It’s the rumbling sexual earthquake in this country, a moral and public health emergency few 
want to talk about.
It’s often the buried root beneath the screaming demands for “LGBTQ” rights, unrestricted access to abortion, and the push to legalize prostitution.
I’m talking about pornography and it’s ruining our values, trapping the minds and hearts of the young, wrecking relationships and leaving America vulnerable.
And males are its most frequent consumers.
Really, let’s be honest. When our young men have little discipline and self-restraint over very personal appetites, they can’t be counted on to be the heads of households, leaders and heroes our nation needs going forward.
So when states like Montana declare pornography a public health crisis, their lawmakers act wisely, but much more is needed. Fourteen other states have done so as well, yet where is a heightened focus by the mainstream media?
The ripples threaten to become a tsunami. We can thank porn for much of today’s “rape culture.” Porn-obsessed males can become violent abusers of women and children.
And they make lousy husbands and fathers, with huge implications for the future well-being of our teens and young adults.
This subject came up recently in a conversation among women professionals. One young woman described her frustration with finding worthy young men to date. She is a Christian. What’s the problem? “They are all into porn,” she lamented.
Most teen males today have some or lots of exposure to easily accessible XXX-rated material. So where does that leave their prospective brides?
Without much of a husband selection, if they are smart. Young women are learning quickly that this is one of the first questions that must be asked.
So we need teach our boys to abstain from porn, if they want the best girls to invest time into a relationship. And for their own benefit. Long-term porn use is associated with multiple social, mental, professional, physical and spiritual risks.
Here’s what the regular and intentional viewing of porn will do to the mind, heart and spirit:
1. Porn changes the brain structure and sexual response. The neuron pathways of the brain are shaped by intense sexual experiences. Regular porn access teaches the guy to respond to images which are unrealistic in a committed relationship, with a non-air-brushed but loving human female. So he becomes desensitized to the real needs and responses of his wife, expecting her to behave like porn actress and be ready for sex 24-7. Contrived sexual scenes center mostly around satisfying the male.
And the typical response to porn is masturbation, not a promising precursor to healthy marital intimacy. So what happens once the single guy enters marriage? Often, he has trouble functioning. Recent studies have found that between 14% and 35% of young men now have erectile dysfunction issues, a sharp recent increase (in 2002, it was around 2-3% of young men). Porn is one of the major culprits.
The reason for the deluge of little blue pill ads is an expanded market. The easy availability of porn on smart phones and laptops has lured younger users into a regular habit. Porn desensitizes the viewer so that more and different stimulation is needed, and eventually, normal intimate relations become boring.
Some women report that their young husbands fail to become aroused unless a magazine or laptop displaying pornographic images joins them in bed.
How depressing.
2.. Porn is actually unfaithfulness and voyeurism. Why should a young woman tolerate her guy viewing other women in sexual activity? Would that same guy watch a girl he knows personally during a sex act? Or a guy friend? Most teen boys would recoil from this, because it’s too privacy-invading.
Exactly. It’s no different when the couple is anonymous. They are human beings and as the anti-sex trafficking people would tell you, that girl in the image has a name.
3. Porn fuels the human rights abuse of sex trafficking as well as the production of child porn. Many if not most females in those videos are under some kind of coercion and all of the children are. Ironically, liberals are often regular porn users and almost universally supportive of keeping porn accessible and free-flowing—and yet this “industry” devastates the women, girls and boys who are its victims.
Any young woman of character will see the young man who views porn as an enabler of this human rights abuse. She should begin to find that young man repulsive.
4. Porn leads to progressively deviant behavior. Men may develop a desire to view sex scenes with progressively more “edge,” including orgies, animals, or children. The sexual high once achieved wears off, with newer and more shocking things needed to obtain arousal.
And so, the boy who starts viewing porn at age 13 may find that by age 17 it’s just not enough, and he moves on to stronger, more depraved stuff. It’s no surprise that pornography is very popular among those involved in homosexual behavior and gender confusion. Porn doesn’t create those desires necessarily, but it certainly embeds them.
Some men go to the final level and begin viewing child porn. These are images of innocent victims whose lives forever changed, but yet a man finds this exciting. What woman wants a guy like that? He not only should go away, he should go to jail.
By the time he’s of a marriageable age, his tastes may have become so hard-core that he is completely incapable of tenderness, respect and a real relationship with a real woman.
5. Porn sometimes leads to violence. Spousal attacks and the physical or sexual abuse of children is associated with prolonged porn use. Why? Because porn today is more violent than ever, with scenes where aggressive verbal and physical acts are depicted as sexually exciting to porn actresses. So men begin to expect the same response from their wives—and get insulting, angry and retaliatory when they aren’t accommodated.
If we truly want to combat a rape culture, this would be a good place to start-- get porn and its phony connection between sexual excitement and violence out of the minds of our men.
6. And how can the guy who regularly views porn call himself a Christian? He dismisses Psalm 101:3 -- “ I will set nothing wicked before my eyes.” Our bodies are to be temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19-20), not animalistic masturbation machines responding to vulgar images on a screen. Such a perversion of God’s intent for the male body should be an enormous red flag to the woman in his life. Can such a man ever cherish his wife (Ephesians 5:28-29) when his driving motivation is for her to service his lust?
Any young woman of character should makes plans to sever the relationship if her guy does not radically change his behavior and repent. That’s sad, because the pool of worthy guys becomes that much smaller. But eventually, the good ones will get the message.
We need to start with our young boys and make sure they know the risks before starting down this pointless path.
