COLUMBUS, NE – In conjunction with Protection from Pornography Week, Morality in Media (MIM) has announced the launch of a campaign to coincide with its annual anti-porn week, an effort called the White Ribbon Against Pornography, or “WRAP.”“Parents, students, and pastors all have resources available to them in a campaign designed to increase public awareness of the harm done by exposure to pornography,” MIM stated in a press release distributed by MIM’s media wing, the Agape Press.
According to the official WRAP website, WRAPFamily.com, the WRAP effort is “intended to educate the public about the extent of the pornography problem and about what can legally be done to fight back against the flood tide of obscenity.”
Although the event coincides with Protection from Pornography Week, WRAP wants visitors to know this is about more than just “raising awareness” for a week and that the concept is not new.
“Fighting pornography and obscenity in particular, however, is a year around challenge,” the WRAP site states, adding “Let us make the public aware!”
According the WRAP website, “White Ribbon Week began in 1987 when Norma Norris heard a sermon delivered against pornography delivered by her pastor in Butler, PA. Soon after, she conceived the idea of a simple white ribbon as a symbol of decency.”
The purpose of WRAP, according to the website is to “increase the awareness” of parents and students regarding the following five “facts:”
1. “Many parents and children/teens are not aware of the quickness of pornography addiction, the ease of acquiring inappropriate pictures or sexual information, etc.”
2. “Inappropriate images can’t be erased from the mind and they influence actions. Children/teens need to abandon the ‘everybody’s seeing these things’ mindset and be responsible for what goes into their minds.”
3. “Sexual addiction can occur within a week and easily within three months for many people.”
4. “Entry into pornography addiction can be inappropriate swimsuit or lingerie images.”
5. “‘Crash and Tell’ and other Internet safety ideas can protect children. Knowledge gives parents and children/teens the wisdom they need in today’s world.”
According to the MIM/Agape press release, “Crash and Tell” is an internet safety tip that calls for an “arrangement in which children should feel comfortable in immediately turning off the computer after they encounter a bad experience and talking with a parent about that experience.”
Also in the news today, a small group of “prayer warriors” in South Carolina are taking just the sort of action advocated by MIM and WRAP – fighting indecency with prayer.
A pastor from Anderson County, Elva Martin, has organized a task force of a half-dozen members that intends to pack into a van on Saturday, and hold prayer vigils in front of the strip clubs on Myrtle Beach’s Seaboard Street, as well as the Myrtle Beach City Hall, according to reports in the Myrtle Beach Sun Times.
When it comes to a small group of parishioners squaring off against a thriving local strip club industry, Martin says it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the… um, size of the faith in the dog?
“God works with small groups,” said Martin, according to the Sun Times, adding that “It worked in Anderson.”
Martin says the same technique worked in fighting the “rulers of darkness” who built a strip club in Anderson.
“One nude club came and we rose up in arms,” Martin said.
According to the Sun Times, Martin and her cohorts “prayed and threw Bibles in front of bulldozers” that were building the strip club and eventually “the building was stopped and adult businesses there were indicted for obscenity.”
Martin and her partner in prayer, Ted Potts of Surfside Beach, told the Sun Times they hope to see similar results in Horry County, and they have crafted a list of 75 target businesses they plan to confront with their brand of holier-than-thou harassment.
Potts and Martin are not alone, of course, in seeking to run adult businesses out of Horry County; the County shut down two local adult businesses as “public nuisances” following three arrests for prostitution at the Gym Omni spa, and 21 arrests (of unspecified variety) at the adult video store Excitement Video.
The Gym Omni and Excitement Video cases have not been resolved yet, but Horry County officials are hoping to use the public nuisance law to shut down additional “repeat offenders,” according to the Sun Times.
Martin says she sees her own groups’ efforts and those of Horry County as a two-pronged assault against adult businesses, Martin told the Sun Times.
“A good army practices reconnaissance, then you train, then you go out,” Martin said.
