Abolish P*rn

It’s worse than you think, and now it’s being legislated on

Jacob Hayward
July 12, 2024

Abolish P*rn

In my undergrad, I was in a position in which many guys would come to me and express their woes. They would tell me that they were struggling keeping their grades up. Struggling in relationships. Struggling with their Bible studies.

And most often, struggling with porn.

The truth was though, these guys were the ones who felt like porn was an issue. For most of the guys on campus, I imagine they saw nothing wrong with porn. For my generation, having access to porn is easy, and something learned at an early age (the national average age for first time viewers is 11 years old).

But is pornography morally ambiguous? Or does it cause real harm for all parties involved?

SCOTUS Takes the Case

The reason this has come on my radar is because the Supreme Court has just agreed to review a law in Texas that strengthens protections for minors from viewing pornographic material. Porn sites, under this Texas law, would have to place an age-verification method on their site such as scanning your ID into the website before continuing. Those who do not comply are charged hefty fines.¹

The challenger to this law is the Free Speech Coalition backed by the ACLU, who have said this law is unconstitutional saying “the law places too many burdens on the adults’ ability to access adult content” and “[exposes] their personal information over the internet”.²

This case is not without precedent. There have been several cases where explicit or obscene materials have come across the desk of the Supreme Court. There has been a clear theme in the past.³

Children should be both protected from being in these types of materials (see New York v. Ferber).
Internet pornography, creation and possession, is seen as free speech. Minors are not exempt, meaning that it is up to parents to prevent their children from viewing these materials (see Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union).

So while there has been real attempts to keep kids from appearing in these materials, it has been viewed as an infringement on adults’ free speech when a government or agency seeks to make it difficult for kids to view the materials.

With these historical decisions in mind, does the Texas case stand a chance?

Get the Facts

More people are watching porn than you may realize. Around 69% of men and 40% of women watch porn at least once a year.

Breaking that down, 28,258 people are watching porn every second.

20% of all mobile searches are for pornography.

This is not just costing time, but money as well. Every minute, 184,538 dollars are spent on consuming porn. That’s over 96 billion dollars.

Over half of divorces occur with one partner being addicted to porn.

There are several studies that suggest that porn is a leading factor in why this current generation is waiting to get married, not having kids, and having less sex in general.

Less than half of the population sees viewing porn as an issue.

COVID lockdowns dramatically increased the amount of porn being watched. The two keywords that increased the most in Google searches pre-lockdown to during lockdowns were “porn” and “depressed”. It may be that these two are linked in some way.

Sources:⁴ ⁵ ⁶

The Story Being Told

The story in modern America around porn is that everyone is doing it and it isn’t that bad. Porn is something that is still kept in the dark most of the time, but more and more people are reporting being willing to have open and approving conversations around porn.

A different narrative needs to be told. One where we no longer turn a blind eye to the negative effects of porn, but instead seek to abolish porn.

And I don’t mean abolish it in the courts, though I wouldn’t mind it. I want every individual to make the decision to abolish it from their life. I want every household to decide rules on engaging with technology. I want every church to be a beacon of freedom from addiction.

Porn is harmful to the participants involved. Many regret being a part of it.

Porn is harmful to people watching. It damages their brains, their relationships, their sense of self.

Porn is harmful to our society. Imagine if all of those hours doing something shameful were spent creating businesses or strengthening relationships. Imagine if the 96 billion dollars a year spent on pornographic materials were spent on something like ending poverty.

Porn is not just a harmless part of our society, but I believe it’s attraction reveals the deep sickness that we have especially in our American culture.

I’m not sure what the Supreme Court will decide on this Texas law. The change that really matters, though, is the one happening in people’s hearts. One where we decide that porn is an unnecessary and frivolous and harmful part of our community.

Resources:

One great resource that many individuals have used to overcome their porn addiction is the software “Covenant Eyes”.

This is a software that tracks your phone and reports activity to an accountability partner. Having a community that seeks your success and is supporting you is one of the best ways to overcome the addiction.

If you want to try it out, I have included the link here. If it is something that you feel you cannot afford, reach out to me. I will work to make sure it becomes possible for you to overcome this.

More considerations for further exploration: