Time To Take a Stand for Sexual Integrity

A broken culture leads to broken people. And we see this played out massively in the West in general and in Australia in particular with the sexualisation of everything. What was once the reserve of adult company has now become ubiquitous. Hyper-sexuality is now found everywhere, and our children are exposed to it just as much as adults are.

Sex is a good and healthy thing, but when it becomes a god, it in fact becomes a demon. Some 75 years ago in Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis wrote about all this. He compared the function of eating – and its excess – with the function of sex – and its excess. He said this:

The biological purpose of sex is children just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair the body. Now if we eat whenever we feel inclined and just as much as we want, it is quite true that most of us will eat too much: but not terrifically too much. One man may eat enough for two, but he does not eat enough for ten. The appetite goes a little beyond its biological purpose, but not enormously. But if a healthy young man indulged his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then in ten years he might easily populate a small village. This appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function. Or take it another way. You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act—that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?

And in a 1963 interview Lewis was asked about the pornification of literature, to which he replied: “I treat this development as a symptom, a sign of a culture that has lost its faith. Moral collapse follows upon spiritual collapse. I look upon the immediate future with great apprehension.”

That warning was given over a half century ago. Today the pornification of our culture is so widespread and pervasive that it seems like the genie cannot be put back into the bottle. But any caring society – certainly one concerned especially about the wellbeing of women and children – will not put up the white flag of surrender here.

I and others will continue to do battle in this arena, and insist that governments take responsible steps to protect our children and our society at large. And there is much that we need protection from. Pornography is harmful – extremely so. And we are becoming increasingly aware of this fact.

The moral and social environment can be polluted just as much as the physical environment can be. As to the former we commonly speak about things like “externalities”. This involves the downstream effects of a polluting factory and the waste products it dumps into a river. Others are adversely impacted by all this.

So too, the spill-over effects of pornography need to be considered. Even if you do not watch it or buy it, you will be greatly affected by those who do. Just as there is such a thing as passive smoking, so there is passive sleaze. It is not a victimless crime, and we all tend to bear the brunt of it.

So very tragic is how children are being increasingly drawn into this dark web. And it is not just that they are being exposed to hardcore and vile pornography, but they are acting out what they see. Consider this shocking information from a late-2017 news item:

Reports of children sexually assaulting each other have almost doubled in the last four years, figures show as experts blame the rise in the availability of online pornography. Police have received almost 30,000 reports of children committing sexual offences since 2013, with 2,625 – including 225 alleged rapes – carried out by under-18s on other children on school premises, including primary school playgrounds. Reports of so-called ‘peer on peer’ abuse rose from 4,603 in 2013 to 7,866 last year…

But we need to put a human face on such stories. Here is just one case that should send shivers down the spines of every parent:

A teenage boy who sexually abused his half-sister said he was copying what he saw on a pornographic website, a court has heard. The 16-year-old, who cannot be named to protect his identity and the identity of his sister, arrived at the Central Criminal Court on signed pleas of guilty to five counts of rape and 44 counts of sexual assault, between September 2016 and January 2017. The court heard the teenager’s mother walked into her living room on 30 January 2017, to find her son who was then 14, inappropriately touching her daughter, who was then eight.

But adults can equally be harmed by porn. One clinical psychologist who works with sex addicts, sex offenders and their victims, makes a forceful case as to how damaging and addictive porn consumption is: “Pornography addicts are harder to treat than cocaine addicts; because with cocaine you can at least do detox.” She goes on to explain:

There’s a difference between words and pictures. When somebody is speaking, words coming out of the mouth, like mine, right now, the people in the audience are thinking about those words and saying to themselves, ‘That’s just your opinion. Now, I may agree with your opinion or I may not agree with your opinion, but that’s just your opinion.’ Pictures don’t work that way. A picture is an event, because you can see it. And once you see a picture it doesn’t come in as an opinion, it comes in as something that happened. And it’s stored in your brain where you store other things that have happened. So you don’t challenge it. You don’t buffer it. You don’t say, ‘That’s not true.’ You saw it. You stored it in the place where you saw the other things.

And mention should also be made of the “porn stars” who are being damaged by the industry. One recent article provides the testimony of a number of women who have been severely harmed by this industry. Let me share just several stories:

Jessie
“People in the porn industry are numb to real life and are like zombies walking around. The abuse that goes on in this industry is completely ridiculous. The way these young ladies are treated is totally sick and brainwashing. I left due to the trauma I experienced even though I was there only a short time. I hung out with a lot of people in the adult industry, everybody from contract girls to gonzo actresses. Everybody has the same problems. Everybody is on drugs. It’s an empty lifestyle trying to fill up a void. I became horribly addicted to heroin and crack. I overdosed at least three times, had tricks pull knives on me, have been beaten half to death…”

Alexa
“Like most porn performers, I perpetuated this lie. One of my favorite things to say when asked if I liked doing a particular scene was, “I only do what I like! I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t like it!” (I would say this with a big fake smile and giggle.) What a total lie! I did what I had to do to get “work” in porn. I did what I knew would help me gain “fame” in the industry.”

Alex
“[One particular film] was the most brutal, depressing, scary scene that I have ever done. I have tried to block it out from my memory due to the severe abuse that I received during the filming. The [male performer] has a natural hatred towards women, in the sense that he has always been known to be more brutal than ever needed. I agreed to do the scene, thinking it was less beating except a punch in the head. If you noticed, [he] had worn his solid gold ring the entire time and continued to punch me with it. I actually stopped the scene while it was being filmed because I was in too much pain.”
https://fightthenewdrug.org/10-porn-stars-speak-openly-about-their-most-popular-scenes/

This website, “Fight the New Drug” has plenty of important information and stories that deserve to be told. It says that porn does at least three harmful things: it affects the brain, it affects relationships, and it affects society. It IS a drug and it IS harmful.
https://fightthenewdrug.org/

And it is not just conservative or religious types who are concerned about the flood of porn and its damaging effects. Some time ago now Benjamin Spock said this: “For decades I was an uncompromising civil libertarian and scorned the hypocrisy involved in the enforcement of obscenity laws. But recent trends in movies, literature, and art toward what I think of as shock obscenity, and the courts’ acceptance of it, have made me change my position . . . particularly in view of other brutalizing trends.”

And even before that D. H. Lawrence said this: “Even I would censor genuine pornography, rigorously. It would not be very difficult. . . You can recognize it by the insult it offers, invariably, to sex, and to the human spirit. Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt to it. This is unpardonable…”

Secular authors have even penned entire books on this, such as Pamela Paul’s Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families (Times Books, 2005); Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (Free Press, 2005); and Gail Dines, Robert Jenson and Ann Russo, Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (Routledge, 1997).

We owe it to everyone – our children, our families, our men and women, and our society – to take a stand against the debilitating effects of the porn plague. Many of us are committed to reversing the tide, no matter how hard it might be or how long it might take.

And the war is winnable. It is already being won on various fronts. If we devote as much attention to putting a halt to moral and social pollution as we do to environmental pollution, the results can only be encouraging. But we all must get involved to see things turned around.

[1758 words]

24 Replies to “Time To Take a Stand for Sexual Integrity”

  1. World Naked Bike Ride to hit Melbourne, CHILDREN encouraged to join this ‘family-friendly’, ‘all ages’ event
    Coming to Melbourne 16th March.
    http://caldronpool.com/world-naked-bike-ride-to-hit-melbourne-children-encouraged-to-join-this-family-friendly-all-ages-event/

    See also:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Naked_Bike_Ride

    You will find the various justifications for these events are disparate and dubious.
    As Bill Muehlenberg has said above, “hyper-sexuality is now found everywhere, and our children are exposed to it just as much as adults.”

  2. Dear John,

    The Liberal Party in NSW is going to give their MP’s a “conscience vote” on abortion after the next election. That should be called an “unconscionable vote”!

    For me that I worse than Labor pollies being pro-baby murder. You expect it from them. You don’t expect it from so-called conservatives.

    if you are in NSW please Vote [1] for either Ben Irawan (AC) or Lara Taouk Sleiman (CDP) to save the unborn babies.

  3. Sarah, my best friend in one of our sre classes asked the visiting experts who were addressing our class on sex and its availability without consequences, something that left the visitor speechless for a few seconds which seemed like ages at the time. “Sarah said to her you only say what you do since you have forgotten sex is an act that takes place in something that is sacred, could you tell me what that is?” Sarah was belittled by the school for that question. That same girl is performing in a musical interschool competition with 4 others from our school, Sarah will win that competition single-handedly for our school as her passion for the beautiful and the uplifting is always at the top of her thoughts and that is the way to replace porn maybe.

  4. Hi John Miller,
    Regarding the World Naked Bike Ride to hit Melbourne, is it not illegal to be naked in public?
    Sounds like indecent exposure. Is it breaking some local laws?
    Kyle

  5. Dear Bill, Thank you yet again. When you encourage us all to get involved to see things turned around, please spell out how we may most effectively do so, so we too may swing into action. Sincerest thanks. We are all with you and we thank God for you and for your rallying calls,
    Suzanna & family

  6. Katie M, I turn my back for 24 hours and you lust after Mr M’s book collection, while on a thread about Pornography! Do you not see the connection between lusting after his book collection and what dopy Ryan lusts after, that which, he views on his phone? Be away with you, you book harlot.

    Don’t worry Mr M, another woman will not get between me and my books, let no Katie M, put asunder to that.

    If I were you, Mr M, I would block her for her concise and informative posts. I have informed her on many occasions that we never use one word if we can use 6 and she willfully ignores me.

  7. We, in the west, have lived under an all-seeing God for 100s of years until we took a second bite of the apple. We have blocked out God with pleasure and frivolous activities. Less than a hundred years ago women didn’t have the freedom to be abused in pornography scenes, they were daughters, wives or wives and mothers, as for the boys often they would go off to war, to fight and die for wives and families they never had since they married a trench to die in, instead, some so young, screamed out for their mothers, dying never knowing the woman he was to delight in.

    I, often wonder if too many of the brave died in those world wars so the cowards could hide in fake outrage or victimhood. They scream out not in sacrifice like that boy soldier dying for the freedom that the cowards could give away, but so they can get their quick fix from virtue signalling.

    Each soldier made an individual sacrifice, for many, too many, their reward was to die a hero where no one knew the hero’s name, other than the girl waiting back home to be chased, caught and married to him.

    The government will not challenge immorality, they will only legalize it. It’s just you and your morality or lack of it, you must strive for a higher morality and not expect the government to mandate it since what the immoral gives, they can take back. You will never want to strive to be more like the government; you will only consider yourself the government of your life. I am sorry to be the bearer of the news that may cause you to consider you may need a social justice warrior, but I have to inform you that you do not live in a democracy, you live in a monarchy and God is king. if you choose morality over immorality you are going to need help and if the thought government still pops up in your head you need to look somewhat higher, you are going to have to have an all-seeing God one that stands over the government, the government that will legalize pornography so you may convince yourself, “well its legal! after all”, you do not need much encouragement to be immoral but you will definitely need a God to know where the source of morality may be found.

    Each one of us has got to strive for purity in our own lives. If the only way purity may be achieved in our lives is by a gun put to our head by an immoral government official, then the immorality you have is compounded by the fact the freewill God gave you, so you could be willingly pleasing to Him has been spent on unwillingly pleasing man instead. You will finish up demonstrating to the world your morality is held in another man and not in God our father.

    We must pray more, not only for our own failings but for the ungodly, since how possibly could they pray- “Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, The power, and the glory, Forever and ever. Amen”. That prayer was given to us as Christians, only we have a mandate from God to pray to him in that way. Each time we fail to bring the good news to the ones we had the opportunity to do so; we are denying them the opportunities found in the Lord’s prayer.

    We should be beacons of hope where there is hopelessness. We should offer each other a pure heart and much joy. We females should offer to be pleasing to the eye, by first being pleasing to the heart. You men need to be strong enough to carry us and weak enough to surrender your strength to lead us sacrificially. We must take every opportunity not to take ourselves to seriously, so we have an abundance of seriousness for God.

    As for the Pornography “Actresses” and those who live day-to-day in cold relationships with an image, let them view our lives so they can see what a great God we have, even if we struggle to be an example he would want at times. I think a small amount of God can go a long way, where a small amount of godlessness just holds you where you are, which is in hopelessness.

  8. Good on you Katie and Sarah! Stay strong! I agree that having a passion for the beautiful and uplifting is a way to overcome evil. Many have forgotten what we have lost. Romans 12.21 ‘Do not be overcome with evil but overcome evil with good.’ How about we start a movement of random acts of beauty? This would of course, encompass random acts of kindness. It would include beauty in our homes, our relationships and our communities. The impetus for this is a relationship with God and the continuation, a journey of holiness.

  9. Sarah, just a quick comment on one of yours, though I think I know what you mean. We men do not need to be weak enough to surrender our strength to lead sacrificially. To lead sacrificially takes inner strength, not weakness, for weakness folds back to self-centredness in the face of self sacrificing demands in marriage. I have never found it otherwise. Yielding oneself to Christ is the bridge one must first cross to obtain the necessary strength for Godly relationships, especially marital.
    Kind regards,
    Robert.

  10. >>Gail,
    Let me offer something uplifting that happened on Thursday, Gail. I and 4 of my school friends represented our school in a music contest held between various schools. One of the girls on our team was performing in front of a large audience for the first time, she is 13. All was going well, we had accrued sufficient points that we just needed to perform basics. One of the opposing team was short of a Violinist to accompany their Cello player; the points gained are for the Cello performance, not the Violinist, so I accompanied her on Violin. I did not realize, neither did our teacher that by me taking part with the other team I excluded myself from the rest of the competition. I had one more piece to play which would have put us in an uncatchable position. Abby, the 13-year-old newbie had to perform her piece not only faultlessly technically speaking, but put emotion and passion into it too. She was terrified, we went through her choices of music and as a Christian, she went for something she could put the necessary emotions into, she chose- “Because He Lives”. Plainly, we told her she could win this for us with a good performance, not that we wanted to put undue pressure on her. We did the group hug and Abby turned to me and said something that made our atheistic teacher gasp in the moment, Abby said we need to pray. I can’t describe the look on Miss’s face of despair. I said to Abby, you make your piece your prayer to God and we will pray while you play. The teacher recorded Abby’s performance on her phone as her excuses no doubt as to how we lost with such a lead, Abby aced it, seriously I have been playing from the age of 4 and have been to many competitions with my mum and I could not have improved on her performance. On the way back in the minibus, the teacher asked Abby what it was like to play the winning piece, Abby’s response:- “Well I bottled it, Miss, I said to God, you’re going to have to play this for me”. We had a few miles of silence; well the Christians amongst us were sending a thank you to the stand in, Violinist. As for Miss, she was very relieved to be going back with the trophy; after all, the school needs to brag what a good music department we have.

    I love your idea of:-

    “random acts of kindness. It would include beauty in our homes, our relationships and our communities. The impetus for this is a relationship with God and the continuation, a journey of holiness”.

    Let’s do that Gail.

    Sarah xxx.

  11. Hi, Mr Greggery, Thank you for your comment; especially given you had to read so much to get to the part you took exception too. Before I comment further, may I say you are right in what you say and what you say is related to your Christian faith, on a Christian blog, communicating with other Christians and you are absolutely right to do so, not only that but its important you do so for the benefit of all not least for me.

    To put into context what I said in that particular paragraph it may be best to show you what I had read as part of my daily bible reading just before writing the post you comment on-

    2 Corinthians 12:9-11 English Standard Version.

    “9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong”.

    I think you realised the context I put, “weak” in, as you said:-

    “I think I know what you mean.”.

    You did indeed sir, but you were right to err on the side of caution, not to mention give me your wisdom as “weakness” relates to marriage, as you rightly pointed out its the weakness that is only found in the strength of Christ that governs the godly husband.

    Sarah. xx

  12. Thanks for that feedback and example Sarah. Well done in your music results. I also play violin. I learned as an adult and play in a community orchestra. I also dabble in art, nurture a large garden, have a food preserving addiction and am a writer. I aim for beauty in all those things. Let’s go forward with random acts of beauty!

  13. >>Gail.

    “Thanks for that feedback and example Sarah. Well done in your music results. I also play Violin. I learned as an adult and play in a community orchestra. I also dabble in art, nurture a large garden, have a food preserving addiction and am a writer. I aim for beauty in all those things. Let’s go forward with random acts of beauty!”

    Wow, Gail, it’s seriously hard to get to a very good standard on Violin or Piano from an adult to a musician. My mum used to say one year before the age of five is worth 10 after. She would have sat me at the Piano at 3 if I could have reached the keys not to mention the pedals. Well done indeed, Gail.

    Addy who I mentioned started at 11 and that is very late but she has worked hard and is at a very reasonable standard. What will hold her back is her shoulder action since you have to have someone like your mother not allowing you to have the wrong shoulder action by watching you continually; my mum really drilled that into me.
    If you want to earn a little money and you are at a high standard you could help provide the backing tracks for sound and recording studios, it’s just a matter of wearing headphones in one of their little sound booths, playing the music score on the screen, sign a paper and they pay there and then. One of my mum’s friends takes me to London, occasionally and we go to the studio, and then go shopping with the money. They never tell you where your music is used or if it’s used, but its nothing special or amazing, it’s just used in something much bigger I think.

    The only, art I do with any passion is repairing book covers as I love books. I but all my books in the main from charity shops and if they have tatty covers I clue a piece of card to the cover and draw or paint the card cover to make it look pretty. If I find a book that isn’t of interest to me, but it’s been well-read I take the book away and put my new covers on it and take it back to the charity shop so they may sell it. I do not like to think someone loved that book and perhaps died and it finished up unloved. My dad thinks that’s silly, but I do not. I think men have very hard hearts.

    My Dad has a vegetable garden that he likes to spend time in, he says the cabbages don’t give him a hard time like his daughter does lol. He will only grow what can be eaten so we do not have any pretty flowers. My dad said if I want pretty flowers I will have to grow them myself! I am a little frightened of spiders and things with lots of legs even if they are small, but I wouldn’t tell my dad or brother, otherwise, my brother will be cruel to me and those little creatures too. “Food preserving addiction”, do you mean you freeze your garden produce so you may use it over winter? I peel apples (from our tree) lightly salt them put then in self-sealing bags and freeze them and use them to make my dad and brother apple pies for their Sunday treat over the winter months. I do not know what addiction means here really.

    A writer like Mr M?

    Ok, I am going to ask our teacher if some of the musicians, the dance class and some of the boy’s football team can go to the old people’s home that we went to at Christmas. The men can talk to the boys about football, and some of those men liked dancing with the girls from the dance class, one of those men said to me if he was 13 again he would marry me, I said to him, if I were 75 I would marry him. Lol, one of the ladies taught me how to knit, and we played some of the music from the wartime. If our teacher says no I will ask our church to arrange for the youth to do the same. I think that would be better since we may preach the gospel then.

    You should take some of your home-grown produce to a family in your street or maybe make a pie of some sort and take it to a man living on his own, but we are not allowed to go into his house without our dad or brother remember.

  14. 1Pe 4:17a; For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God:

    Sadly, we must also contend with the number of professing born-again Christians who are getting their jollies in secret via internet porn.

    It’s just sickening and a cancer upon the church that is causing unbelievers, who, true, will look for any excuse to dismiss the gospel, to decide we are no different from them. God help us.

  15. Bill, I’d like to apologize for jumping in with a comment, as I so often do, that may have a bit of pertinence to the topic, but in the long run doesn’t truly address the point of your article. Too often, it becomes all about me, what I think and blah, blah, blah…

    Your are so right that this porn epidemic flows down on others in society who don’t indulge in it. The stats on child abuse often show a parent(s) who indulges in it. The internet makes it so easy, as much of it is free and anonymous.

    I know the world scorns those who point out the dangers of porn. But I pray for strength for all who stand against it and that the message will get through and change hearts and minds. Thanks for another helpful article.

  16. Thanks so much, Bill, for your indulgence and patience. God bless!

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