Porn & Morality

Freedom of conscience, enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, is deeply rooted in the nation’s DNA. The earliest colonists left Europe in search of religious freedom and their descendants codified protections against religious tyranny in the country’s founding documents.

Americans cherish the right to believe whatever they wish— which turns out to be a mixed blessing. For example, reaching consensus around a moral code for society is difficult when no one can agree on the source or arbiter of that code.

Most of our cultural forebears looked to a higher being as the ultimate source of moral knowledge and the final moral authority. But recent Barna research shows that today’s Americans are more prone to turn inward for such knowledge. Half of all U.S. adults believe that “ethics and morals are based on what seems right to a person based on their own judgment and ideas” (53%). Nine out of 10 believe “people should not criticize someone else’s life choices” (89%) and eight out of 10 say “people can believe whatever they want, as long as those beliefs don’t affect society” (79%). This inward-oriented search for truth or purpose also leads nine out of 10 adults to agree “the best way to find yourself is by looking within yourself ” (91%) and 86 percent to say “to be fulfilled in life, you should pursue the things you desire the most.”

When it comes to the sexual expression of that desire, nearly nine out of 10 Americans believe “each person has to decide his or her own sexual boundaries” (88%).

In other words, the only moral code most people agree on is that each person is the sole moral authority for himself. Each individual must decide for himself what is right and wrong, taking into account his needs, desires, hopes and dreams. In their book Good Faith, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons call this the morality of self-fulfillment.34

Accounting for society’s allegiance to this moral code is essential for understanding attitudes toward pornography in the U.S. today. Not only is there a lack of consensus on the moral goodness or badness of porn, but there are also myriad views about its impact on society. These are largely based on how porn is perceived to be or not to be a source of self-fulfillment—because self-fulfillment is the final word on morality in today’s culture.

Q

“These days people turn inward for moral reassurance rather than outward to public moral standards.” Could this actually be an opportunity for the Church? Jesus taught that our morality works from the inside out (compare Matt. 6:1–8 and 15:11, 17–20). By fighting for external moral standards, has our message become confused? Could we regain a hearing for Christian morality by drawing on Jesus’ teaching? Keeping in mind the underlying assumption that self-fulfillment is a moral nonnegotiable, let’s take a look at how U.S.teens and adults view the morality of porn.

Porn on the Scales of Morality

Teens, young adults and adults 25 and older rated a series of action statements according to a five-point scale: “always OK,” “usually OK,” “neither wrong nor OK,” “usually wrong ” and “always wrong.” Combining the percentages of those who chose always and usually wrong for each statement, a picture emerges of where using porn ranks on a list of possible immoral actions.

The short answer? Low.

Barely half of adults say viewing porn is wrong (54%) and it ranks only seventh on a list of 11 actions—behind overeating (58%), which is #4.

Teens and young adults are roughly 10 points less likely than older adults to think each of the actions is wrong. In addition, the ranking order below the top three are quite different between the younger and older age cohorts. (It is not necessarily surprising that the two groups agree on these top three actions as always or usually wrong, since these top three are the most likely to affect someone else negatively. Whereas the remaining items are all primarily questions of personal or internal morality. An exception might be “not recycling,” which may explain why teens and young adults rank it higher.)

Actions that may negatively impact the environment rank higher among teens and young adults than among older adults. The younger group has grown up in the age of climate change, manmade natural disasters, droughts, mandatory recycling, electric cars, pesticide-free farming and so on. Thus it is not surprising that they perceive a moral dimension to actions with environmental implications. (It is notable, however, that “not recycling ” ranks so highly.)

Older adults seem to retain a greater vestige of Judeo-Christian morality than younger Americans. For example, “overeating ” (58%) and “wanting something that belongs to someone else” (57%) are both sins according to Christian tradition: gluttony and covetousness. Nearly six in 10 adults 25 and older say these actions are immoral, compared to just half of teens and young adults who say overeating is wrong (48%) and one-third who believe coveting is wrong (32%).

The moral code of self-fulfillment is alive and well in both age groups. “Thinking negatively about someone with a different point of view” is perceived to be always or usually wrong by more than half of teens and young adults (55%) and adults 25 and older (55%). The highest moral good is not figuring out what is right, but accepting each person’s view as “right for them.”

For most teens and young adults, using porn seems to fall into this category. Only one-third believes viewing pornographic images is always or usually wrong (32%), compared to more than half of older adults (54%). About one-quarter says reading erotic content (27%) or watching sexually explicit TV or movie scenes (24%) is immoral.

There appears to be a momentous generational shift underway in how pornography is perceived, morally speaking, within our culture—at least when it comes to each person choosing for himself whether to use porn. Yet when it comes to assessing porn’s impact on society more broadly, people are more apt to hold a negative view.

Which presents an interesting paradox of belief: Porn is fine for individuals but bad for society.

Bad Porn

Half of the U.S. population ages 13 and older say porn is bad for society (50%). About two in five say it’s neither bad nor good (39%) and the remaining 11 percent believe porn is good for society, overall.

Perhaps surprisingly, older Millennials (25 to 30) are more likely than their older and younger counterparts to say porn is very bad for society (30%, compared to 24% Gen-Xers and 14% young adults 18 to 24). The reasons for the significant difference between older and younger Millennials are difficult to pin down, but it could indicate a tipping point some twentysomethings experience after having used porn for a number of years, or after having suffered negative repercussions of their partner’s porn use. It may be that younger adults haven’t yet experienced many negative consequences related to porn. When they reach their late 20s, serious relationships or marriage are more likely to be part of the equation and the relational impacts of porn may be felt more acutely.

Alternatively, the difference between younger and older Millennials may infer a considerable shift in wider cultural paradigms about pornography. Teens’ perceptions of porn’s impact on society seem to contradict this theory, however. Forty-three percent of 13-to 17-year-olds believe porn is bad for society, compared to only 31 percent of 18-to 24-year-olds.

Among the general population 25 and older, there is a significant difference between married and single (that is, divorced and never married) adults in their views on porn’s impact on society. Singles are much less likely to think that porn is bad in this regard. While nearly six in 10 marrieds (58%) think porn is very or somewhat bad for society, just 47 percent of all singles agree.

Q

In general people find thinking negatively about someone else as morally worse than using pornography, and young people rank not recycling and conspicuous consumption of electricity or water as morally
worse. What does this say about what we value as a society? How can the Church lead the way in reordering our priorities?

Marriage seems to have a lasting influence on a person’s views, even if he or she is no longer married: Divorced adults (53%) are more likely than those who have never been married (42%) to say porn has a negative impact on society. (It’s likely that some of these divorced Americans directly experienced porn’s relational destructiveness—explored further in the next chapter— but how many and in what ways are questions beyond the scope of this study.)

As previously discussed, women are less likely than men to view porn. They are also far more likely to believe porn is bad for society (66% vs. 42% of men), and less likely to be neutral on its effects (29% vs. 46%) or to say porn’s impact is a net good for society (5% vs. 12%).

The greatest difference between people on this question is not gender, however; it is between practicing Christians and all others. Three-quarters of practicing Christians (77%) say porn is bad for society—six in 10 say it is very bad (59%)—compared to about one-third of all other Americans 13 and older (37%). Half of the general population that does not practice Christianity says porn is neither good nor bad for society (49%), contrasted with one in five practicing Christians who is neutral on porn’s societal effects (19%). And those who do not practice Christianity are four times more likely than practicing Christians to say porn is good for society overall (14% vs. 3%).

About one in 10 among all Americans say porn is, on balance, a good thing for society (11%). Even these teens and adults, however, draw the line at certain types of pornographic content. Nearly all Americans who use porn say images that include children under the age of 12 are wrong (97%), and nine out of 10 say images that depict non-consensual sex (i.e., rape) are wrong (89%). Much smaller percentages disapprove of gay porn (28%) or of porn that includes more than two people at once (25%).

Porn Use and Guilt

Sociopaths aside, human beings tend to feel uncomfortable when they do something they believe is wrong. Acting contrary to one’s convictions usually causes stress to the human psyche. And often those feelings of stress are the result of guilt—an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes she has violated a moral standard.

The connection between discomfort and guilt led researchers to ask those who use porn how comfortable they feel with the amount they use. Their level of discomfort could indicate guilt-induced stress related to porn use.

By segmenting porn users by how often they report seeking out porn, Barna found that more frequent porn use correlates to higher levels of comfort related to porn use. In other words, if you use porn often, you’re more likely to feel okay about it. If you use porn less often, you’re more likely to feel uncomfortable with it. Eighty-nine percent of daily porn users, 77 percent of weekly porn users, 70 percent of once-or-twice-a-month porn users and 52 percent of those who use porn less often are comfortable with how much porn they use. And those who seek out porn less than monthly are more than 10 times more likely than those who do so daily to say they would rather not use porn at all (36% vs. 3%).

The dynamic between porn use and discomfort is a kind of chicken-and-egg question: Do those most predisposed to guilt about porn limit their porn use, or does using porn more frequently lead to less mental stress associated with guilt? It may be that both are true to some extent.

Compared to older age groups, fewer teens who seek out porn report being comfortable with the amount of porn they use (52% vs. ~69%). Roughly equal proportions say they wish they used less (25%) or none at all (22%).

Among twentysomethings who are not comfortable with their use of porn, it is more common to wish they used less than to say they would like to stop altogether. But among Gen-Xers and Boomers, the opposite is true: Those who are uncomfortable with how much porn they use are more likely to say they would rather not use porn at all.

Predictably, practicing Christians who seek out porn at least on occasion are much less comfortable than others with their use of porn. About two in five say they are comfortable (39%), compared to nearly three-quarters of teens and adults who are not practicing Christians (73%). They are also about twice as likely to say they’d like to stop (40%) than to say they’d like to use less (21%). Teens and adults who do not practice Christianity are equally likely to say they want to use porn less (13%) or to stop (14%).

Good Porn?

The data on practicing Christians’ views and feelings support what is likely an assumption held by many readers: Christians, by and large, believe pornography is immoral. Yet traditional Judeo-Christian morals are not the only word in the cultural conversation surrounding porn. Pro-porn activists argue that pornography is empowering for women, useful for sex education and ultimately valuable for society.

Let’s examine the evidence for these claims. (In chapter 4, we’ll look at the counterarguments.)

Empowerment

Sex-positive feminism arose in what has been called the “sex wars” of the 1980s to counter the claims of anti-porn feminists who place pornography at the center of the battle against oppression for women. For those in the sex-positive camp, sexual freedom is an essential component of women’s equality. As such, sex-positive feminists oppose legal or social efforts to control sexual activities between consenting adults. Pornography is simply one expression of liberated sexuality.

“The popular rhetoric about pornography as violent, degrading, and harmful to women and society,” writes scholar Mireille Miller-Young, “ignores the diverse ways that women actually interact with it. . . . . Women enter the pornography industry because they are enthusiastic about its potential for lucrative, flexible and independent work.”35

Coming from more traditional sectors like nursing and retail, women found that pornography offered them greater control of their labor, and surprisingly, it treated them with more humanity. Some women found that it enabled them to rise out of poverty, take care of their families or go to college. Others emphasize the creative aspects of pornography, and say it allows them to increase their economic mobility while also making a bold statement about female pleasure.36

According to this argument, porn is empowering because the performers are using their sexuality to their own ends, to make money and support themselves.37 If the Christian community is perceived as pitted against the equality and empowerment of women, our arguments against porn use are unlikely to gain traction.

Sex Education

A leading sexologist in Denmark has called for pornography to be shown in the classroom, claiming that starting a debate about the industry could help teenagers become “conscientious and critical consumers” who are able to tell the difference between pornography and the reality of sexual relationships. “We want our kids to have exciting and gratifying sex lives, so an open-minded, constructive dialogue is the best way to make sure that they are able to make meaningful decisions for themselves.”38

An op-ed in The Guardian recently took up the argument:

It’s time we wake up to the fact that a sex education curriculum that does not include porn is not a sex education curriculum, and furthermore is one that is failing in its safeguarding duty. Because better discussion of porn and consent is vital when set against a backdrop of child sexual exploitation. Teenagers have passionate views on sex and porn and want to talk about them. Embarrassing though it may be, it’s high time adults started talking back.39

If nothing else, proponents say, sex education that includes porn provides an alternative narrative to the violence, racism and sexism endemic to hardcore pornography, and can teach young people how to think critically about the sexually explicit media they consume. Rather than seeking to prohibit sex education altogether, the Christian community might consider how to provide an alternative narrative about sexuality overall and teach young people to think critically about society’s underlying assumptions about sex.

Positive Impact

In at least one scientific study, viewing porn was found to help limit the brain’s production of the hormone cortisol, which is associated with stress. Men who viewed erotic images performed nearly 50 percent better than those who didn’t on the math portion of a stress test.40 Even if this is not a convincing argument in favor of porn use, it may explain one aspect of porn’s appeal: as a reliable stress-reliever.

More compelling and harder to refute is data that shows a correlation between greater access to porn and lower rates of sex crimes, including exhibitionism, rape and child abuse. Across the world, as men gain more access to Internet erotica, sex crimes go down. The argument here is that porn provides a net positive value to society by offering an avenue of sexual release to those who might otherwise commit crimes against the most vulnerable, including women and children.41

Finally, there are some who argue that porn is an important component of “sex positivity,” which seeks to countermand messages and attitudes about sex that are based on shame. The sex-positive movement is gaining cultural ground: Two in five adults 18 and older agree that “sexual images and situations in media are important for showing people how to be positive about sex” (42%).

Insofar as Christians rely on shame-based arguments against porn use, we may find it increasingly difficult to gain a hearing in the wider culture as sex-positive views proliferate. The sexpositive message aligns seamlessly with the morality of self-fulfillment, and is thus more culturally resonant than traditional Judeo-Christian morals—especially when those morals are presented in terms of shame and guilt, rather than in terms of God’s good intentions for human flourishing. But as we’ll see in the next chapter, though the research does not show direct, sole causation when it comes to porn use and sexual violence, there are certainly reasons to believe porn contributes to, and is implicated in, the prevalence of sexual violence.

Special Report: Pastors & Porn

When they think about U.S. Protestant pastors as a group, nearly two-thirds of the pastors Barna interviewed say porn use is a major (6%) or significant (58%) problem among these leaders—but it’s not the most pressing problem. About three-quarters say burnout (79%), marital problems (78%) or pride (73%) are bigger problems than porn use, and two-thirds say finances (65%) and disagreements among the church leadership (64%) outweigh porn as difficult issues pastors are dealing with.

Rather than only asking pastors about “pastors” as a macro group, researchers also asked church leaders about themselves. (All surveys were anonymous.) One in five youth pastors (21%) and one in seven senior pastors (14%) admitted they currently use porn. About half do so at least a few times per month, and the vast majority feels guilt or shame when they do so. More than half of youth pastors who use porn (56%) and one-third of senior pastors who use porn (33%) believe they are addicted.

A high percentage of pastors (14%) and an even higher percentage of youth pastors (21%) admit they use porn on a regular basis. The research indicates that the isolated nature of ministry is a key factor. Pastors and churches build the isolation together. All too often, pastors fear honesty and congregations fear their pastor’s vulnerability. How can churches become safe places for pastors to come out of isolation and into gracious accountability?

Porn use by any church leader is a problem, but senior pastors’ responses are cause for particular concern. Senior leaders are more likely than their youth leader counterparts to say that their job makes it easy to use porn in secret and that neither their spouse nor even a trusted friend is aware of their struggle. There also seems to be a tendency among senior leaders to underestimate or downplay the impact of porn use both on their ministry and on their relationships. And although a majority says they feel guilt or shame related to their porn use, senior pastors are less likely than youth leaders to say so. These data combine to paint a portrait of senior leaders in isolation, too many of them unaware of or in denial about the spiritual and relational risks they are running—risks that have the potential to harm not only themselves but others. In recent years we have seen ample evidence that, for some pastors and priests, the spiritual power they wield can too easily lead to sexual coercion and abuse. If, as some experts suggest, porn is implicated in sexual violence, the Christian community and its leaders must bring these struggles into the light.