Isn’t it interesting how antiporn activists are so outward with knowing “THE FACTS”???
Never mind that their “facts” turn out to be nothing but cooked-up propaganda and mashed-up statistics slanted to their own agenda…but boy, do they know about THE FACTS.
Shelley Lubben is one of the better examples of someone claiming to be so deeply knowlegable of THE FACTS about porn, so much so that her Pink Cross Foundation webpage and her personal website is practically littered with the standard: PORNOGRAPHY KILLS. PORNOGRAPHY DESTROYS. GET THE FACTS.
Now, never mind that most of those “FACTS” about how porn led to so many performers deaths are woefully off, since she claims deaths by anything from tragic traffic accidents to cancer to unrelated suicides from drug abuse to be blamed on porn.
And, never mind that perhaps Sister Shelley might not be the best to claim expertise on such matters, having openly said herself that she “contributed” to the epidemic of herpes” by being an active prostitute engaging in unprotected sex with clients (but, of course, that was when The DEVIL had a hold of her, before Jesus SAVED her!!!).
But…for this once, I’m going to let Shelley off the hook for now, especially since Julie Meadows has more than enough of the hammer of truth to smack her down for the rest of the year.
Naaaaah. Today, I’m focusing my wrath on another antiporn organization that, similarly to Lubben and the PFC, is attempting to make waves in converting former porn starlets to their religious Right agenda.
However, unlike Shelley Lubben, Craig Gross and his own website XXXChurch.com tends to take on a far less confrontational approach. They are far more of a “good cop” to the Lubbenite smash-mouth “bad cop” approach; Gross appears friendly and magnamanous, appearing at porn conventions not to preach down performers a la Lubben, but simply to spread their message that there is a dark side of porn, and their agency is there to help those who might need it.
Certainly, this is a far, far less hostile approach that XXXChurch takes…which is why they have even garnered support from plenty of people within the porn industry as an acceptable and decent advesary who isn’t a wild censor like Lubben or Gail Dines or Pat Trueman.
That’s all fine and good…but underneath all of the friendliness and the amicable smiles of the XXXChurch, it seems like they have the same fundamental agenda that Lubben does…and the same fleeting carelessness with “THE FACTS”.
Want some proof of that? Well, once again, we turn to Julie, who has been sticking to the case like Colombo of late.
In doing followup research on the mythology of “sex addiction”, she discovered a page of the XXXChurch.com website which included some “factoids” on how much porn had decimated society and enabled “sex addiction”. That page included a link to another page hosted by something called HeartSupport.com, which featured this lovely graphic (which Julie grabbed and reproduced at her blog):
[Click on image for a larger view]
The claim here, of course, is that porn has created a whole nation of “sex addicts” who are so obsessed with seeing T & A (and D & P) that they are destroying their and other people’s lives, and that only through compassionate Christian “treatment” will they and the world get any better. Notice how close this gets to Mary Ann Layden’s theory of “sexual obesity” (and there’s more on her whackiness too..but that’s for another post), without crossing that line into full-on censorship advocacy.
Nevertheless, all of those “FACTS” can be easily disposed of. Julie has done an excellent job at her place of debunking the more obvious fallacies and BS at her space, so I will simply go off what she has done.
Let us begin at the beginning, shall we??
4.7 million Americans visit porn sites in excess of 11 hours per week.
Sounds mighty sinister, doesn’t it?? Sure it does…until you realize that 11 hours a week still corresponds to less than 1.7 hours a day. I know some commutes to/from work that are longer than that. So, where does that leave the rest of the day…other than the 8 hours of sleep and we give 8 hours for work and two hours for commute, that still leaves us with 4.3 hours of downtime.
And…4.7 million Americans viewing porn?? Out of a nation of well over 300 MILLION??? Gee, that’s some epidemic!!
Here’s a similar nugget that Julie discovered from her research:
“40 million Americans regularly visit porn sites.”
OK…do you mean 40 mil in a year?? In a month?? And how does that jive with that earlier stat of 4.7 million visiting porn sites a week??
And, what’s to say that most of those most likely to visit porn sites might be the very ones most critical of porn?? Remember that study that concluded that the most proific area for downloading porn online happened to be….Utah?? Where some of the most fervent advocates for censorship of porn are located?? I know…facts are stupid things.
Onward to the next factoid, please:
24 million Americans are classified as sex addicts.
Of course, they don’t back up this FACT with any sources…like, who exactly is doing the classifying of so many people as “sex addicts”, or what that has to do if anything with consumption of porn.
It also ignores the basic fact, as Julie mentions, that not even the American Psychiactric Association, which should know about such things, has been moved to label “sex addiction” as an official disorder worthy of inclusion in their vaunted Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders:
“The American Psychiatric Association publishes and periodically updates the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a widely recognized compendium of acknowledged mental disorders and their diagnostic criteria. The most recent version of that manual, DSM-IV-TR, was published in 2000 and does not recognize sexual addiction as a diagnosis.[7] Although some authors had expressed that excluding sexual addiction from the DSM represents a problem,[8] the proposed diagnosis was rejected for consideration for inclusion in the DSM-5.[9] Darrel Regier, vice-chair of the DSM-5 task force, said that “[A]lthough ‘hypersexuality‘ is a proposed new addition…[the phenomenon] was not at the point where we were ready to call it an addiction.”
Obviously, there are those who do believe that sexual compulsion is indeed worthy of inclusion as an “addiction” worthy of treatment.
“The National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity estimates that 6 to 8 percent of Americans – or 18 million to 24 million people – are sex addicts. And 70 percent of sex addicts report having a problem with online sexual behavior.”
That’s from a quote from an article on “sexual addiction” found at SFGate.com, via Julie’s article. Funny thing, though…when I Googled “National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity”, one of the first links I found was to the website for a group called the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health, which included this page that included this factoid:
A conservative estimate of those who could meet the criteria for sexual addiction and compulsivity is that of about 3 – 5% of the United States population. This is most likely a very conservative estimate, since these numbers are based on individuals who seek treatment.
They also link to the very controversial “sexual addiction” test invented by Dr. Patrick Carnes, who is considered to be one of the experts on “sex addiction”. Problem is, that test has been waylaided from pillar to post for its base conservative assumptions and not-so-veiled biases against common sexual practices. See Dr. Marty Klein and Greta Christina for some trenchant critique of Carnes’ illogic as well as the test itself.
Nexxxxxxt….
260 million pornographic pages on the internet
I suppose that that’s supposed to ellicit a response like that popular Best Buy commercial currently running: “WOW!!!!! That’s a lot of porn!!!!” Yeah, 260 million is a very big number. When compared to the over 63 BILLION pages that current ly exist total on the Internet, though, it doesn’t look so big in scale. Actually, it amounts to a ratio of 0.02% of porn pages to all Internet pages….kinda like comparing the power of our sun to that of the entilr Milky Way galaxy.
Oh…and such stats don’t tell us either how many of those porn pages are self-made, or the range of explicity (Playboy nudes?? Topless photos?? Homemade sex tapes?? Homegrown websites??), or where these sites are located.
Finally there is this:
Sex addiction can often lead to: illegal activity and sex complications
First off…”illegal activity”??? Yeah…watching porn — and remember, Clones, that to these folks, too much of an interest in porn is the equivalent of “sex addiction” — most definitely leads to such “illegal behavior” as engaging in sex with the wrong people at the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, what constitutes “illegal behavior” might just depend on who you ask, though. If we are to believe the words of, say, Mary Ann Layden, any form of sexual activity outside of the boundaries of reproduction within Christian-sanctioned marriage would be considered to be “compulsive” and “addictive”, and thusly illegal. After all, we just can’t have impressionable children learning how to touch their genitals and nipples, for that may offend God and make him mad enough to cause more earthquakes or throw another lightning bolt like He did with Sodom and Gommorah. Let us not also forget that until recently, even consensual sex between people of the same gender, as well as people of different races (especially if one of the races happened to be Black) were also considered illegal, too. I don’t quite think that HeartSupport had that in mind when they wrote this, but that’s basically where the logic inevitably leads.
And as for “sex complications”: well…for most people, the only complication that they suffer from after watching most porn is how to clean the sheets. Not saying that for those who do become compulsive enough on sex imagery that it starts disaffecting them, there isn’t issues…but let’s not mistake them for the overewhelming majority of folk who use porn wisely without freaking out.
All this leads me to this question for The Reverend Cross and all of his allies: Why don’t you reveal all this when you are out at porn conventions pretending to be all nice and moderate (at least, as compared to The Reverend Shelley Lubben)?? I can respect you not being an overt censor, but still…using the sime “facts” as Shelley Lubben and Gail Dines de to downgrade porn and selling the same fundie Christian solution of faked up “treatment” for “porn addiction” doesn’t quite click with your rep as being non-partisan and partial.
Hiding the fact of the Dirty Girls Ministries doing silent conversions behind the scenes doesn’t help your cause with me, either.
This isn’t at all to deny Craig Gross his earned freedom of speech to spread his ministry to whomever might be receptive to his message. This is only to reveal that if you are going to present yourself as a factual source, it would make sense to rely on actual factual sources for your information. And, it would behoove those of us who defend sexual expression and sexual media to read between the lines and do your research before you blindly accept the logic of your adversary. That smile in your face could be hiding a knife headed towards your back. The Lubbens are easy to spot and avoid…the Grosses are a bit harder.
Trust, but verify. Good enough for Reagan; should be good enough for sex+/porn defenders.
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