A Thought on Slowing the Growth of Pornography in Our Society

Abortion is the Fruit of the Seeds of the Sexualization of Society

In Humanae Vitae, then Pope Paul VI predicted several things that would befall our society as we became transfixed by sex into people who think, not with the brain above our shoulders, but the smaller one that we hide in our jeans.

Fellow Catholic blogger Jennifer Hartline recently wrote a piece at Catholic Online in December 2009, called poignantly "It is Time for a Real Sexual ‘Counter-Revolution’ " that gave some insights into Humane Vitae in today's society, and what we can do to change.

She said:

Unless we give sexual intercourse its due reverence, we’ll never give human life its due reverence. The two can never be separated, as Pope Paul VI tried to tell the world in his prophetic encyclical, Humanae Vitae. If we don’t regard all life as sacred – and thus the creative act of sex—then we will always find ways to rationalize and justify the murder of a child as a “right.” 

She concluded with the following:

It’s time for a radical revolution of responsibility; a revolution of reverence for sex and reverence for life.It is time for a sexual counter-revolution which liberates men and women, honors marriage and reaffirms the beauty and dignity of human love in the Divine Plan. 

Previously, I had written about Humane Vitae in a blog post on Contraception here, and described what Pope Paul VI had prophesied about our society if we did not heed the words of his encyclical letter:

The Pope was calling for the faithful to eschew the use of artificial means of birth regulation. In his document, he made 4 predictions or prophesies about what would happen if birth control became habitual among mankind.

He first predicted a rise in marital infidelity and moral decline. Bingo on that one. Anyone want to disagree?

Second, he predicted lost respect for women. Our culture does not respect the gifts that women have as women, but values them more as sexual objects. Watch any TV last night?

Next, he predicted abuse of power. The power over reproduction is a heady power. With it you can rule nations. China has abused reproductive power significantly, and the abuses of family planning in third world countries, in the name of helping them are legendary.

Finally, he predicted that mankind would think he had unlimited dominion over his own body. We see sterilization, wide use of body disfigurement, test tube babies, and stem cell research requiring the fertilization of eggs, essentially killing pre-born infants, among other things.

But, our society remains sexually obsessed, and any of us who have either always known that this is wrong, or who have come to the light bulb moment through a latter day gift of wisdom, see our own children being deluded by this perversion into sexual lives that do not honour the God we seek to serve.  What is worse still for many of us, is that they are following in footsteps we made long ago.

I, for one, cannot change what I have done in my life, but I can change how I speak about it, and use my own sinfulness to warn people away from the things that dulled me to my own gift of sexuality, the gift that produced the children that I love dearly and the gift that I share with my beloved wife.

So, count me in to Jennifer Hartline's Sexual ‘Counter-Revolution’.  Vive la Revolucion.

Here is my first target.  The thing that dulls our minds most to the sexualizing of our society is the growth of the pornography industry.  It is apparently a $13 billion industry, which on its own is bad enough, but what is even worse is the free porn that is available throughout the internet.  I just googled one common sexual practice and found that there were 29,400,000 search results for it, 7,160,000 Image results, and 90,600 Video results.  Frankly, I find this shocking, and also very graphic, and also easily tempting.

I don't think that we can stop what is out there from being out there, but I think we can impact what is available to our homes.  We can put filters on our computers, which protects us and our kids when they are home.  But the world out there is not so protective, and also very inviting.

Here is my thought on how to make a difference here.  The free porn that is available takes up bandwidth on your service providers network, yet produces no revenue for the Service provider, beyond the normal monthly fee that they charge people who just do their email and periodic surfing.  So, heavy users like the porn down loaders are in effect raising the cost of internet service for us all.  The service providers have the ability to monitor what is downloaded to your computer, and consequently, the ability to filter it as well. 

If we were to successfully petition our service providers to restrict the down loads of all pornographic material to only those customers who paid a separate fee to them for the "privilege of down loading porn", then the service providers would have a new source of revenue, we would all have faster connections, since the traffic on the internet from those casual sex surfers would decline, and we would have put a bite into the sex industry.

Does anybody out there think this is a good idea?  If it is a good idea, is it a practical idea?