Gen. 9:20 And Noah began to be a farmer, and he planted a vineyard. 21 Then he drank of the wine and was drunk, and became uncovered in his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness.
24 So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him. 25 Then he said:
“ Cursed be Canaan;
A servant of servants
He shall be to his brethren.”
26 And he said:
“ Blessed be the LORD,
The God of Shem,
And may Canaan be his servant.

I think that there is a moral principal here that is related to the subject of porn and other people’s nakedness (outside of medical reasons). It is not morally acceptable to view other people completely naked as a recreational exercise, especially in the act of sex.

CD’s argument seems to be that porn is less harmful than prostitution, so should be acceptable. It’s the same argument that has often been used for marijuana smokers. Marijuana is less harmful than most of the other addictive drugs, so should be legal. All of it is harmful. None should be acceptable.

I want to apologize for bringing up the topic of porn. It ended up ruining your blog. And for that I am sorry.

Amen. (and I am not questioning CD-Host’s salvation with this “Amen”)

I agree fornication is sinful that one is specifically in the bible. As for the encouragement argument. It is subtle whether the amount of fornication increases with pornography or decreases. Certainly there is fornication among the actors. On the other hand there might be substantially less among the viewers. As people talk about porn use skyrocketing in the last 40 years, prostitution has dropped off incredibly sharply. In the 19th century you see structural support for prostitution in government.

From the high around the 1850’s and 60’s of 4% of the female population was involved in prostitution today we are down to one in ten thousand. Lets do some approximate figures for a moment:

You have to decide what the number would be today. Lets say 2% of the female population are prostitutes in the USA engaging in 1000 fornication acts per year is three billion acts of fornication per year.

production of 10,000 pornographic videos each involving 10 acts of fornication is a hundred thousand acts of fornication per year. There would still be 15 million acts from the remaining prostitutes In other words a 99.5% reduction in fornication looking at prostitution and pornography or a 99.997% reduction just looking at prostitution vs. pornography.

Now I’m not going to attribute all the of the decrease in prostitution to the expansion of pornography. The explosion in premarital sex has a lot to do with the drop in prostitution as well. But on the other hand the increase in porn usage has induced a large drop in the amount of premarital sex. We could do a similar analysis here, but it is more complicated since there are more factors at play. Finally all this doesn’t even examine the effect on things like adultery which is much more serious and way down over the last 2 generations.

But in answer to your question I think it is unlikely that porn in a net increase in acts of fornication. It probably results in at least 1/1000 decrease in fornication, that is each act filmed replaces 1000 acts that would otherwise be occurring off camera.

on July 16, 2009 at 4:10 am CD-Host
Eric –

Look at the comment you said amen to. If it wasn’t meant that way then I’ll withdrawal my comment.

CD-Host:

I “Amen”-ed this:

CD, if you have come here to argue the benefits [and/or the harmlessness - EricW] of porn, you really have come to the wrong place. It’s not going to fly.

NOTHING in the above statement(s) questions, let alone addresses, your salvation. I am simply agreeing with “TL on July 15, 2009 at 4:32 pm” that this forum/blog is the wrong place to argue for the benefits or harmlessness of pornography, and a probable waste of one’s time if one tries to do so.

Again… What in my “Amen” questioned your salvation?

What is your response to this:

Sex outside of marriage is sinful.

Porn is made by people who are not married having sex with one another (although they can be, let’s feel safe in assuming that most are not).

Even if the act of viewing others having sex is not in itself sinful, purchasing and viewing porn encourages unmarried sex, along with the sins that you mentioned: lust, harlotry, etc.

If you don’t consider sex outside of marriage to be sinful, there isn’t much point in any of this conversation, and I wonder why you pursue it so vigorously.

First off thank you for responding directly.

so, you don’t think that pornography has long term effects on ones life. Perhaps, that should be clarified. If one only watches it once or a few times and then seeks to turn completely away from it, I’d agree. However, if a person spends a year watching pornography I suspect that it will be difficult to erase the effects on ones life. And the longer one involves oneself, the less likely one will be able to erase the habits and views from ones thinking and sexual desires.

I assume by a year watching you mean something like 200 sessions of 5-30min each over the course of a year not literally a year watching: 365 sessions of 12+hrs each.

You’ve given a long list of effects. Can you name one that there is good evidence is connected to porn and unquestionably negative? That is the main point of contention that such effects exist.

I do know several men who have had that response. To my knowledge they have never been able to recover, so it is still affecting their lives and relationships.

What does “still affecting their lives and relationships” mean? What does “recover” mean. Often the assumption here, and on the porn recovery sites is that behaviors which are characteristic of male sexuality are in fact diseased and caused by porn.

So take a simple example, that even works for a woman. A woman is gay but loves her husband. She is using female porn as her primary sexual outlet and female lovers a few times a year. She makes herself sexually available to her husband frequently but finds the act of intercourse with him tedious and slightly unpleasant. She is Christian and believes those acts immoral, and thinks she is porn addicted.

What is “recovery”? If you by recovery you mean she becomes a happy heterosexual then no she is not likely to recover ever. If by recovery you mean she stops using porn things like:

– she divorces, gets into a sexually fulfilling lesbian relationship
– she convinces her husband to take on another wife who has similar proclivities
– she having a lot of lovers on the side

might all cause the porn usage to drop off drastically. So would things like:

– she increases the amount of work and stress in her life and becomes exhausted and nervous decreasing sex drive sharply
– frequent non pornographic masturbation

So what’s recovery?

Also regarding the first question, could you please just repeat it one more time as I cannot seem to find where you have clearly said whether you believe pornography is sin or not. And it would make discussion clearer.

I don’t think we can create sins. There is no sin called “pornography” in the bible, and the NT was written in a culture with lots more of it than our culture so it absence means that pornography is not intrinsically sinful. There are a lot of sins associated with porn: like lust, harlotry and spilling seed. I.E. porn itself is not sinful but it may not be possible to engage with porn in a non sinful manner.

I think when people talk about sins (and this isn’t specific to porn) they tend to be casual in their speech and their thinking. For example, when you gave an answer to what made porn sinful you gave “viewing other people naked” as a sin. In which case is being a doctor or nurse sinful? Is working as missionary in a country like south africa where women go topless sinful? Is going to a gym sinful? If the answer is no, then there is no sin called “viewing other people naked” either.

But the most important thing is I reject the connection you keep trying to make between “is it material harmful” which is a question about the material universe and “is it sinful” which is a question about the spiritual universe. Unless you believe in natural law both neither or either one individually can be true. But this is a Protestant board so I figure you are coming from a place of sola scriptura.

so, you don’t think that pornography has long term effects on ones life. Perhaps, that should be clarified. If one only watches it once or a few times and then seeks to turn completely away from it, I’d agree. However, if a person spends a year watching pornography I suspect that it will be difficult to erase the effects on ones life. And the longer one involves oneself, the less likely one will be able to erase the habits and views from ones thinking and sexual desires. I do know several men who have had that response. To my knowledge they have never been able to recover, so it is still affecting their lives and relationships.

Do you agree with my thinking here?

Also regarding the first question, could you please just repeat it one more time as I cannot seem to find where you have clearly said whether you believe pornography is sin or not. And it would make discussion clearer.