The Church often avoids being transparent. By this I mean that while the leaders of the church, and the people sitting in the pews, often lambaste things like pornography without admitting that they themselves participate in some way in supporting pornography, without admitting that we who strive toward holiness are still a broken people. I will not make that same mistake. I have had a long and torturous history with pornography. Most young males do. But that is no excuse. I was exposed to pornography at an early age before I had developed enough of a conscience to know that it was not the best thing for me, and then it became a drug to me, an addiction that I could not and cannot easily rid myself of. But that is no excuse, either.
You see, my own personal history with pornography has helped me see first-hand that it does, indeed, have disastrous consequences on the lives of all those involved, the porn stars and the audience. Now, first of all, I should respond to a common objection many people raise when "those holy religious folk" condemn pornography: the objection that the porn stars do what they do because they like it. After all, it is a profession of choice. I suppose that if we consider being a professional athlete as a profession, as an occupation, as a job, then so, too, can pornography be a legitimate form of work. Both do what they like. Sure, but in that case I want to call into question the profession-ality of sports as well. Look at the root of that word, profession, and you'll clearly see that the root is profess. That's the same word that religious folk use: we profess Christ and profess that we are Christians. To profess something is to say that it forms the very core of your being. When a person professes Christ that means the love of and for Christ is at the heart of all they do and all they are. What does it say about a person if they profess to sports or sex? Essentially, that the core of their being is sex or a game. Plus, they are now getting paid for what should be a special part of life rather than an industrialized economic source (I'll get more into this in part II).
The issue, then, is that porn stars, whether they actually like what they do or not, have "voluntarily" reduced their self-worth to a person who has sex. Even if we are avowed Darwinists and believe that we are simply another animal, can we not see that there is a lot more to life than sex? If at the core of my being I say that I am a person who has sex, my relations to other people are basically reduced to how much I want to have sex with them and vice versa. I would then find little enjoyment in life if I weren't having sex.
The question of whether or not porn stars actually like what they do, as well as the implications of our watching pornography, will be the subject of discussion in my Part II, but for now I'd like to say that regardless of their enjoyment of starring in pornography, they are no longer truly human. If we believe in God, then they are certainly not truly human. God has created us to enjoy so much more than one little part of our being. And if we don't believe in God and only believe in the human spirit and will, then the person who stars in pornography is still forced to ignore some fundamental elements of animal life, namely family and community. Very few beings in the animal kingdom without developing and relying on a deep sense of family and community built on trust. If one cannot trust another, the herd falls apart. If a group of wild dogs go to feed in a field they have to trust that there will be one on the lookout that will warn the others. How can anyone develop that trust if at the core of their being they are sex machines? concerned only with personal enjoyment? or perhaps concerned only with getting others to appreciate them?
A part of what gives life to, well, life itself is missing from pornography. The porn star must look at themselves as someone who has sex. And yet, all people are fundamentally much more than that. The community of life is fundamentally much more than that. As a lead-in, we the audience of pornography get enjoyment out of seeing the porn star merely as a person who has sex. In fact, in many ways we have to view them that way, much like the American slaveholders didn't want the slaves to become Christian because then they would have to see them as a person that shouldn't be enslaved...
The relationship between porn stars and African slaves is far deeper than we might like to think. At the heart of the matter, we do not view porn stars as real people. In a number of ways the porn stars themselves do not look at themselves as real people. They are merely people who have sex. The second we see them as more than that, we start feeling a little guilty. When we plow through that guilt is when we start running into serious problems in who we are as people. For the sake of the many who make a living being 2/3rds of a person, can we really allow pornography to continue?
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