Internet Pornography

 There are two  reasons I am an advocate against pornography. One is due to my experiences as a social worker within the state of Utah. It is amazing how many of the people we sit with within the walls of our own church privately struggle with inappropriate boundaries when it comes to children. Unfortunately, once a child is exposed to sexual content or activity, that child then begins to share with other neighborhood children. Granted, there are circumstances that can be attributed to curiosity amongst same age children, however, we cannot hide our heads in the sand and believe that everything occurs because of age appropriate behaviors. The fact is, there are adults who love to photograph children (anyone under age 18) in sexually graphic poses and then sell them for profit. There are families within our communities where children are afraid to go to bed because they know tonight is their night to sleep with big brother. Brothers, Sisters, Mothers, Fathers, Uncles, Aunts, Grandparents AND strangers are perpetrators of the most atrocious behaviors toward those they should be protecting. And despite what you might believe, YES LDS MEN AND WOMEN ARE INCLUDED.

The second reason I advocate against pornography is due to my own experiences with it. My father frequently had magazines hidden in his dresser drawer. He had to have known that all of his daughters were aware they were there. We used to go to the newspaper/magazine store with him! Usually we left with a choice in candy and one or two comic books. He left with his own choice of magazine. After being exposed to it due to curiosity, I never saw my father in the same way. Simple acts such as a hug frightened me because I could not interpret the intent. Growing up and as a young married woman, it was just accepted that my father had these magazines. In due time, my father would experience the death of my mother and would invariably seek companionship to live within his home. These experiences never turn out well and he generally became the victim of abuse. He did marry one woman though. She seems to be good for him and appeared to be conscientious of his medical needs. She came to Utah and toured the Temple Square. She took missionary lessons and desired to be baptized within the LDS faith. But she was living with my father. To make a very long story short...this woman brought into her marriage with my father pornographic videos. She stated that they had belonged to her ex-husband. But she is the one who kept them. When my father finally made a decision to separate from this woman, he suggested that I place the entire collection amongst her belongings. All except for two. When I asked what he needed them for, he responded that he liked them and sometimes had friends over to watch.  I refused to leave them and ultimately, after my sister removed the covers, (which we needed to photograph for legal purposes but I did not want my husband to see) my other sister and husband proceeded to destroy the videos. I was having a conversation with my FATHER!! About the way these items made me feel. My father admitted he had been introduced to magazines at about age 12. The videos were brought in by his new wife. And we did not even discuss the toys found in another drawer. In fact, he asked my older sister to "take care of those things in that bottom drawer".  After we had destroyed all the videos and provided all the legal information requested of us, my father reconciled with his wife. However, she never returned to live with him. I had a very interesting conversation with their Bishop after traveling 800 miles. I informed him of the videos and objects we had destroyed. My father would later inform me that the Bishop asked his wife something and it upset her so much that she refused to speak. Hmmmm. Do I consider myself a victim of pornography? You bet I do. And so is my Father. I can only imagine what our relationship could have been like if I had not been introduced to how he saw the female body. Being female, I was totally degraded by it and it has affected my own self esteem since I was a very young girl.

I found the following statistics on a website dedicated to providing accurate research regarding the real effects that pornography can have. It is amazing how prevalent it has become. As a mother, I wish all we had to worry about were the magazines hidden in sock drawers and under mattresses. Check these statistics out:

•Approximately 40 million people in the United States are sexually involved with the Internet (Exposing Porn: Science, Religion, and the New Addiction, Paul Strand. Christian Broadcasting Network, 2004.)

•2.5 billion emails per day are pornographic (Pornography Statistics 2003. Family Safe Media. www.familysafemedia.com, 2003.)

•25 percent of all search engine requests are pornography related (Internet Pornography Statistics: 2003, David C. Bissette, Psy.D. www.healthymind.com, 2004.)

•72 million Internet users visit pornography web sites per year (Pornography Statistics 2003. Internet Filter Review. www.internetfilterreview.com, 2003. )

•94 percent of Americans believe a ban on Internet pornography should be legal (Statistics on Internet Pornography. http://www.levelbest.com/.)

•Sex is the number 1 topic searched on the Internet. (Overdosing on Porn, Rebecca Hagelin. www.worldandi.com, March, 2004.)

•34 percent of churchgoing women said they have intentionally visited porn websites online (Internet porn a guy thing? Not really, online rating service says, Mark O’Keefe. The Charlotte Observer.)

• “82 percent of adult Americans surveyed in March 2004 said that the Federal laws against Internet obscenity should be vigorously enforced.” (Americans STILL want federal obscenity laws enforced! The Morality in Media Newsletter, June, 2004.)

•At least 20,000 American adults visit Internet sex sites at least 11 hours per week (Victims of Pornography Month Should Not Exist, Jan Larue. Christian Counseling Today, 2003 Vol. 11 No. 3. )

•The most common ways people have accidentally reached pornographic content on the Web are pop-up windows (55%), misrepresented links (52%), misspelled URLs (48%) and auto links within emails (23%)

Fifty Percent of Workers Spend Nine days a Year on Personal Surfing at Work. (Cerberian Inc. and SonicWALL, 20 July 2004.)

•While 77% of surveyed people said they thought their computers were well-protected, 4 out of 5 had spyware or adware programs running on their computers (Home PCs not so safe? CNN Money, 25 October, 2004. http://money.com/2004/10/25/technology/personaltech/cpu_security.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes)

•15 percent of online porn habitues develop sexual behavior that disrupts their lives (The Porn Factor, Pamela Paul. www.time.com. 19 January, 2004.)

•According to Datamonitor, over half of all spending on the Internet is related to sexual activity. Each day 30 million people log on to pornographic Web sites (Internet pornography statistics. Internet Filter Review, 2003.)

•In 2004, there were 372 million pornographic Web pages, 2.5 billion emails (8% of total emails), 100 thousand Web sites offering illegal child pornography, and 72 million annual worldwide visitors to pornographic websites (Internet Pornography Statistics. Internet Filter Review, 2004. )

•9.3 million women access adult websites each month (Internet Pornography Statistics. Internet Filter Review, 2004. )

•The Internet accounted for US $2.5 billion of the adult industry’s $14 billion in U.S. revenues in 2004.

Dirty Downloads Ready to Go on iPods, Ron Harris, www.macnewsworld.com, 2005

•70% of 18 to 24 year old men visit pornographic sites in a typical month. 66% of men in their 20s and 30s also report being regular users of pornography. (First-person: the culture of pornography, R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Baptist Press, 28 December 2005. )