“For at the window of my house, I looked out … and I saw among the naïve … a young man lacking sense, passing through the street near her corner; and he takes the way to her house…in the middle of the night and in the darkness. And behold, a woman comes to meet him” (Prov. 7:6-10).
Instead of walking the streets the modern man is surfing the internet. And the new street corner is a porn site.
Pornography is a moral virus spread in the new public square called the internet. And now that 91% of Americans have a smartphone, the potential for geometric spread of the virus across all generations is a clear and present danger to stable, civil, and polite society. In the digital age the following Scriptural observation has never been more accurate, “She … lurks by every corner” (Prov. 7:12).
And while the internet has been and, in many ways, continues to be a miraculous fountain of productivity, journalism, and oratory, hiding under the cover of freedom of expression, purveyors of pornography are using the publication power as a sewage line, piping noxious moral sludge into our hearts and minds, poisoning the body politic.
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If America fails to repent of our addiction to the evil that is pornography, not only will we sear our conscience and lose our soul but Scripture warns we will lose our nation: “Numerous are all her slain. Her house is the way to Sheol, descending to the chambers of death” (Prov. 7:26-27). As Theodore Roosevelt concluded, “…in the last analysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, and that by such admiration of evil they prove themselves unfit for liberty.”
Civil society, especially those with a claim to self-government, must be informed. And that requires vehicles to communicate ideas, ideas that help us imagine what kind of society we want to be and ideas that create a road map for the journey. Formerly pulpits, soap boxes, newspapers, radio and television, the vast majority of public discourse is now digital, reaching billions of people globally any given minute in the new public square called the internet.
Those digital companies that control this unprecedented “power of oratory,” the ideas and means to communicate them effectively, have a responsibility to use it responsibly. Theodore Roosevelt asserted that those who wield this power to debauch the citizenry claiming “the public demands it and that the demand must be supplied, can no more be admitted than if it were advanced by the purveyors of food who sell poisonous adulterations.”
The fire of the pornographic industry is sucking up America’s moral oxygen, suffocating healthy relationships. The moral authority of Scripture spends entire chapters, warning that sexual infatuation leads only to ruin. Speaking to his son, King Solomon warns against pursuing foreign women and harlots saying, “Her feet go down to death” (Prov. 5:5), “Keep your way far from her” (Prov. 5:8), “For why should you, my son, be exhilarated with an adulteress…? (Prov. 5:20).
Known for being the wisest man in history, King Solomon provides a solution: “Rejoice in the wife of your youth…Be exhilarated always with her love” (Prov. 5:18-19). King Solomon says healthy sexuality is found only in a male/female mutually monogamous marriage.
Replacing marriage and family with porn propagates perversity and crime. Studies and law enforcement are confirming the connection between consumption of pornographic material and the socio-moral destruction with the epidemic rise in child sex crime. The U.K. reports that 850 men are arrested for online child abuse offenses per month, warning that nearly 2% of the adult population “pose some degree of sexual risk to children.”
Further, children are being exposed to porn as early as 4 to 5 years old, no doubt a form of child sex abuse itself. And then that exposure has been linked to the rise of sexual violence perpetrated by children upon other children with as much as 25% of all sex crimes committed by minors. One expert said, “What we are seeing is more and more kids that have sexual behavior problems and at the same time, more and more children that have access to pornography.”
Brain studies reveal that consumption of porn physically alters the brain, normalizing aggressive and abusive sexual behavior in adults too, causing them to be more likely to engage in the sexual abuse and trafficking of women and children.
With over 300,000 missing migrant children presumed to be forced into sexual slavery, the U.S. is one of the primary consumers of this crime against humanity. And to cover their shame, the $97 billion global porn industry is abusing the 1st Amendment constitutional right of freedom of speech as a fig leaf.
Porn is a debilitating gateway drug to horrific human rights abuses both creating criminals and a conduit to monetize their victims.
Courageously, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced what should be a common-sense bill to re-establish common decency.
Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act essentially exempted digital media companies from many content regulations related to the obscene, regulations required of other content delivery modes like radio or cable television. Lee’s bill, called the “Interstate Obscenity Definition Act,” would tighten that loophole like a noose, making it illegal to dispense porn online.
Sex abusers, law enforcement, the medical community, and many in government understand internet pornography itself is criminal for how it is debasing our society, destroying lives and undermining the ability for people to have healthy relationships.
America should take Mike Lee’s antidote to the viper venom of porn — entire generations depend on it.
Rev. Jim Harden, M.Div. is a medical ethicist, author of the newly published Ethical Theory and Pertinent Standards in Women’s Reproductive Health, and CEO of CompassCare Pregnancy Services. He pioneered the first measurable and repeatable medical model in the pregnancy center movement and has written extensively on medical ethics, pro-life policy, and executive leadership. Rev. Harden has developed materials and strategies used by hundreds of pregnancy centers nationwide, helping them become more effective at serving women and saving babies from abortion.
