Hardcore porn: The mortal enemy of humanity — women and men
Seldom, if ever, have I been more dejected at having been proven right about my prediction for over three decades now about the catastrophic impact the spiritual and emotional cancer of hardcore internet pornography would have on all levels of our culture.
Imagine my surprise when I began to read my copy of The New York Times on Sept. 25 (I should confess I have been reading The New York Times every day since age 18. Considering how far the former “paper of record” for the country has fallen from its former glory, it is more of an addiction than a search for knowledge).
There, on the top fold of the editorial page was a column by Michelle Goldberg, “Sex Positive Feminism is Falling Out of Fashion.”
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Ms. Goldberg reports what I suspect was a very surprising development to her. She reports on philosopher Amia Srinivasan’s experience while teaching students at the University of Oxford about “second-wave anti-porn activism.” Ms. Srinivasan assumed that her Oxford students (late millennials and early Gen Zers), who have been immersed in a porn-saturated culture, as were their parents, would “find the anti-porn position prudish and passé.”
On the contrary, they seemed to be channeling the spirit of Andrea Dworkin in their responses. Responding to the massive and impassioned response of her students, Ms. Srinivasan said, “The warnings of the anti-porn feminists seem to have been belatedly realized.” Somewhere Ms. Dworkin and her supporters are saying, “I told you so.”
The responses of the Oxford students are revelatory. They overwhelmingly affirmed the belief that porn bears “responsibility for the objectification of women,” the “marginalization of women,” and “sex and violence against women.” One young man in the Oxford class expressed doubt about whether “sex that was ‘loving and mutual’ was even possible.”
How indescribably sad, and yet how predictable. When one looks at descriptions of the content of online porn (I would not advise anyone to view the actual product — you don’t want those images burned into your consciousness), it is impossible not to see it as grotesquely anti-woman.
Real feminists who understand what hardcore porn really is would picket every “adult” bookstore and porn outlet in the country if they had the courage of their convictions. And women are not the only victims.
The average age of first exposure to hardcore porn for American males has dropped from 17 to 11 with the advent of the internet. Now, every home in America is just one of two clicks way away from having material that was previously confined to the worst areas of the worst cities in America ooze up into their hearts and minds through the internet.
Hardcore internet pornography is analogous to an electronic river of malignant and toxic emotional slime running just under the surface waiting to be uploaded into the hearts and minds of Americans, young and old alike.
While pornography does exploit and objectify women, it also victimizes young men. Millions of these boys and young men are receiving their sex miseducation from internet porn. Having been exposed and too often addicted to this twisted view of human sexuality, they are daily having their ability to become the husbands and fathers they desire to be stunted, twisted and destroyed.
Hardcore internet pornography has poisoned the basic building block of human relationships, the man-woman interaction that produces marriage and families. When I hear the responses of Ms. Srinivasan’s Oxford students, my heart breaks for both the male and female students as they testify to how pornography has shaped their interaction with each other.
Those of us who came of age before the tsunami of hardcore internet porn engulfed us have a difficult time understanding the world which this has created for millennials and Gen Zers. I continue to be haunted by a story related to me by a women’s dean at a prominent liberal arts college. She expressed to me how painful it was to have a steady stream of young women come for counseling with the lament that they felt extremely pressured to have casual sex and that they just “wanted sex to mean something!” How unspeakably sad.
I believe that internet porn is the Madison Avenue ad campaign that promotes sexual immorality and creates the market for sexual slavery. I believe that Satan has figured out that the most powerful weapon in his arsenal in his incessant attempts to degrade and defile humanity is hardcore internet pornography.
One measure of the level of his success is that vulgar and leud terms for sexual intercourse are now routinely used to describe acts of hostility and aggression and exploitation. The devil has taken the relationship that God intended to be the most giving and loving relationship between husband and wife and has deformed it into synonyms for the exact opposite.
It is well past time for Christians of all denominational persuasions to covenant together to seek to reclaim God’s gift of gender and sex and to redeem them for the purpose for which God gifted them — to make of the two one flesh, a knowing and a being known beyond the human capacity of speed to describe.
Let us be about our Heavenly Father’s business.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
