Perhaps the boldest public policy step the Republican Party’s rules committee took last week was to declare pornography a public health crisis. The declaration mirrors a resolution recently passed by the Utah Legislature.
It was bold because it is bound to face withering criticism from arrogant sophists who represent a culture awash in the acceptance of sex outside marriage.
It was bold because it sheds light on something that, if the facts were widely known, would be seen clearly as one of the most important and urgent problems facing the nation today.
And yet it’s difficult even to begin a serious discussion about the matter without having to cut through a thick haze of cynicism and condescension.
Several pundits weighed in almost immediately after the platform plank was announced, making fun or arguing the party should have focused on reducing gun violence instead. One said he guessed few people consider pornography a pressing problem.
And that is indeed part of the problem. The nation as a whole is out of touch with the enormous harm pornography is doing, especially to the perceptions and behaviors of a rising generation. A growing acceptance has lulled the culture into a sense of complacency that makes the truth hard to accept.
If the mounting credible scientific evidence, published in peer-reviewed journals by researchers at accredited universities, were examined carefully, pressure ought to mount on both major political parties to adopt such a platform and on politicians of all stripes to begin vigorous efforts to eradicate this plague.
While the industry eagerly pushes the notion that science never has shown a connection between porn and bad behavior, the science is so overwhelming as to make such an assertion a stunning denial of the evidence.
Writing recently in the Washington Post, Gail Dines, a sociology professor at Wheelock College in Boston, outlined a bit of the evidence stretching over 40 years of research. For example, a study of college men in the U.S. found 83 percent had seen mainstream pornography in the past year, and that men in that group were more likely to admit they might rape or otherwise sexually assault someone if they knew they wouldn’t get caught.
Other studies link the viewing of porn by young teenage boys to the commission of sexual harassment and to reluctance to intervene if finding someone else committing a sex crime. As Dines wrote, “A 2010 meta-analysis of several studies found ‘an overall significant positive association between pornography use and attitudes supporting violence against women.’”
Other studies have shown a connection between males who view pornography and a diminished self-esteem in their female partners. Researchers now say the average first exposure to pornography is about age 11, and much of what is viewed is violent, degrading and objectifying, building damaging expectations of what young men, in particular, grow to expect from women. A content analysis of the most-viewed pornographic films found women were the targets of aggression and violence 94 percent of the time.
And while the culture becomes more accepting of this sort of “mainstream” porn, the fear is that problems on the fringes will become better able to escape scrutiny. These include “revenge porn,” or the posting of explicit photos of one’s former partner on the internet, human trafficking and child pornography.
A recent Time magazine cover story found many young men are unable to form lasting relationships because of their porn addictions. Much of an entire generation may be coming of age with a warped sense of what proper intimacy means, which further threatens the family unit.
Of course this is a public health crisis. Alarm bells ought to be sounding nationwide. Without minimizing the other troubles facing the nation, the mainstreaming of pornography and its tightening grip on the nation’s youths deserves a prominent place on the list of national concerns.