Pornography empowers women, Christianity represses

by Dean Selby

The other day while eating a sandwich I was wondering how these “Christian” anti-porn crusaders would find it if adult webmasters, or pornography enthusiasts, began battling Christianity? It’s amazing these zealots, whose take on Christ’s peaceful teachings have caused more pain, suffering, and death than any known force in humankind’s history, have the gall to stand on an ivory pulpit, ignore their own inbred hypocrisies, and criticize pornography while fully missing the beams sticking out of their own eyes.

These so-called Christians are renowned for making up their own rules--like a spoiled, snotty child on a playground who does not like the outcome of a game--and assert the sins of their church and the behavior of murdering fanatics have nothing to do with them; yet they do not grant adult webmasters or pornographers the freedom to claim separation from pornography’s criminals. For them, all porn is child porn, all porn is snuff porn, all porn is degrading and misogynist, and all porn is ruining the fabric of society. It is tellingly ironic that these same people are never as vocal about the thousands of violent televised scenes available for any child to watch, or the brutal video games children regularly play, or the wars our nation routinely finds itself entrenched in. Obviously, they are more comfortable with death and violence than the peaceful teachings of Christ, or their own beautiful, innate sexualities.

It is healthier, more realistic, and more natural to be involved in, and to promote, human sexuality than it is to believe in a super-hero-style invisible being who inhabits the sky, who lives with the dead, who is omnipotent and omniscient but never lifts a hand to stop the woes of humankind, and who demands allegiance by threatening unimaginable, infinite torture but at the same time professes love for his creation.

And the real reason they fight porn is far different from the excuses they expound on the airwaves or in front of senate committees. There are social, psychological, and economic reasons that have nothing to do with the “spotted owls” crusaders talk about, for instance, protecting children, protecting women, and protecting family values. The main reason they fight pornography is that porn creates an acceptance of the nude female form, empowering women in the process. But if this were true, one might wonder, then wouldn’t these women champion porn?

Hardly.

They have been brainwashed by a fear-based apparatus developed 2,000 years ago by burgeoning patriarchal governments to control the populace and crush female-centered worship—enter Christianity. Many women are now ashamed of not only their sexuality but also their sex. These women ironically champion the patriarchal Christian paradigm that demands allegiance to a male God and promotes a male-dominated society, a belief system that has long relegated them to second-rate citizens held responsible for our fall from an imaginary paradise. Because of their upbringing, these women now unwittingly battle against the very element that could set them free, and, in the process, they promote a belief system that does not even respect them.

It is stunning “Christians” even begin to mention pornography is degrading to women when the Old Testament contains page after page of the most controlling, misogynist directives in circulation today. Why is there a glass ceiling for women in the workplace? Why are women paid less than men for the same work? Not because of porn. Porn has the potential to empower women, Christianity, never. In the final analysis, these “Christians” are wrong: it is not porn that is destroying the fabric of society, family values, or degrading women, it is organized Christianity.