In 1865, following the most costly war in America’s history, the 13th Amendment abolished the odious institution of slavery in the United States.

Why, then, is telecommunications giant Verizon providing an outlet for the products of the modern-day slavery of sex trafficking? The short answer is that it’s good for the bottom line.

Speaking of the bottom, that’s where you find libertine societies where the only considerations are whether something makes money or involves adult consent. Stripped of moral restraints, the marketplace eventually serves up child-themed pornography and sexually violent content.

Each year, Morality in Media, an anti-pornography group headed by former Justice Department attorney Patrick A. Trueman, releases a “Dirty Dozen List” of the leading facilitators of pornography. This year, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. tops the list.

“As the pandemic of harm from pornography grows, Holder gives criminal pornographers the green light to proceed by stopping all enforcement of federal obscenity laws,” Mr. Trueman explains.

The list, which is far from comprehensive, includes Facebook, for not enforcing its own standards, the local networking site Tumblr, Google, YouTube and PlayStation for its live, streamed pornography and sexually violent games.

It also includes Verizon, citing the obscene movies it sells through FIOS. You’d think that a company that portrays itself as the acme of excellence would be embarrassed. You’d be wrong, though.

Because of U.S. Supreme Court rulings, pornography is legal, but even the court drew a line at obscenity, which is not protected speech under the First Amendment. The reason that even corporate giants now peddle obscenity is that the Justice Department, beginning in the Clinton years, stopped enforcing the law.

Consequently, Verizon is taking pimp money for such movies as “I Banged My Stepdad” and “Mom, Daughter and Me.” These are actual titles.

Verizon’s associate director for advertising and content standards, John P. Artney, blithely dismissed Morality in Media’s concerns:

“The explosion in choice is a tremendous benefit to consumers, but not all consumers want to have access to all content for themselves and their families all of the time,” Mr. Artney responded in a statement. “Not all content is desirable to or appropriate for all consumers, however, and Verizon is proud to provide our customers with myriad tools to control the types of content that they and their families have access to through our service.”

Wow. That’s a relief. We sure don’t mind if the guy down the street in the raincoat is getting “benefit” from the kind of porn that perps act out when they victimize women and children. As long as we’re making “choice” the litmus test, shouldn’t people who want to raise their kids in a decent community have any choice?

Not to Verizon, or to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The liberal group has attacked obscenity laws for decades, and still defends possession of child pornography. On its Blog of Rights, the ACLU recently featured an article by Linda Chateauvert, author of the book “Sex Workers Unite: A History of the Movement from Stonewall to Slutwalk.” She begins: “Do sex workers have rights? Put another way, can whores, hustlers, strippers, streetwalkers and porn stars demand respect and justice?”

Well, yes. As human beings created in the image of God, they deserve respect and justice. However, that doesn’t mean that selling one’s body is a good thing. It also does not mean the victims have exercised free choice. Often, they are beaten and drugged to force them to “perform.” Sex trafficking of women and children is part of the worldwide modern slavery plague of human trafficking. It’s a pipeline to dependency on evil men who exploit the vulnerable. This now includes some Fortune 500 executives. Jesus famously rescued a woman caught in adultery who was to be stoned to death by a mob. He suggested that any man who has not sinned should cast the first stone. After all the men left, starting with the oldest, Jesus told the woman to “go and sin no more.” That’s the part that libertines leave out when they twist Jesus’ compassion into a free ticket to Sodom and Gomorrah.

For more than 200 years, America’s laws reflected the biblically derived understanding of sex — that it belongs in marriage, and that outside that haven, it causes much grief. Family-centered, self-governing Americans created the freest and most prosperous nation in history.

Although sometimes it feels as if America suddenly got hit by a tsunami from hell, the wave got its start in an earthquake at Indiana University in the late 1940s. That’s when Alfred C. Kinsey launched his fraudulent sex studies of men and women and laid the “scientific” foundation for the sexual revolution that took off in the 1950s and rumbled through the drug-addled ‘60s. By the time it lurched into the ‘70s, the sexual revolution had conquered or wounded all institutions that transmit cultural values.

The sexual revolution, beloved of liberals who still think America is too prudish, has reduced our country to a land where a massive media company can wrap films like “Pigtail Teens Pounded” (a real title on Verizon) in the red, white and blue flag of consumer choice.

If we end up living in a land where shame has no place, we will be ashamed of where we live.

Verizon is a communications company. Eric Holder Jr. is attorney general. Maybe it’s time we communicated something about the new slavery to them.

This article was first published on the WashingtonTimes.com blog.

This week’s decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirming the conviction of hardcore pornographer Ira Isaacs serves as a reminder that distribution of hardcore adult pornography is still illegal under federal law in America.

The Isaacs obscenity case began in the administration of President George W. Bush.

“Not one new adult obscenity case has been initiated under President Barack Obama despite the fact that America is suffering a pandemic of harm at the hands of pornographers,” noted Patrick Trueman, President and CEO of Morality in Media and former Chief, U.S. Department of Justice, Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. Trueman asks, “Why is the administration protecting the pornography criminal syndicates instead of women and children?” 

Among the many harms, pornography leads to life-long addictions of children and adults, to increased demand for trafficked women and children, to violence against women and to increased child sexual abuse and child pornography.

Morality In Media has included Obama’s US Attorney General, Eric Holder, on its annual Dirty Dozen List because he has refused to enforce federal obscenity laws. Details of these laws can be found at www.WarOnIllegalPornography.com.

An event that went largely unnoticed by the mainstream media in 2012 perked up the ears of the Obama administration when it sparked a movement that ignited the hearts of 40,000 young evangelicals.  Today the “End It” movement, fueled by a new generation of social conservatives, could impact the culture in ways their elders only dreamed.

“End It,” along with a coalition of 12 other non-profits like LOVE146, are raising awareness, and the money needed to do something about it–like wading through the darkest cavities of human depravity to rescue these girls. Reaching those lost without hope is a chance to bring everyone to the table and put right vs. left aside. That is, if both sides truly care about real justice.

However, that’s not always the case.

From a recent article over at BuzzFeed titled, ”A New Mission for the Religious Right“:

“The event received only marginal press coverage, but the White House took notice. A few weeks later, senior Obama adviser David Plouffe sat down in the White House with Joshua Dubois and Michael Wear, the president’s ambassadors to America’s believers. Plouffe had seen data that suggested young Evangelical voters were up for grabs in the upcoming election, and he wanted to know how the president could appeal to that demographic, according to someone with direct knowledge of the meeting. They discussed a range of tactics, and at the end of the meeting Plouffe asked which single issue could make the biggest difference in courting young Christians.

“Human trafficking,” Wear responded.”

“As [human trafficking] issue has gone mainstream in conservative Christianity, politicians have begun working it into their speeches and legislative agendas. Shortly after his aides discussed it in early 2012, Obama gave a shout-out to anti-trafficking efforts at the National Prayer Breakfast, praising young Christians who “worship the God who sets the captives free and work to end modern slavery.” And just weeks before the election, at the Clinton Global Initiative, Obama spoke at length about the issue, in remarks that one adviser called “the longest speech on slavery of any president since Abraham Lincoln.”

While the Obama administration may see this as an opportunity to steal away young evangelical support, I see this as a way to redefine “Social Justice.”

Although in an interview with The Christian Post, Pastor Giglio said it was pointless to pit social justice against the culture war, when as he put it, “young people are simply concerned about using their lives to elevate the lives of others.”

Living as a follower of Christ is about bringing hope to the hopeless. Abolishing slavery is doing just that in real time. However, it makes me wonder if he’s worried that the mud, disgrace and usual stigma smeared on social conservatives of the past will taint this movement.

He has a valid concern. It’s hard to think of one real battle in the culture war we’ve actually won. However, this generation gives me hope. Their aim is to make a difference — not just make a point.

An authentic Christian life–to follow Jesus–means they are entering into dangerous territory. Jesus said in Matthew 10:16,

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” New International Version

The sheep believe that justice is served when evil individuals that do unspeakable deeds and destroy lives are captured.They also are young enough not to recognize the wolves dressed in sheep clothing.

These courageous sheep are hunting wolves that rip the voices out of children and devour their innocence. While they are focused and driven, they must be aware that there are wolves of a different color with a repugnant underbelly as well. These wolves steal faith and virtue and twist justice into their own image.

For them, “social justice” is a pretty fleece to cover an ideology that seeks only to demonize capitalism. It does not free any one person–ever. Instead it seeks to enslave everyone into one economic class. Their vision is not a world free of human slavery, but a world where everyone is equally enslaved. The savior they serve is government. Not a just God.

This generation is willing to risk their lives for social justice. So let’s define it clearly. 

We serve a just God. That alone is the driving force behind this movement. Wickedness is punished and the innocent are set free and restored. A just God feels the pain of a suffering world. From Nicholas Wolterstorff:

“Made in the image of God: That is how the Biblical writers describe us. To be human is to be an icon of God…Authentic life is to image God ever more closely by becoming like Jesus Christ, the express image of the Father.

In what respects do we mirror God? In our knowledge. In our love. In our justice. In our sociality. In our creativity. These are the answers the Christian tradition offers us.

One answer rarely finds its way onto the list: in our suffering. Perhaps the thought is too appalling. Do we also mirror God in suffering?” 

A just God is a suffering God. That is not one we think of often. But a God that loved the world so deeply that He sent redemption, is a God that feels the suffering of his creation. The President and Cofounder of Love146, Rob Morris, must have felt a glimpse of the injustice and sorrow God feels when he wrote on his website of his experience witnessing first hand the horror of the sex trade. He saw little girls made to sit in front of a television, watching cartoons with blank-eyes. They sat with numbers instead of names–waiting to be picked. These children, eleven maybe even as old as thirteen, who were raped as many as fifteen times a night, sat there, almost dead inside.

“…All of these emotions begin to wreck you. Break you. It is agony. It is aching. It is grief. It is sorrow. The reaction is intuitive, instinctive. It is visceral. It releases a wailing cry inside of you. It elicits gut-level indignation. It is unbearable. I remember wanting to break through the glass. To take her away from that place. To scoop up as many of them as I could into my arms. To take all of them away. I wanted to break through the glass to tell her to keep fighting. To not give up. To tell her that we were coming for her…”

It’s time to teach the wolves of every color the correct definition of justice.

Many people think public libraries are obsolete in the age of the Internet, yet libraries remain a valuable asset to any neighborhood. But just imagine taking your kids to your local library on a beautiful, sunny day to find some good books and engage in the other activities offered. You’re hand in hand, discussing what kind of books to borrow when, to your horror, you see…

Someone on one of the library computers is looking at pornography!

This isn’t a scenario out of a parent’s worst nightmare; this is taking place in libraries around the country. A recent case involves a library in Orland Park, Illinois, where residents are now insisting that the library  install filters on public computers to block access to illegal pornography. However, opponents to filtering, which include the American Library Association (ALA), are concerned that such filters violate free speech rights and insert more government into the lives of Americans.

The ALA’s long-held position is that ALL information, regardless of content and age of user, should be available and that it’s a parent’s job, not the library’s, to protect children.

Judith Krug, ALA’s former Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom said, “I have a real problem when people say, Well I walked by and you should have seen what was on the computer screen. Well, don’t look, sweetie. It’s none of your business. Avert your eyes.” 

The ALA  states on their web site:

The primary responsibility for rearing children rests with parents. If parents want to keep certain ideas or forms of expression away from their children, they must assume the responsibility for shielding those children. Governmental institutions cannot be expected to usurp or interfere with parental obligations and responsibilities when it comes to deciding what a child may read or view.

While some liberals raise First Amendment concerns, we have a right to ask the question of whether tax-funded public computers should be providing illegal porn in view of children on our dime. If the answer to that question is yes, then why don’t we allow strippers to dance on public streets? Why aren’t pornographic movies shown to all ages at movie theaters around the country?

The questions might sound ridiculous, but it’s the venue and location of any sexually explicit material that’s really in debate.

I’m thrilled to see parents insisting Internet filters be installed on the library’s computers located within sight and reach of young kids – the very computers they provide with their their hard-earned tax dollars. In a hyper-sexualized society where children are often caught in the crosshairs of marketers and advertisers, parents must be vigilant in protecting their kids. It appears the concerns of parents are at least causing the public library to reconsider its policy of no filters on the computers.

Providing access to porn on public computers in the library creates a hostile environment for parents seeking to protect their children from that explicit content. It’s bad enough that our public schools are now mandating explicit sex-education beginning in kindergarten. Parents already have a tough enough time guarding their kids from explicit content on television, in movies, music, and on their home computers. The last thing parents need is another venue in which they have to be concerned about sexually explicit content for which their kids might be exposed.

It’s clear that allowing porn on public library computers violates the basic laws established to regulate the porn industry in order to safeguard children.  Most states have Harmful Materials Laws, including Illinois.   An excerpt of Illinois’ law states:

Ironically librarians lobbied for an exemption to this law and it was granted to them. Who could conceive that librarians would allow an innocent child to view all forms of deviant graphic sex online?

Anyone who has been addicted or had trouble with porn knows how serious of an issue it is. Some want to downplay the implications and act as if porn is a common place, everyday routine for everyone. Unfortunately that is nearly true and the outcome has been catastrophic, especially for youth. Let’s look at some statistics on porn use in America:

9 out of 10 boys were exposed to porn before age 18.
6 out of 10 girls were exposed to porn before age 18.
28% of 16-17 year olds have been unintentionally exposed to porn online.
15% of boys and 9% of girls have seen child pornography.
32% of boys and 18% of girls have seen bestiality online.
39% of boys and 23% of girls have seen sexual bondage online.
83% of boys and 57% of girls have seen group sex online.
69% of boys and 55% of girls have seen same-sex intercourse online
56% of divorce cases involved one party having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites.

Is it any wonder we live in a society where sex among teens is not merely average and rising, but considered normal and celebrated? The worldwide sex-trafficking industry is growing and we are now realizing that even in America sex-trafficking is a major industry. Pedophilia is on the rise as online porn makers increasingly cater to the “barely legal” crowds. These outcomes are all reality because pornography has become so readily available online. One doesn’t have to go to the red light districts to find it. It’s available in the privacy of one’s home – or provided by your tax dollars in the library.

Providing access to porn on tax-funded computers  is akin to paying for and providing drugs to an addict. There can be no doubt that porn is addictive and many fall victim to this addiction and risk ruining their lives, marriages and families. By providing a public space  to view porn the library has become the “dealer” to those seeking their next “fix.”

A public library should not be a place where parents have to worry about what their kids might see on the computer. It should not be a place that enables the destruction of marriages and families.

The Orland Park battle is heating up as the issue is one of contention with ardent supporters on both sides. And while I am a staunch defender of the First Amendment and heartily believe in the rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, at times we must exercise moral common sense.  Illegal pornography, or obscenity, is not protected under the First Amendment.  Nor should it be.  Those that say restricting access to illegal pornography in a public library would certainly not advocate for sex shows on public streets. The reason is that some things, though legally protected for adults, are not permissible in public.

Just as it is not permissible for a couple to engage in sex acts in public, neither should it be legal for a person to access images and videos of people engaging in sex acts on a public computer. There really is no difference.

Hopefully the Orland Park library will comply with the law and see the need and wisdom in installing filters to protect children from being exposed to illegal pornography and keep the library from being a hostile environment. The logical conclusion is to install filters that keep such content from being accidentally or intentionally accessed.

Read more about this situation here and here.

Concerned grandmas and old-fashioned church ladies are locking arms with a growing group of young men plagued with erectile dysfunction. 

Yes, you read that correctly. 

This eyebrow-raising army is taking different approaches to fight a common enemy: pornography. 

Gone are the days of pre-teen boys being introduced to images of naked women’s bodies via discarded Playboy and Penthouse magazines.  Studies show that boys as young as 14 are addicted to pornography easily available on their iPads, laptops, and smart phones.  

The problem is so widespread that in 2009 researchers realized there were not enough college-aged men who did not use Internet porn to form a substantial control group to study in comparison to their porn-using peers. 

The seriousness of porn and its effects on young men, their relationships with others and their lives has its roots in science and the make-up of the brain. Viewing nude bodies stirs a young man’s brain’s dopamine production. Dopamine produces pleasure, and as time goes by, the brain requires more of the hormone to produce the same or greater levels of pleasure.  The dopamine effect unleashed can lead to what scientists now call “arousal addiction.” 

So what’s the harm? Porn viewing is nothing new, and it’s just a natural part of a young man becoming more confident with women to produce mutually pleasurable sexual experiences, right? 

Fact is arousal addiction produced by Internet porn will hit a brick wall in a normal young man’s development. Unnatural arousal is actually destroying sexual performance as the addict experiences gradual desensitization and eventually erectile dysfunction – something medication only cannot reverse. 

Billions of dollars are spent each year on Internet porn and uninformed or disengaged parents naively shrug off the Internet porn phenomenon as natural curiosity. Instead, their sons begin to spend more time alone focused on computer screens as their immature brains demand more and more dopamine and the pleasure it brings. The young men become depressed, withdrawn and develop social anxiety – the fear of interacting with peers, friends and family.  Many become angry and violently act out their aggression. 

It’s at this low point where these devasted young men and their unlikely co-horts — grandmas and old-fashioned church ladies– are converging. Many of these women, having known all along the devastating effects for years of pornography on men, women, children and whole families, have fought for years against pornography. 

They fought to protect innocents from assaults from predators whose arousal addictions began with Playboy and Penthouse magazines. They pleaded with lawmakers to protect women and children from the effects of pornography provided by taxpayers in local public libraries. 

Over twelve years ago, I was among several Illinois conservative women – who were thought to be prudes and pleasure-stiflers  – that marched with members of Rev. James Meeks’ Salem Baptist Church and Bishop Larry D. Trotter’s Sweet Holy Spirit Church around Chicago’s Harold Washington Library. 

An elder at Bishop Trotter’s church had been with his 8 year old son at the library, when his son and he came across a man viewing obscenity on a taxpayer-funded computer screen.  Outraged, the father told the story to his pastor, and Trotter rightfully spoke out to the Chicago press. 

Rev. Meeks proposed we begin printing out some of the scenes available on the library’s computer screens and stick them on the library’s walls to shame the library board. He and other pastors pled with the library board to protect their patrons. A library employee who felt threatened by the unfiltered pornography in the area for which she was responsible also appealed to the board, but all to no avail. 

The American Library Association, headquartered in Chicago, declared filtering Internet access was censorship, and something they refused to endorse, no matter who it offended. Unfiltered pornography access, paid for by Chicago taxpayers, stayed, while concerned parents with children they wanted to protect were dismissed. 

These same conservative women took their pleadings to the state legislature. They asked that Internet filters be placed on library computers. The American Library Association kicked its efforts into high gear, and shamed even family-oriented lawmakers away from voting to require obscenity filters on taxpayer-funded computers. 

These women, now grandmas, were mocked and ridiculed by librarians, the media and state lawmakers for simply trying to ward off part of the attack they knew could devastate the healthy heart and souls of the next generation. 

And here we are today — locking arms with the very ones we tried to protect. 

Now these young men, damaged by the foolishness of a generation unwilling to protect their own, are fighting back for their own sake. They are forming a new movement of ex-porn addicts that meet online to hold each other accountable and encourage each other away from Internet arousal addiction and onto healthy person-to-person relationships.  

October 27 to November 2, 2013, is White Ribbon Against Pornography (WRAP) week.  Whether you’re a grandma, an old-fashioned church lady, an awakened parent or a redeemed ex-porn addict, wear a white ribbon proudly.  

We’re all in this battle together — and there’s hope, no matter what the librarians and lawmakers say.

Please, click HERE to support IFI.

Thank you.

From Morality in the Media

How it started: It was just one woman in Pennsylvania with an idea, and now 26 years later thousands are still participating. 

The White Ribbon Against Pornography (WRAP) Campaign began with one woman in Butler, PA in 1987. Norma Norris heard a sermon against pornography delivered by the pastor of her Catholic parish. Msgr. Francis Glenn lamented that local prosecutors and law enforcement had been deluded into thinking that people didn’t care about the hardcore porn being sold in her community.

Norma looked at the full pews in the church and said, “That can’t be; we’re here and we care!” Norma then gave herself the challenge to inspire her community and to send out the message: WE CARE! WE COUNT! Norma thought the plan had to be simple, inexpensive, and something to catch the imagination. Soon after, the idea of a simple white ribbon as a symbol of decency came to her, and a movement was born.

What can you do during White Ribbon Week?

1. Take steps to protect yourself and your family from pornography.
2. Wear a “White Ribbon” throughout the week and discuss the harms when someone asks you why you have it on. (OR JUST BRING IT UP WITHOUT THE RIBBON!)
3. Share facts on your social networks. Find avatars and hundreds of prepared posts here.
4. Find free graphics, posters, presentations from our organization and others here on Google Drive. Share with your friends and family. Invite people over to discuss the issue and ways to protect your community.

For more information on White Ribbon Week, CLICK HERE.

For resources on the harms of pornography, CLICK HERE.

We are fast becoming a pornographic society. Over the course of the last decade, explicitly sexual images have crept into advertising, marketing, and virtually every niche of American life. This ambient pornography is now almost everywhere, from the local shopping mall to prime-time television.

By some estimations, the production and sale of explicit pornography now represents the seventh-largest industry in America. New videos and internet pages are produced each week, with the digital revolution bringing a host of new delivery systems. Every new digital platform becomes a marketing opportunity for the pornography industry.

To no one’s surprise, the vast majority of those who consume pornography are males. It is no trade secret that males are highly stimulated by visual images, whether still or video. That is not a new development, as ancient forms of pornography attest. What is new is all about access. Today’s men and boys are not looking at line pictures drawn on cave walls. They have almost instant access to countless forms of pornography in a myriad of formats.

But, even as technology has brought new avenues for the transmission of pornography, modern research also brings a new understanding of how pornography works in the male brain. While this research does nothing to reduce the moral culpability of males who consume pornography, it does help to explain how the habit becomes so addictive.

As William M. Struthers of Wheaton College explains, “Men seem to be wired in such a way that pornography hijacks the proper functioning of their brains and has a long-lasting effect on their thoughts and lives.”

Struthers is a psychologist with a background in neuroscience and a teaching concentration in the biological bases of human behavior. In Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain, Struthers presents key insights from neuroscience that go a long way toward explaining why pornography is such a temptation for the male mind.

“The simplest explanation for why men view pornography (or solicit prostitutes) is that they are driven to seek out sexual intimacy,” he explains. The urge for sexual intimacy is God-given and essential to the male, he acknowledges, but it is easily misdirected. Men are tempted to seek “a shortcut to sexual pleasure via pornography,” and now find this shortcut easily accessed.

In a fallen world, pornography becomes more than a distraction and a distortion of God’s intention for human sexuality. It comes as an addictive poison.

Struthers explains:

Viewing pornography is not an emotionally or physiologically neutral experience. It is fundamentally different from looking at black and white photos of the Lincoln Memorial or taking in a color map of the provinces of Canada. Men are reflexively drawn to the content of pornographic material. As such, pornography has wide-reaching effects to energize a man toward intimacy. It is not a neutral stimulus. It draws us in. Porn is vicarious and voyeuristic at its core, but it is also something more. Porn is a whispered promise. It promises more sex, better sex, endless sex, sex on demand, more intense orgasms, experiences of transcendence.

Pornography “acts as a polydrug,” Struthers explains. As Dr. Patrick Carnes asserts, pornography is “a pathological relationship with a mood-altering experience.” Boredom and curiosity lead many boys and men into experiences that become more like drug addiction than is often admitted.

Why men rather than women? As Struthers explains, the male and female brains are wired differently. “A man’s brain is a sexual mosaic influenced by hormone levels in the womb and in puberty and molded by his psychological experience.” Over time, exposure to pornography takes a man or boy deeper along “a one-way neurological superhighway where a man’s mental life is over-sexualized and narrowed. This superhighway has countless on-ramps but very few off-ramps.

Pornography is “visually magnetic” to the male brain. Struthers presents a fascinating review of the neurobiology involved, with pleasure hormones becoming linked to and released by the experience of a male viewing pornographic images. These experiences with pornography and pleasure hormones create new patterns in the brain’s wiring, and repeated experiences formalize the rewiring.

And then, enough is never enough. “If I take the same dose of a drug over and over and my body begins to tolerate it, I will need to take a higher dose of the drug in order for it to have the same effect that it did with a lower dose the first time,” Struthers reminds us. So, the experience of viewing pornography and acting out on it creates a demand in the brain for more and more, just to achieve the same level of pleasure in the brain.

While men are stimulated by the ambient sexual images around them, explicit pornography increases the effect. Struthers compares this to the difference between traditional television and the new high definition technologies. Everything is more clear, more explicit, and more stimulating.

Struthers explains this with compelling force:

Something about pornography pulls and pushes at the male soul. The pull is easy to identify. The naked female form can be hypnotizing. A woman’s willingness to participate in a sexual act or expose her nakedness is alluring to men. The awareness of one’s own sexuality, the longing to know, to experience something as good wells up from deep within. An image begins to pick up steam the longer we look upon it. It gains momentum and can reach a point where it feels like a tractor-trailer rolling downhill with no brakes.

Wired for Intimacy is a timely and important book. Struthers offers keen and strategic insights from neurobiology and psychology. But what makes this book truly helpful is the fact that Struthers neither leaves his argument to neuroscience, nor does he use the category of addiction to mitigate the sinfulness of viewing pornography.

Sinners naturally look for fig leaves to hide sin, and biological causation is often cited as a means of avoiding moral responsibility. Struthers does not allow this, and his view of pornography is both biblical and theologically grounded. He lays responsibility for the sin of viewing pornography at the feet of those who willingly consume explicit images. He knows his audience—after all, his classrooms are filled with young male college students. The addict is responsible for his addiction.

At the same time, any understanding of how sin works its deceitful evil is a help to us, and understanding how pornography works in the male mind is a powerful knowledge. Pornography is a sin that robs God of his glory in the gift of sex and sexuality. We have long known that sin takes hostages. We now know another dimension of how this particular sin hijacks the male brain. Knowledge, as they say, is power.

While we could decry the antics of the former child star Hanna Montana on the stage of the Video Music Awards, we really have no one to blame but ourselves.  America is awash in pornography. It is an industry with a larger annual income than the entire NFL Superbowl.  We lift up women as sex objects, teach children that they descended from animals, and enforce that by teaching them to use condoms because we expect them to behave like dogs when hormones kicks in. We even tell them silly stories about “gay penguins” to justify any abnormal sexual impulse they might have otherwise questioned.  
 
Miley Cyrus is the epitome of what we routinely teach young people to be and do for fame and fortune in Hollywood and the music industry, both areas that we constantly worship and look to as a culture.  
 
Why are we shocked when she provides a disgusting display on a TV show before a cheering audience?  Anyone who dares to suggest we return to the moral standards that Americans widely embraced for our first 150 years is pummeled by the patron saints of tolerance. 
 
We applaud pushing the boundaries, then we act surprised when young girls exceed the antics of “stars” like Madonna, Beyonce, and Lady Gaga forgetting that we reap what we sow. We decry sex crimes and child abductions, never making the connection as to how we grow and feed offenders in our culture. 
 
If you would like to read a good analysis of this phenomenon and its impact, particularly on young girls, John Whitehead has a good editorial about this HERE. 

The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is seeking public comment until May 20 on a proposal that would ease off on the regulations that enforce the decency standards set by Congress, which prevent showing nudity and the most profane language during hours when children are likely to be watching. The FCC would like to allow “fleeting” uses of profanity and “isolated (non-sexual) nudity” and focus only on “egregious” indecency incidents.

If enacted, the new FCC policy would allow network television and local radio stations to air the f-word, the s-word and to allow programs to show frontal female nudity, even during hours when they know children will be watching and listening.  Current broadcast decency law prohibits expletives and nudity, even if brief or “fleeting.”  The Supreme Court of the United States has upheld the law as constitutionally enforceable by the FCC, despite lawsuit attempts by networks NBC and FOX to overturn it.

Now the networks want to undo those standards. This proposal benefits no one but major media networks, which are too vulgar and too powerful already.

But this is not a done deal. You can make a difference. Congress will listen if the FCC gets a flood of comments instructing it not to weaken the enforcement standards. Massive resistance blocks the intentions of even hardened bureaucrats. The U.S. Senate is set to have confirmation hearings for a new FCC chairman soon, but in conducting that evaluation they need to hear that families, not broadcasters greedy for ratings, represent the authoritative voice of the public.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to provide your own public comment to the FCC.  Tell the Commissioners that you object to allowing “fleeting” uses of vulgar and profane language and instances of “isolated nudity”during family hour.  The public comment period ends May 20, so time is short. PLEASE RESPOND NOW, IT WILL ONLY TAKE A FEW SECONDS!

Please forward this Action Alert to like-minded friends, family members, and church members.

Click HERE to make a donation to the Illinois Family Institute.

While there seems to be some surprise in the reaction to this finding, most theologians would understand that when a person’s moral foundations crumble, it has a pervasive impact upon many areas of his life and mindset.

A new study from an Indiana University professor finds that the more men watch pornography, the more it breaks down their moral views and the more accepting they become of homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

“Pornography adopts an individualistic, non-judgmental stance on all kinds of non-traditional sexual behaviors and same-sex marriage attitudes are strongly linked to attitudes about same-sex sex.  If people think individuals should be able to decide for themselves whether to have same-sex sex, they will also think that individuals should be able to decide for themselves whether to get married to a partner of the same-sex,” Professor Paul Wright told The Washington Examiner.

A review of 500 men over six years found that “pornography consumption did prospectively predict support for same-sex marriage,” according to an abstract of the article, which is soon to be published in the journal Communication Research.  Heavy viewers of pornography were also far more likely to believe “marriage is an outdated institution” and that homosexuals parent as well as heterosexuals.
 
This is at least the second study to find such a connection. University of Texas sociology professor Mark Regnerus first mentioned the link between porn and gay “marriage” last December in The Public Discourse.  He found that 54 percent of men aged 23-39 who watched porn “every day or almost every day” strongly agreed that homosexual marriage should be legal.

Incidentally, today, four out of five 16 year-old boys regularly view pornography.   This may add credence to Regnerus’ next observation.   “Contrary to what we might wish to think, young adult men’s support for redefining marriage may not be entirely the product of ideals about expansive freedoms, rights, liberties, and a noble commitment to fairness. It may be, at least in part, a byproduct of regular exposure to diverse and graphic sex acts,” Regnerus wrote.
  
Same-sex marriage is not a result of greater liberty and a new intellectual enlightenment, but a symptom of widespread moral decline and spiritual decay.

EXPRESS, a popular clothing store for young adults, has decided that our culture, and specifically our young men, are not sexualized enough. They’re now selling sexually explicit T-shirts for young men in their stores and online. 

Does EXPRESS really believe young men need to be wearing T-shirts that degrade women and feature them with scant clothing in very suggestive poses?  With the Christmas shopping season just getting ready to take off, it’s the perfect time to let EXPRESS know you won’t be spending your money there as a result of their blatant disregard for women, decency and family values. 

TAKE ACTION: Click HERE to email EXPRESS and tell them your disappointment in their choice of T-shirt designs. Tell them that this Christmas season, your hard-earned money will go to uphold your family’s values and not to clothing the males in your house in soft-core porn. 

You can also call them at 800-477-8844 to EXPRESS your disappointment.  Tell them you won’t be shopping there for Christmas or anytime soon unless they remove the offensive T-shirts.

To view some of the T-shirts and descriptions, click here.

The .XXX domain that was established by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) last year did nothing but create thousands of new PORNOGRAPHY sites on the web.  Now the company behind the .XXX domain, ICM Registry, wants even more porn sites and is asking ICANN for permission to open three new domains, .PORN, .SEX, and .ADULT.   

If you recall, ICM Registry originally proposed the .XXX domain so that all porn sites would be in one place on the web.  Well, that was never a possibility and now we know just what the true motivation of ICM is – lots more porn on the Internet. 

There is a public comment period open now to stop these new domains. 

Take ACTION:  Please submit comments to ICANN for the proposed three new domains, .PORN, .SEX, .ADULT.  It takes just a few minutes but is so necessary.  Please take time to make your comment and tell ICANN that there is no public interest of good to having more porn domains.  

• 1st: Create an account HERE.
  
  
• 2nd: Confirm your account by checking email they send immediately
  
  
• 3rd: Submitthree complaints, one against each proposed new domain: ICM Registry AD LLC (this one is for .ADULT), ICM Registry PN LLC (this one is for .PORN), ICM Registry SX LLC (this one is for .SEX). I suggest you submit it to the “String Similarity – Evaluation Panel.”
  
  
• 4th: Type your comment.

Your help  is greatly appreciated!  

Today, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the Federal Communications Commission v. Fox case.  The Parents Television Counci praised the Court for refusing to side with the networks’ years-long campaign to overturn the broadcast decency law, and upholding the authority of the FCC to enforce broadcast decency standards between the hours of 6 and 10 p.m., when children are likely watching. 

“Contrary to some media reports, the networks have lost their latest attempt to obliterate television decency standards once as for all. In fact, their efforts were slapped down by a unanimous Court. Broadcast decency rules have existed to protect children since the dawn of the broadcast medium and it is for their sake that there will still be decency rules and the TV networks will be required to abide by them,” said PTC President Tim Winter.

“The Court today specifically acknowledged the FCC’s ability to continue broadcast decency enforcement as part of its public interest obligation. Pacifica is still good law. The FCC must now rule on the merits of more than 1.5 million backlogged indecency complaints. The ‘notice’ requirement, which allowed Fox and ABC to slip off the hook in these two cases at issue today, has already been satisfied for all the pending complaints.

Broadcast decency rules have existed to protect children since the dawn of the broadcast medium. It is for their sake that there will still be decency rules and the TV networks will be required to abide by them.

Morality In Media’s now three week-old boycott of Groupon, the online coupon company, is growing. Seven organizations with substantial membership have joined the boycott in the last week. More than 15,000 of Morality In Media’s own supporters have now contacted Groupon to cancel their memberships.  

Groupon’s support of porn producers Kink and Playboy caused MIM to initiate the boycott. “Why Groupon would find Kink to be an attractive business associate is puzzling,” said MIM’s executive director Dawn Hawkins, “because Kink brags that its productions include, ‘Girls … pulled in and out of cages, their tongues clamped, their bodies pinned, and their arms and legs strapped.’”  

Kink also claims to employ “contraptions used in countries such as China for torture” as well as “machines, water, metal, wood, electrodes, hooks, needles, and urination, all for the sexual persecution of women and ‘sexy, young teens.’”  

Groupon defends Kink, saying, “We thoroughly vet the businesses we feature…Fortunately, this business has proven to be a responsible member of their community.”  

“Playboy is no better than Kink,” Hawkins said. “It started the porn exploitation explosion.”  

Joining the boycott in the last week are Citizens for Community Values, Girls Against Porn & Human Trafficking, American Family Association of Kansas and Missouri, Louisiana Family Forum Action, Illinois Family Institute, Women for Decency, and Arizona Family Council.  

Groupon may be attempting to conceal its associations with sexually exploitative businesses, in response to the boycott. Advertisements related to Kink and Playboy have now been wiped from the company’s site though expired coupons for other businesses are still on the site. You can still see them HERE.  

“Until Groupon announces that it will no more support sexually exploitive businesses, the boycott will grow,” said Hawkins.  

A special “Boycott Groupon Project” page has been set up HERE.  There boycott supporters may also email all top Groupon executives, and call on them to reject partnership with businesses that glamorize the exploitation and abuse of women.  

About Morality in Media

Founded in 1962, Morality in Media, Inc. is the leading organization focused on opposing pornography and indecency through public education and the application of the law. www.PornHarms.com.

Last week Morality in Media’s executive director, Dawn Hawkins, called attention to Groupon’s exploitation and degradation of women through their promotion of torture pornographer Kink, a San Fransisco-based pornographer that produces films depicting sadomasochistic torture, rape, bondage, and hardcore fetish sexual acts. Today, it appears that Groupon has doubled down on smut, supporting an event at the mansion of the world’s top sexual exploiter, Playboy.  

Clearly, they don’t yet care that more than 10,000 of their customers have complained and are boycotting them for promoting the sexual exploitation of women and girls. Groupon’s all-male management has made it clear that they have no intention to stop selling coupons for pornographers. 

WE NEED YOUR HELP!  Many of your friends likely use Groupon.   Are they all aware that Groupon promotes the “use them, abuse them and discard them” Playboy philosophy?  Does everyone you know realize that Groupon defends Kink who specializes in the live filming of “young sexy teens who are overwhelmed and outnumbered…” and of women “who need to learn a lesson by multiple men…and are tormented beyond all reason?” 

PLEASE TELL YOUR FRIENDS! URGE THEM TO TAKE ACTION HERE!  Morality in Media is trying to get 50,000 people to join this boycott. 

Groupon is already hurting for money, their stocks have recently hit the lowest ever. Let them know that selling coupons that exploit women is not the way to save their company.  

TAKE ACTION:  Click HERE to sign the boycott pledge to cancel your subscription and find all contact info for their leadership here too. 

Please, let us know if you have contacts who can help or more ideas. Also, forward emails from Groupon to grassroots@pornharms.com. 

Thank you for your help! I am encouraged that more than 10,000 people are on our side. I’m sure there are many more too. We just need your help to get the word out.