OPPapers.com

Pornography

Pornography is tearing apart the very fabric of our society. Yet Christians are often ignorant of its impact and apathetic about the need to control this menace. Pornography is an $8 billion a year business with close ties to organized crime.(1) The wages of sin are enormous when pornography is involved Pornography involves books, magazines, videos, and devices and has moved from the periphery of society into the mainstream through the renting of video cassettes, sales of so-called "soft-porn" magazines, and the airing of sexually explicit movies on cable television. To some, pornography is nothing more than a few pictures of scantily-clad women in seductive poses. But pornography has become much more than just photographs of nude women. Nearly 900 theaters show pornographic films and more than 15,000 "adult" bookstores and video stores offer pornographic material. Adult bookstores outnumber McDonald's restaurants in the United States these days which is telling us that it’s starting to take over people’s everyday life.
More and more Internet sites are portraying pornography. Playboy.com gets about 5 million hits or visitors daily. More than 266 new pornography sites are created every day. With the help of technology pornography has become more and more accessible regardless of the age of the viewers. Since pornography never actually makes physical contact with viewers, some might think it is innocuous. Yet, there are many people who view pornography as a scourge on society that needs to be strictly censored. Thus the question arises: what harm if any does pornography do to viewers and to what extent? Pornography affects viewers mentally and has been known to be a factor in sexual violence. In the U.S. 87% of convicted molesters of girls, and 77% of convicted molesters of boys, admit to the use of pornography, most often in the commission of their crimes. Many people who are affected by pornography were exposed to it while they were in their adolescent...