Sunday, April 20, 2008

AOTD: Porn Pastor (not what you think)

'Porn pastor' brings Jesus to Exxxotica

In short: This pastor goes to porn conventions to hand out bibles. They don't preach while there or hassle anyone, they just hand them out. I got no problem with that.

I STILL have a problem with the idea that porn is bad. So bad, in fact, that it deserves a whole lot of time and effort to counsel people away from it. Is it just that gambling is so much less sexy (metaphorically speaking) that it doesn't deserve the same attention?

Edit: I sometimes forget to think from the point of view of the people I'm writing about. Duh, commandment #whatever, Don't lust after your neighbor's wife. I'm guessing that random women who pose nekkid in magazines or perform sex acts on the internet count. So of course porn is more important to Christians (so to speak) than gambling. Now, to the comments...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

When a person uses porn in place of an actual relationship or has unrealistic expectations of their partner because of what is seen in porn, it can be a bad thing. This is similar to how the air brushed photos of thin women on magazine covers can affect the self image of girls, or the buff men on fitness magazine encourage unhealthy behavior in boys. Also not considered is the snuff films and porn that treats women as mere objects. You can't tell me that doesn't have an effect on people's behavior.

Faithinate said...

Hey, my first anonymous comment!

Well, sure, there are problems with porn. I for one find the music annoying. I doubt that any of the reasons you listed are really of top importance to the Christians (I made that mistake myself, see my edit), but to reply:

As for using porn in place of a relationship/unrealistic expectations. Sure, but this is really the fault of the person in question, as opposed to the porn. I think there's a big problem using World of Warcraft in place of an actual relationship, and I think TV in general promotes all kinds of unrealistic expectations. It's up to parents, and then individuals to seek out real life and to consciously seperate fantasy and reality.

I think there's a fair amount of objectification - both of men and of women - in day to day life, not even counting porn. The thing is, it's kind of okay (within limits) to objectify somebody you aren't interacting with personally. Faces we see on TV, in movies, on billboards and so on are completely objectified, whether there's sex involved or not. We've rather created a culture of objectification - this may simply be the dark side of globalization - and it takes a little effort to make something far away be real to you. So to a degree, so what if porn objectifies THOSE women? It's not as if you're then going to meet them and have a difficult time forming meaningful relationships with them. And I don't think porn is what gives people a hard time relating to others in their lives. I think porn is something you do, and if you do it too much you probably had a hard time relating to people in the first place. To say it another way, I don't think porn is the cause.

Snuff films? That's a whole other topic, there, man.