Making Men and Women Unsuitable For Each Other

Because men and women are different, the current cultural and relational wasteland will play out differently for each, often in ways that make men and women even less suited for each other, thereby establishing a relational doom loop in which cultural corruption encourages individual dysfunction that damages and destroys relationships — thereby further entrenching both the cultural and individual problems. 

Pornography is an obvious example. It may be especially appealing to men who have not, as a nature documentary might put it, been able to find a mate, but it encourages habits that make it harder for them to establish and sustain a relationship with a woman. For example, porn has taught a generation of young men to be aroused by degrading and dangerous kinks, such as sexual strangulation. The result is further alienation and enmity between the sexes.

Nathannael Blake, Demons Must Be Delighted At How Badly Americans Have Butchered Marriage

"Ethical Porn" is an Oxymoron

Religion and Pornography

We now live in a society where pornography is expected to be public and religion is expected to be private. No society can survive this.

Ben Shapiro

Pornography is Immoral

Porn is immoral because porn treats persons as a means to an end, one’s own self-centered gratification. But at what undesirable cost? Porn isn’t simply “satisfying” lustful desires. It also shapes our view of sex taken into the marriage bed (if marriage is ever consummated) and objectifies women, among other things. Indeed, it is also linked not only to rape but to sex trafficking as its metaphorical “gateway drug.” When we watch, we inspire the demand. While not every pornographer (anyone addicted to porn) is a sex trafficker, every sex trafficker is a pornographer. Porn is the gateway to the sex trade industry. We supply its demand, and the providers cater to our “need.” Yet, the need is insatiable as it continues to grow and take on a life of its own to include and normalize Freud’s polymorphous perversity: sex with animals, sex with multiples, sex with kids, sex with robots, and so on and so forth to include increasingly violent sex.

Sexuality itself becomes identity. It becomes associated if not identified with who or what I am. Ultimately, it’s not all about sex. It’s much deeper. The sexual revolution on steroids with which we’re now seeing and was predicted is a symptom of the search for human identity, meaning, and significance, i.e., the quest for what it means to be human. This quest is orphaned when we kill God, and anything goes in His place. The existential quest is always a quest for “God,” but the “God” many seek is one made in man’s image.

Cory Miller, Is it Really All About Sex?

Viewing Pornography Violates Marriage

If you are a man trapped and addicted to pornography, just know that by viewing this stuff, you are not only contributing to this BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY that profits off the souls and lives of young girls (and the male actors as well), but you are ALSO engaging in FORNICATION, which God calls an abomination. And if you are a married man, make no mistake: you are committing ADULTERY every time you look at one of those young women with lust… you are CHEATING on your wife. You may never actually commit the physical act, but you are just as guilty. Is your wife not worth more to you than THAT?

Rob Pue, The Weed of Porn Bears Bitter Fruit

We Become What We Enjoy Looking At

There is the myth that what we watch doesn’t affect us. However, various studies have shown that violent video games and other media can produce both short-term and long-term aggressive behavior in adolescents and adults; and we hardly need a study to prove the degenerative effects of pornography use on everything from marital relationships to how young people view sex. Why would advertisers spend billions for ads if what we see doesn’t affect our behavior? Let me put it even more strongly: we become what we enjoy looking at.

Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.124

What Pornography Teaches

Porn teaches its consumers that women exist for the pleasure of men and that their purpose is to be degraded and dehumanized for men’s excitement—and that they like it, even if they pretend not to. But this is part of the lie of pornography: many women in porn are there against their will and are being exploited. … The physical, emotional, and psychological damage to the women and children in porn is heartbreaking, but equally insidious is porn’s effect on men and the culture by normalizing the degradation and dehumanization of women. … The prevalence of porn means that people are becoming desensitized to it, and are seeking out ever harsher, more violent, and degrading images. …

Justin Holcomb, Hugh Hefner’s Legacy is Not Harmless

Avoid Porn and Keep the Erotic Bond Between Husband and Wife

In many more traditional cultures, it is not prudery that leads them to discourage men from looking at pornography. It is, rather, because these cultures understand male sexuality and what it takes to keep men and women turned on to one another over time—to help men, in particular, to, as the Old Testament puts it, “rejoice with the wife of thy youth; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times.” These cultures urge men not to look at porn because they know that a powerful erotic bond between parents is a key element of a strong family.

Naomi Wolf, “The Porn Myth,” paragraph 11; cited by Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy, pg.200.

The Pill and Porn — United to Destroy Marriage

Cheap sex has been mass-produced with the help of two distinctive means that have little to do with each other—the wide uptake of the Pill and mass-produced high-quality pornography—and then made more efficient by communication techniques. They drive the cost of sex down, make real commitment more “expensive” and challenging to navigate, have created a massive slow-down in the development of long-term relationships, especially marriage, put women’s fertility at risk—driving up demand for infertility treatments—and have taken a toll on men’s marriageability. The “pure relationship” regime, which has flourished alongside the dramatic rise in cheap sex, is not nearly so consonant with other long-standing priorities like childrearing and relational stability. But it is becoming the norm in the West—the template for evaluating relationship development. And it has changed how men and women perceive themselves, their sexuality, each other, and the point of relationships. Cheap sex does not make marriage unappealing; it just makes marriage less urgent and more difficult to accomplish.

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy, pg.193-194

The Lies and Destruction of Pornography

I cannot help but note the contrast between classic descriptions of marital sexuality and how sex is portrayed in modern pornography. The latter redirects sex away from any sense of it as involving relationships of permanence, exclusivity, or expectations of fertility. On the contrary, pornography typically treats gazers to a veritable fire-hose dousing of sex-act diversity, and presses its consumers away from thinking of sex as having anything to do with love, monogamy, or childbearing—all traits that most Americans long equated with marriage. So, add to the sharing of bodies temporarily and non exclusively a significant dose of alternative sexual activities—different positions, roles, genders, and varying numbers of participants—and that is basically where porn leads today: away from sex as having anything approaching a classic marital sense or structure.

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy, pg.125-126

Pornography and Exploitation

Pornography is the new frontier to explore and exploit in the name of liberation. It is the invention of totally deprived minds. Based on the dehumanization of women and the ridicule of the family, it represents the total absence of equality between men and women.

Hope MacDonald, The Flip Side of Liberation: A Call to Traditional Values, pg.112

"Playboy" Magazine and Social Engineering

Playboy magazine serves as a tool of “gay” social engineering in that the existence of a thriving pornography industry serves the “gay” cause by morally corrupting the men who use it.  It logically makes them less likely to oppose homosexuality on moral grounds and more likely to support public policies which legitimize sexual license.  Exposure to pornography, especially at a young age, can also be a gateway into the “gay” lifestyle itself.  In the same manner, the “gay” cause is advanced by a successful abortion industry (which also arose in response to the sexual revolution).  The choice to kill their unborn children morally compromises both men and women (making them unwilling to criticize the choice to engage in other forms of immoral behavior), and ensures that the outcome of an unwanted child will not be a lasting deterrent to those who have chosen sexual license over family.  This explains why homosexuals, who by definition cannot bear children together, are among the most militant advocates of abortion on demand.  

Scott Lively & Kevin Abrams, The Pink Swastika, pp.307-308

How Same-Sex Fake Marriage Was Attained

The redefinition of marriage as a genderless partnership is possible only in a society that has already done serious damage to the institution.  Long before there was a debate about same-sex marriage, Americans of every political stripe bought into a sexual ideology that undermined the rational foundations for the marital norms of permanence, exclusivity, and monogamy.  Cohabitation, no-fault divorce, recreational sex, nonmarital childbearing, and pornography all contributed to the breakdown of the marriage culture.  If marriage is simply about emotional companionship, then of course men and women are interchangeable.

Ryan T. Anderson, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” pg.179

Pernicious Effects of Pornography

Pornography leaves the impression with its viewer that sex has no relationship to privacy, that it is unrelated to love, commitment or marriage, that bizarre forms of sex are the most gratifying, that sex with animals has a specially desirable flavor and that irresponsible sex has no adverse consequences — no venereal disease, illegitimate births, abortions, premature marriages, single-parent families or moral erosion.  I see no way that a torrent of material with this subliminal message, which ultimately fans out to reach people of almost all ages, can fail to have pernicious effects.

Dr. Reo M. Christenson, “Political science calls for common sense in porn issue,” American Family Association Journal, April 2000, pg.12

The Dragons in Our Culture

Dragons have a preference for the virgin flesh of maidens because they are not merely hungry but wicked. They desire the defilement of the pure and undefiled, the destruction of the virgin. Their devouring is a deflowering.  Parallels with human “dragons” in our own world are not difficult to discern. The war against the dragon is not, therefore, a war against a physical monster, like a dinosaur, but a battle against the wickedness we see around us in our everyday lives. We all face our daily dragons and we must all defend ourselves from them and hopefully slay them, which is only possible with the assistance of God’s grace which serves as a sort of St. George in the heart of man. The sobering reality is that we must either fight the dragons that we encounter in life or become dragons ourselves. There is no middle-path. No neutrality in this fight to the death is possible. We either fight the dragon or we become the dragon.

An additional problem is that we live in a dragon-culture, a culture of death, which pours scorn on the very concept of virtue and which has banned the very concept of “sin” from its vocabulary. Purity is equated with puritanism and is shunned. Chastity is ridiculed. And true marriage, in which the sexual union is united with the self-sacrificial desire for children, is being ripped apart. To make matters worse, Pride, the wickedest of sins, which rules the heart of every dragon, is now unfurled as an infernal banner and held aloft as a sign of the dragon’s war on Christian humility.

Joseph Pearce, “Rescuing Our Maidens from the Culture of Death.”  

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Pornography Is Slander Against God’s Creation

Pornography is a slander against the goodness of God’s creation and a corruption of this good gift God has given His creatures out of His own self-giving love.  To abuse this gift is to weaken not only the institution of marriage but the fabric of civilization itself.  To choose lust over love is to debase humanity and to worship the false god Priapus in the most brazen form of modern idolatry.

The deliberate use of pornography is nothing less than the willful invitation of illicit lovers, objectified sex objects, and forbidden knowledge into a man’s heart, mind, and soul.  The damage to the man’s heart is beyond measure, and the cost in human misery will only be made clear on the Day of Judgment.  From the moment each boy reaches puberty until the day he is lowered into the ground, every man will struggle with lust.  Let us follow the biblical example and scriptural command that we make a covenant with our eyes lest we sin.  In this society, we are called to be nothing less than a corps of the mutually accountable amidst a world that lives as if it will never be called to account.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of Sexual Tolerance,” pg.41-42

Marriage vs Pornography

Consider these two pictures.  The first picture is of a man who has set himself toward a commitment to sexual purity and is living in sexual integrity with his wife.  In order to fulfill his wife’s rightful expectations and to maximize their mutual pleasure in the marriage bed, he is careful to live, talk, lead, and love in such a way that his wife finds her fulfillment in giving herself to him in love.  The sex act then becomes a fulfillment of their entire relationship, not an isolated physical act that is merely incidental to their love for each other.  Neither uses sex as a means of manipulation, neither is inordinately focused merely on self-centered personal pleasure, and both give themselves to each other in unapologetic and unhindered sexual passion.  In this picture there is no shame.  Before God, this man can be confident that he is fulfilling his responsibilities both as a male and as a man.  He is directing his sexuality, his sex drive, and his physical embodiment toward the one-flesh relationship that is the perfect paradigm of God’s intention in creation.  

By contrast, consider another man.  This man lives alone, or at least in a context other than holy marriage.  Directed inwardly rather than outwardly, his sex-drive has become an engine for lust and self-gratification.  Pornography is the essence of his sexual interest and arousal.  Rather than taking satisfaction in a wife, he looks at dirty pictures in order to be rewarded with sexual arousal that comes without responsibility, expectation, or demand.  Arrayed before him are a seemingly endless variety of naked women, sexual images of explicit carnality, and a cornucopia of perversions intended to seduce the imagination and corrupt the soul.  This man need not be concerned with his physical appearance, his personal hygiene, or his moral character in the eyes of a wife.  Without this structure and accountability, he is free to take his sexual pleasure without regard for his unshaved face, his slothfulness, his halitosis, his body odor, or his physical appearance.  He faces no requirement of personal respect, and no eyes gaze upon him in order to evaluate the seriousness and worthiness of his sexual desire.  Instead, his eyes roam across images of unblinking faces, leering at women who make no demands upon him, who never speak back, and who can never say no.  There is no exchange of respect, no exchange of love, and nothing more than the using of women as sex objects for his individual and inverted sexual pleasure.

These two pictures of male sexuality are deliberately intended to drive home the point that every man must decide who he will be, whom he will serve, and how he will love.  In the end, a man’s decision about pornography is a decision about his soul, a decision about his marriage, a decision about his wife, and a decision about his God.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of Sexual Tolerance,” pg.39-41

The Trap of Pornography

Medical research has documented the increased flow of endorphins, hormones that create sexual pleasure in the brain, when sexual images are viewed.  Given the law of reduced effect, greater stimulation is needed to keep a constant flow of endorphins to the brain's pleasure centers.  Without conscious awareness of what is happening, men are drawn into a pattern of deeper sin, more and more explicit pornography, and never-ending rationalization.  And it all started when the eye first began its perusal of the pornographic image and sexual arousal was its product.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of Sexual Tolerance, pg.31-32

Pornography Plague

Our culture suffers from a plague of pornography.  Perhaps nothing more threatens the purity of the church today than the smut the world slobbers over.  Freedom from the filth comes in the desire for a more powerful pleasure.  The degrading, dehumanizing, objectifying prostitution of pleasure on offer from the worlds a twisted perversion of the true satisfaction to be found in the enjoyment of God's good gift within the boundaries of God's good commandments.

James M. Hamilton, "Song of Songs," pg.24

Fifty Shades of Garbage

It is shocking to me that an article such as this needs to be written to professing Christian women.  Even the world recognizes the damage such garbage can inflict on people.  For instance, read the following excerpt from a recent Charisma Magazine article:

We Americans get really angry when oil companies spill toxic fuel in our oceans; yet we applaud when Hollywood dumps a tanker of poisonous garbage like Fifty Shades of Grey on our country—with no offer to clean up the damage. We should be outraged.

Last year a researcher from the University of Michigan did a study on the effects of Fifty Shades of Grey on women readers. It showed that women who read the books (it is actually a trilogy) were 25 percent more likely to have an abusive partner; 34 percent were more likely to have a partner who stalked them; and 65 percent were more likely to engage in binge drinking. Just as there is a link between violent video games and violent behavior in teen boys, this study showed that women who read graphic porn novels tend to gravitate toward the types of abusive relationships depicted in books like Fifty Shades. The study also showed that these women were more likely to have eating disorders. (Interestingly, the dominant male character in Fifty Shades carefully controls his girlfriend’s eating habits.)

In one scene in the book, Christian buys Ana a platinum and diamond bracelet so she can cover the bruises on her wrists—which she got after being tied to her boyfriend’s bed. The message from Ana’s lover: I will hurt you, but I will buy you nice gifts so you will stay with me. That’s twisted. And couples are going to see this movie on Valentine’s Day?

One of the most bizarre moments in the book occurs after Ana leaves Christian and then goes back to him. She says: “The physical pain you inflicted was not as bad as the pain of losing you.” Any psychologist will tell you that is the mentality of an abuse victim, who is brainwashed to believe that the attention she gets from her abuser is better than no attention at all.

Does this sound, in any way whatsoever, like a book or movie a Christian woman should have anything to do with?

Landon Chapman, "Fifty Shades of Grey" and the Annihilation of Christian Women’s Innocence