Hooked By One Look

(The picture above is a finalist in the 2014 Porn Hub ad contest they held. I believe they were trying very hard to normalize pornography and this add seems so simple and harmless until you take a closer look.)

When the readings turned to pornography I found it interesting in the different levels of feelings towards it. I felt like some of the information was taking more of a diplomatic approach and skimming the surface and not facing the true danger of pornography and that kind of bothered me. I specifically didn’t like this line below from the State of the Nation Report:

“These researchers believe that the majority of people who visit online sex sites do so without any harm,…”

The first view is harmful, there is no getting around that fact but many try to state that it isn’t harmful in small doses. It is good that the world in general is having more dialogue around the pornography issue but to me it feels too timid and politically correct. This is a disease ravishing our world and it is not getting the honest attention it needs in order to stop it. Back in the October 2004 Priesthood Session President Gordon B Hinckley said:

“It is like a raging storm, destroying individuals and families, utterly ruining what was once wholesome and beautiful. I speak of pornography in all of its manifestations.”

President Hinckley didn’t say that pornography would be harmless the first time or that this form was ok; it is destructive from the start in any of its forms. There needs to be more studies down that focus on all the impacts pornography has including the physical changes that happen in your brain. Something that has been scary to me is how certain forms of pornography are being seen as acceptable even among church members. I have several friends that see no harm in reading erotic literature and yet condemn men for watching pornography. They fail to realize they are being hypocrites and that the literature is porn.

The devastation is already beginning in families across the nation and with the Porn industries increasing efforts to normalize pornography we will begin to see increasing casualties. More and more people will become desensitized to the negative impact across all areas of a person because of pornography and justify their use.