Could there be anything more vile to read than Christians of all confessional stripes commenting, nay, waxing indignant about pornography, either the sort popularly portrayed in films like 50 Shades of Grey or the everyday stuff which litters the Internet? Pornography is evil — is there much more to be said about it than that? The attempts of some to build-up utilitarian arguments against its production and consumption are not without merit; but that’s a dangerous road to walk down. For whether some wish to admit it or not, there are plenty of pro-pornography arguments cast in utilitarian terms, and the social-science literature has only yielded findings which are, at best, inconclusive and, more often than not, contestable. The less charitable side of me, the one activated by social media and e-mail chains, finds almost all Christian writings on pornography is perverse. The curiosity that sits just underneath the condemnatory rhetoric is — if I may use the word again — perverse. It’s not enough to just say that the sort of “deviant sex” portrayed in most pornographic (or quasi-pornographic) videos is “disgusting” or “immoral”; graphic descriptions, the sort which ended up enticing more than horrifying, are part of the package. O, how I long for the days of yore when a sly euphemism or two might have stood-in for “analingus.”
The prevalence of cheap moralizing literature is sure evidence of inadequate moral instruction. In earlier times made more decent not by the quality of men but the intolerance of the laws for vices most high-school kids experience before graduation, epistles of revulsion toward gang bangs, sadomasochism, and run-of-the-mill bestiality (light household pet stuff; no farm animals) wouldn’t have been necessary; their authors would be punished for pruriency. Now I pray that these “consciences of our darkened times” might be sanctioned with irrelevancy. But that won’t happen because there is a market for “pornography porn,” a ghastly spectacle typically comprised of misdirected rage, impotent posturing, and stern nonsense. Show me a man confronted with a 1,200 word finger-wag over his masturbatory practices who repented of his ways, humble and contrite before the frowning faces of the disapproval class and I’ll dig up dozens of more tempted to peek at that which is ostensibly damned. No, you see, what “pornography porn” does, aside from fill its producers with a false sense of justification and mission, is draw hapless souls further into the snares of the devil. They read of lascivious lifestyles and lurid practices to which they have no access, to which only the misdirected and corrupted embrace, and they want to know more. They want to know what to get angry at, not because it’s objectively evil, but because they themselves ought not, cannot, and therefore will not be able to imbibe.
Then some do, and I bet it’s a real horror show in the confessional after that. (Or, if they happen to belong to a Protestant sect, it’s a real horror show down at the local Celebrate Recovery group.) I don’t mean to mock; toward these poor men I feel a great deal of pity. Wanting to be good Christians prepared to battle against worldly temptations, they mistakenly arm themselves with the enemy’s time bombs. Yes, shame on the pornographers, but shame, too, on those who make a cottage industry out of claiming to combat the pornographers. They don’t drain the cesspool; they help keep it full. What should we say to such people? A brief perusal through the Bible reveals 20 or so references to stumbling blocks, and so many, many more about hypocrisy in general.
