Pornography is one of the scourges of our society.  It is a $13,000,000,000 a year business. Nine-hundred theaters show adult films. Fifteen-thousand adult stores outnumber MacDonald's fast food restaurants. One-hundred full-length porno films are made each year and gross $500,000,000 in revenues. If you do a search on Google for pornography you will get 1,910,000 hits. You do better if you search for adult.  There's lot of porno out there and it is a goldmine for its producers.

But what is pornography. Pornography is simply any material that can be seen or heard that is sexually exciting or offensive. In legal parlance it is prurient. By law prurience is defined as any material that, the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interests. The work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state (or federal) law, and the work taken as a whole, lacks serious, artistic, political or scientific value. It is interesting that there is very little one can find that is called adult that does not appeal to prurient interest.

Some years ago I was asked to testify in the trial of the producers and distributors of Deep Throat. There were at least 15 persons on trial who one could deduce were members of or under the influence of the Mafia. Larry Parrish was a US District Attorney in Memphis, TN, who was trying the case alone. The defendants had five lawyers who were pleading their case. Larry had called 40 people to testify, but had only found one person who would agree. I was the 40^th person he called. He had kept trying since he hoped to have two experts. When he asked me if I would come I told him that I would come if I could find the time. I was particularly busy and would only do it if I did not have anything important scheduled and I could get to Memphis, testify and come back the same day. I looked at my calendar and there was a day when I had nothing in the time frame he gave me. I called an airline I knew had a nonstop flight there and found that there was a flight out at 6 AM and another back at 7 PM. I called him back and told him I would come. I was sure that God wanted me to go even though I was aware that I would be testifying against minions of the Mafia. I have to admit that I felt a little scared.

Larry sent me some legal materials and after I studied them I, for the first time, learned exactly what prurient meant. The day came for my trip. I went to the airport and flew to Memphis. I was met by two FBI agents, loaded in a limo and taken to a little movie house that provided private showings of films for parties and other functions. Now I had seen perversions in the flesh in Panama when I was interning, but I had never seen a porno movie. (In Panama City they had what were called exhibitions where live persons performed perverse acts for a price.) I watched the film and was amazed and amused by the activities of the participants and the absurdity of the plot. Linda  Lovelace, the female star of the film who was turning states evidence, did a passable job, but the man who was her a co-star (I don't remember his name) was a flop. He also provided a certain humorous note to the show. To my mind, both intellectually and experientially, the film was prurient.

After I viewed the movie I was taken to the federal courthouse where I met Larry. We went to lunch and he explained the charges, and my role as an expert witness. I had sent him my credentials and he had agreed that I qualified as an expert. We discussed the case further and then went back to the courthouse for some more discussion. I was then put in the witness waiting room with some other guys. It turned out that they were the defendants in the case. One burly guy from Seattle was willing to converse with me in a guarded way. He did not know that I was to be an expert witness so he was quite open about what he did, but did not elaborate. He admitted he distributed adult films, and that it was a lucrative business. Not wanting to pursue the conversation too long, I then got up and walked the halls for an hour praying that God would use me in this case to see that justice was done. I also asked Him to give me the words to say when I was cross-examined. I prayed fervently.

In time they came and asked me to come into the courtroom. I was shown to a seat next to Linda. Since the judge had not arrived I engaged her in conversation. She turned out to be a rather nice person. I did not have time to find out how she began starring in a porno film, but I did find out that she had been a prostitute.

I was the first witness called and sworn in. Larry inquired into my credentials to establish my credibility. They were not challenged. He then asked me the questions that he told me he would ask me before the trial. As I sat in the box I could see the jury. They had been totally disinterested in the material being presented before me, but when I was testifying they were interested in every word I said. It was as if the Holy Spirit woke them up. Finally Larry finished. It was now the defendants' lawyers' turn to cross-examine me. My heart raced as the judge asked if they had any questions. I nearly fell out of the witness box when they said they had none. I stepped down, and since I had some time before my plane left I sat as an observer while the Mafia's defense lawyers presented some of their material. But time had passed more quickly than I realized, and it was time for the FBI to take me back to the airport in the limo so I heard only the beginning of the defense arguments.

I flew home back to my work and to my family. In a few months Larry called to say that he had won the case and the defendants faced jail terms. They were going to appeal. This case was tried just a few months before Jimmy Carter was to become president. With his inauguration the whole of the Justice Department changed and their attitude toward pornography changed so the appeals were not contested and the cases were dropped. The defendants did not serve a day of time. I was convinced before I testified, and still believe, that porno is bad for humans and the purveyors need to be prosecuted and imprisoned.

I had a similar experience in Charlotte testifying in a case where the defendant was peddling bestiality films. These were the most offensive things that I have ever experienced. They were so offensive that I will not describe them for you.  They were imported from Denmark, and were being distributed from an east coast city. Again the defendant was convicted, but he went to jail for 38 years. His appeal was denied.

I might add that both of these cases were prosecuted by the Department of Justice when the attorney general was serving under a Republican President. The present Department of Justice is back at it and they are especially going after child pornography. Even the Clinton administration did that.

Why are they prosecuted? The answer is simple. Porno has no redeeming value. It appeals to depraved people, especially men. A few of them are impulsive persons with defective character development who can become overly excited and impelled to act out what they see in the material. This can be in their marriages, or with their girlfriends or with persons they do not know. A perverted user of porn attempted to rape a 92-year-old friend of mine who I loved dearly. This made me so angry I wanted to see him dead for what he did. He shortened her life. After the attempted rape, she rapidly deteriorated physically from the injuries she sustained in fighting him off. It took a while but they caught him and put him out of circulation. He had raped three women, two of them aged.

Porno has a profound effect on users. First of all they commit fornication or adultery when they view it. It impels most men to masturbate after they get sexually aroused. God condemns that. If it is violent porn it will increase their aggressiveness. It stimulates sensitive persons to rape since many of them have viewed it immediately before they rape someone. In 41% of sexual assault cases the person who commits the act has viewed porn just before or during the crime. According to the FBI, pornography has been found in the possession of 80% of the perpetrators of violent capital sexual crimes.  Pornography also increases the incidence of oral sex, anal sex, group sex and sadomasochism. It diminishes a viewer's satisfaction with their usual partner. Porn is bad stuff.

Do Christians view porn? You bet they do. At one Promise Keepers meeting, over 50% of the men admitted to having viewed pornographic material in the week before. I have seen numerous pastors and parishioners who have become addicted to porn. One of my patients was spending over $1,000 a month downloading porn. This man was enslaved to it. He tried to quit but could not stop. The same was true for a man who was a slave to dirty talk in adult chat rooms. They were clergy, but morally paralyzed. Christians are not immune. I once had the daughter-in-law of a Christian clergyman who came and consulted me about her father-in-law who possessed a huge collection of kiddie porn. Sadly he was the superintendent of an orphanage.

In my other writings I have observed that sin arises out of our human nature. Our sex drive is part of our human nature. Men (not women) are sexually aroused easily by seeing things that are beyond their experience. Porno is almost always beyond a man's experience. It does, therefore, arouse the viewer, and according to our Lord they lust and in lusting they sin. Satan knows where a man's greatest weakness lies. It is in the sexual sphere. Satan whets his curiosity because he knows that he will be aroused if he views porno. He does and sins.

Why is he so vulnerable? The answer is that curiosity is part of his human nature. He wonders what is on the other side of the hill. What happened to the people who were in that wreck? Who is the person who is so attractive on the other side of the room? How does this gizmo work? Why does that woman dress that way? He is innately curious. He seeks new experiences for the excitement that comes when he has them. Some call this the adrenaline rush. But unfortunately continued viewing makes it lose its novelty. Men who view porn wonder then if harder porn will be more stimulating if they view it. To satisfy their curiosity they do view it and then move on. I think you can understand how it is so addicting -- so enslaving.

On the Internet there are numerous web sights that defend pornography. Many of them are written by radical feminists. Most of the defensive sites, though, are put there by users. They have many reasons why it is OK. They use the following arguments. 

1.  Obscenity is a matter of opinion.  It cannot be defined.
Answer: It has been defined.

2.  The First Amendment protects obscenity and pornography.
Answer: The Supreme Court has ruled that it does not.

3.  Pornography doesn't hurt anyone.
Answer: There is ample evidence that it does.

4.  Pornography is a harmless outlet for dangerous impulses.
Answer: Untrue-It misimpells some people who act on their dangerous impulses.

5.  Pornography is exciting because it is illegal. Make it available and it will go away. People will become bored.
Answer: Pornography is exciting because it stimulates sexual desire. Making it legal does not make it go away.