WASHINGTON – If you felt a little tug at your porn-stained soul on Tuesday morning, it’s because droves of America’s concerned Christians were praying for your redemption. (Sure, you’re a filthy, lecherous, porn-addicted internet creep, but this doesn’t mean Jesus doesn’t love you.)
Tuesday morning marked the National Day of Prayer to Strengthen the Fight against Pornography and Sexual Exploitation. It’s a day that raises awareness of pornography’s harms by encouraging a bunch of people who already believe porn is harmful to gather at churches and group-fret about how deeply fucked up the rest of us are becoming due to our sinful, porn-viewing ways.
First off, let me just say kudos to Morality and Media for coming up with such a catchy name for their inspirational day of (with apologies to Marvin Gaye) “sexual healing.” It works even better as an acronym: NDPSFAPSE.
Morality in Media wasn’t alone on NDPSFAPSE, of course. They were joined in their anti-smut day of prayer by several other prominent Christian groups, including The Christian Film and Television Commission, Women for Decency, the Alliance Defending Freedom and Route 1520.
If these names aren’t familiar to you, prepare to be impressed…or maybe that should be impugned. I get those words confused sometimes.
The Alliance Defending Freedom is a name you’ll usually hear within the context of the ongoing debate concerning same-sex marriage. Take a wild guess as to which side of the debate they fall. Apparently, it’s also an organization in need of a little cash, judging by the massive banners stating $7.6 million dollars is “needed by midnight on Dec. 31.”
What happens if they don’t get the money? Does the organization turn into a pumpkin? Luckily, we will never find out, because “Alliance Defending Freedom is trusting God for $7.6 million in gifts by December 31.” Hey – it worked for Oral Roberts in 1987, right?
Of course, ol’ Oral upped the charitable ante by claiming if he didn’t raise $8 million, God would “call him home.” So far as I know, nobody from the Alliance Defending Freedom has promised to die if they come up short of their goal, so they might not match Oral’s fundraising frenzy.
The Christian Film and Television Commission typically occupies itself with fruitless campaigns to get movies like Django Unchained labeled with NC-17 ratings. They’re also the group behind the Movie Guide Awards, the website for which states “six main award groups” comprise the honors – but then proceeds to list eight groups. I’m sure they’re very earnest, well-meaning people over at CFTC, but God bless ’em, they’re just not too handy with math.
By the way, the 10 best movies for “mature audiences” recognized at the Movie Guide Awards in February were:
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So, three movies based on comic books, one based on a young-adult novel, a movie based on a book J.R.R. Tolkien wrote for his children and a PG-13 adaptation of “Jack and the Beanstalk” were among the best releases in 2013 for “mature audiences,” eh?
Do Christian communities define “mature” as “between the ages of 7 and 12”? (If so, this might go a long way in explaining some of the troubles the Catholic Church has had with its clergy over the years….)
Women for Decency sounds like a group composed of exactly the opposite of the sort of women I like to hang out with, but at least they are focused on the big picture – in the literal sense, because one of their big campaigns involves partial nudity on roadside billboards.
Dr. Jennifer Brown, a woman for decency who is also a part-time dentist, “started noticing, more and more, the seemingly harmless images contained on advertisements that come through the mail or are posted on billboards and are sometimes difficult to avoid.”
“Even with my science background, I was surprised at the impact this environment that we’ve created as a society can have on our children,” Brown said. “Not only does it make it more difficult for children to not view others as objects, but it goes much deeper than that.”
I, too, am shocked Brown’s “science background” didn’t give her any insight into the mechanics of sexual objectification. After all, I’m pretty sure my dentist was required to take Freudian psychology and women’s studies in the same semester she studied oral and maxillofacial radiology.
As for Route 1520, I don’t know much about them, but if nothing else, they offer a handy online self-assessment you can use to determine whether you’re a sex addict.
Unfortunately, the website for “My Grace Journey,” the service identified by Route 1520 as “a beacon of hope for men trapped by pornography,” was offline on the day I checked. So, if you’re a man who has been “trapped by pornography,” I guess you’ll just have to chew off your own penis in order to escape, like some sex-addict version of Aron Ralston.
Naturally, whatever contributions to NDPSFAPSE these organizations might have made, the real star of the show remains Morality in Media, a group that thinks it’s going to make progress against the “threat” of pornography by labeling entities like Hilton, Sony, Attorney General Eric Holder and the American Library Association among their “Dirty Dozen” – an annual list of “responsible parties in the spread of pornography and exploitation.”
This makes perfect sense, because we’ve all seen Eric Holder in his booth at AEE, handing out free copies of the DVD This Ain’t the Department of Justice: A XXX Parody – and who among us hasn’t stroked one out on occasion while sitting in the coin-op video viewing booths at Barnes and Noble?
While Morality in Media likes to trumpet their “wins” against porn (including claiming credit for Google dropping porn from programs like AdWords), consider this: The organization was established because the standards of American culture were too loose and permissive for them…in 1962.
I’m not saying Morality in Media failed, miserably and comprehensively, in their 50-plus-year crusade to cleanse American media; I’m just saying while its founder was appointed by LBJ to serve on the Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography in 1968, and Reagan consulted with them in a similar fashion in the early ’80s, MIM hasn’t exactly been on the White House speed dial since then.
Beyond that, you tell me: In the 52 years since the organization was founded, do you think the content of “the media” in America has become more to the liking of Morality in Media, or less to their liking?
The answer just might explain all this prayer.
Image: detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on canvas by Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1480-1505
