Sounds like an Addiction to Me . . .
Op ed for the LA Times laments that pornography has become . . . boring.
20% of men and 13% of women look at pornography at work, and a staggering 90% of 8- to 16-year-olds have viewed it online. In other words, explicit [images] has become the wallpaper of our era. We’re living in the Porn Age.
The piece also mentions a recent lawsuit where a hotel was sued for making porn so easily accessed on the room TV that 7 and 8 year olds were able to find explicit images in the time it took Mom to take a shower. The jury awarded her $85,000 dollars.
There’s still something surprising — even quaint — about the notion of being traumatized by [sexual images]. As explicit sexual imagery has found its way into nearly every corner of our lives — pole dancing is now taught at the Learning Annex — those images (both the porn kind and the regular old R-rated TV and movie kind) have come to seem a bit . . . boring. Sure, it’s human nature to become inured to repeated images of anything, but pornography throws a kink in that assumption because demand for the product seems to increase even as genuine enthusiasm wanes.
That does sound like addictive behavior. All of this is par for the course. What’s interesting is what the writer says after talking about the woes of porn:
What’s even sadder is how sexiness itself, which is rooted in mystery, has been replaced by the far less interesting — and less titillating — ‘porniness.’
What could she mean by “mystery?” I can hazard a guess. What’s missing from porn is the mystique of intimacy and imagination. Something that comes from a committed relationship. Sex maybe rampant on TV but we’ve had how many seasons of the “Bachelor” where people can watch as a relationship grows? It seems no matter how ubiquitous sex becomes we don’t seem to ever mistake it for intimacy.
Christians are often called prudes. The stereotype is that we eschew any sexual fun. The word “prude” most likely comes from “Prudential” as in intelligent moderation. We take our titillation within a committed relationship. It seems that saturation in a culture of casual sex leads to boredom meanwhile monogamous Christian women are reporting more sexual satisfaction than ex-playboy bunnies hawking the Kama Sutra on late night television. I once told a friend that Christians don’t hate sex because it fun, we think its so amazing that it ought to be handled with care. If being part of the sexual revolution gets you boredom, I’ll take being a prude any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
And now for something completely different: Pro-Life atheists . . .
In a fit of nostalgia, I picked up and read an honest-to-goodness paper and ink copy of Time magazine this week. There was an article about pro-life atheists. I decided to check out this strange creature who I’m sure most secularists would love to ignore. To my surprise, there’s a whole league of pro-life atheists. The AALP is an organization of very passionate self-proclaimed “godless pro-lifers.” How passionate? Just listen to Randal M. Jones on his response to those that say a fetus is just a piece of tissue:
My response to that is: ‘If you smash your hand in a car door who feels the pain? You do! No one else, not your friends, your father, nor your mother. That PROVES that YOU ARE A SEPARATE HUMAN BEING, because you feel your own pain. If the fetus feels it’s own pain, then that would make it a separate human being too.’
Just because you are a secularist doesn’t mean you can’t have common sense and a conscience. I know, I know you are just dying to argue that there is not right or wrong without God which is a worthy discussion to have. However, I think its reasonable to reach across the aisle and become familiar with the AAPL. In fact you can be a theist and support them.
Speaking of Strange arguments . . .
Nancy Pelosi has offered a novel argument for federal funding of contraception–it will help the U.S. Economy. In an interview with George Snuffaluphagus she made no apologies about about the Dems proposal to include some 200 billion in the stimulus package for “family planning” that Pelosi says will help the economy by cutting costs for state welfare services. While Mrs. Pelosi didn’t mention state-funded abortion by name, its clear that’s exactly what Reps including minority leader, John Boehner, are worried about. Hey, abstinence education might help also. What’s a few billion more when you are using someone else’s money?
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