Q&A with Mark Regnerus

Pornography and masturbation are nothing if not the “cheapest” forms of sex. But modern pornography is distinctive in that it not only supplies cheap sex but stimulates interest in it, too. That is not how supply-and-demand curves typically work. Instead, porn creates—then meets—demand with a near-infinite supply, kept afloat by its propensity toward compulsion. Even the market in prostitution does not function like that.

The second half of the 20th century birthed three forms of technology that function to drive down the “price” of sex. Fertility control and online pornography each, in their own way, seek to “free” sexual relationships—the Pill from unwanted pregnancies, and porn from the demands of self-control and the challenges that come from navigating relationships and the real-time wishes of real people. Throw in online dating- and meeting software, which makes the process of accessing cheap sex more efficient, and you have the ingredients that have combined to bring us to this place.

The hook-up culture isn’t just “out there” anymore. It’s inside the Church: masked, moderated (a bit) and justified, prompting congregations everywhere to do soul searching over whether they’re genuinely utilizing technology to better evangelize the world or, instead, to conform to it.

It is difficult for those of us who grew up before the Internet to truly identify with how sexual education and assumptions about relationships have changed because the Internet exists. Women are entirely correct when they perceive that pornography creates competition. There may have been an era in which a man dabbling with porn would have had trouble retaining the sexual interest of a woman, but that era is no more. Women now consider it the new cost of doing business with men. To be sure, breaking off a relationship because of pornography use can be a rational and moral reaction—but few recognize that doing so also contributes to the broader retreat from marriage and significant relationships about which many of us claim to be concerned. Hence for both good and bad reasons, the flight from marriage in the Church continues unabated. This is the pornographic “double bind,” wherein women find themselves stuck between unhappy scenarios—the unwanted porn use of the man they are with, the elevated odds of the same among the man they might leave him for, and the risk of being alone. On the matter of men and pornography, the data suggest you may not be able to flee far enough.