Pornography....Everybody's doing it!

Pornography is a dirty tool that cheapens one of the most beautiful and sacred rites between a man and a woman. Pornography used to be something taboo. It used to be something that you would have to seek out in order to find it, but "the times they are a changing". The sad truth is that every single person is willingly or unwillingly involved in pornography. No one may be exempt from this truth unless they have completely isolated themselves from the world. A decade or two ago, our parents would tell us to stay away from such filthy material. Now it consumes our whole way of life. (It even envelopes our parents now.) Let me cite a few examples to illustrate my point that we are all involved in pornography. Hollywood....(I could stop citing, because everyone knows what I am talking about now.) from the big screen, to the family hour on TV, Hollywood promotes its over-sexed agenda. School... whether this is the sex ed taught in schools, the novels in English class, or the manner of dress of the students. School is a haven for pornography. Daily life...It doesn't matter how protected you are, if you are living in the 21st century than you are exposed to pornography. Look around (or for that matter don't look around, it is about the only way not to get sucked into this snare.) as you walk into a grocery store. The check lines are full of magazines with inappropriate pictures. Walking from the store through the parking lot, you see the decals of strippers or naked "angels" or "devils" on either side of the window. Maybe you are keeping your eyes low in the parking lot, (trying to avoid the embarrassing window features) which causes you to glance at the just as inappropriate bumper stickers. On your drive home, (as you are trying think of great ways to be a good husband, father, or Man) you pass billboard after billboard of Pornography. Some billboards try to be subtle with their fully clothed yet very curvy models, others are in your face bold. I have an image in my mind that I just cannot shake. It is of a billboard in a residential neighborhood ( I can't believe the people in this area didn't demand that it be taken down) featuring a local spa. Let's just say that the model was very bare, so much so that I looked around to see if the kids had seen it. Do I need to give any further evidence? So you might ask, what is so wrong with these little examples? They harm our families, which means that they harm our communities, which means they harm our country.....which harms the world!

You may think this a little extreme, but what makes up the world? Individuals congregating into societies, and the most basic of these is the family. Pornography is meant to arouse one's sexual appetite, to cheapen the act of sex, and to encourage disrespect of one's partner. Once again you may ask, what is so wrong with this? When a person has their sexual appetite aroused with their spouse they are able to express themselves within the bonds of marriage. (thus preserving the basic unit, the family). When that person allows themselves to ignite those passions outside of those bounds, it will lead them, and their imagination to infidelity, thus causing a break up of the family. To cheapen sex, lessens our capacity to build loving, meaningful relationships. It can also create desires for a myriad of deviant sexual behaviors which will plague the individual until the taboo is met. The disrespect of one's spouse should speak for itself. No matter how good your lover is, she will never trump the unrealistic expectations that pornography has created. So you can see, we are all involved in the damning effects of pornography. The questions we should ask ourselves is, how involved are we? I will leave you with a few suggestions in closing. 1st. Leave blatant pornography alone. ( I realize that is self evident but it must be stated.) 2nd. Choose your forms of entertainment carefully. 3rd. If you feel too engrossed with pornography on any level, reach out to your spouse, religious leader, or for clinical help. 4th. Teach your families why it is good to avoid pornography in all its forms. I hope you will find those suggestions as helpful reminders, and encourage you to add to them as you see fit. If we will but strengthen ourselves we will be able to strengthen our families; If we strengthen our families we can strengthen our communities; If we can strengthen our communities, we will strengthen our nation. If we can do it for our nation, who knows maybe the world. In that day it might be said "Pornography....Nobody's doing it!"