSES ABOUT SEXUALITY

Pornography attacks the dignity of men and women who are created in the image of God, also distorting God’s gift of sex which should be shared only within the bounds of marriage. The Bible condemns acts of sexual exposure, adultery, bestiality, homosexuality, incest, and prostitution.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Genesis 2:24-25

And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Matthew 19:4-6

Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets. Let them be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee. Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.

Proverbs 5:15-19

Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.

Hebrews 13:4

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.

Genesis 4:1

Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power. Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

1 Corinthians 6:13-18

For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication.

1 Thessalonians 4:3

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness.

Galatians 5:19

Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband.

1 Corinthians 7:2-3

And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.

Genesis 9:21-23

Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour’s wife, to defile thyself with her.

Leviticus 18:20

Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.

Leviticus 18:23

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

Leviticus 18:22

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

Leviticus 20:13

None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the Lord. The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. The nakedness of thy father’s wife shalt thou not uncover: it is thy father’s nakedness. The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover. The nakedness of thy son’s daughter, or of thy daughter’s daughter, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover: for theirs is thine own nakedness. The nakedness of thy father’s wife’s daughter, begotten of thy father, she is thy sister, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s sister: she is thy father’s near kinswoman. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother’s sister: for she is thy mother’s near kinswoman. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s brother, thou shalt not approach to his wife: she is thine aunt. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter in law: she is thy son’s wife; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife: it is thy brother’s nakedness. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son’s daughter, or her daughter’s daughter, to uncover her nakedness; for they are her near kinswomen: it is wickedness. Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time.

Leviticus 18:6-18

There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel. Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the Lord thy God.

Deuteronomy 23:17-18

ADOLESCENTS WHO VIEW PORNOGRAPHIC VIDEOS

Figure [45]

IS PORNOGRAPHY MORALLY ACCEPTABLE OR MORALLY WRONG?

Figure [46]

SOURCES CITED

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