{"id":612,"date":"2002-07-29T20:36:04","date_gmt":"2002-07-30T00:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/?p=612"},"modified":"2002-07-29T20:36:04","modified_gmt":"2002-07-30T00:36:04","slug":"612","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/?p=612","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

So apparently the pornography thing is a big topic at the moment… at least among a few sites that I read….. so here’s another one here. First, I’m going to post another one of the pamphlets from Porn Free Youth, and then, I am going to write a little bit.

Here’s the pamphlet:

Shedding Light On the Lies<\/b><\/u>

This is a day and age soaked in sex and sexuality. It is used both subtly and openly in all forms of advertising, as well as showing up as the primary subject matter and focus in all forms of the media. It is what is focused on in today’s relationships, being both the primary reason for and the goal of many of them. It is a primary influence on today’s fashions and ideas, reaching into and touching upon almost every aspect of our lives. Sexual lifestyles are as varied and available as toppings at a salad bar, and heterosexuality (unless it is a very active form of it) is viewed as somewhat prudish and boring. Pornography and its ideals have workedthemselves into the entire spectrum of society, influencing how we approach, interact with, and think about other people, animals, and even inanimateobjects. Sex is viewed, whether consciously or unconsciously, as the underlying purpose, goal, and meaning of life as a whole, and if we are not involved with it and experimenting with it, we are taught that something just simply must be wrong with us. Sexually-oriented fiction is being taught as fact throughout our society, cementing lies as truth in many of our minds.


Some words from Matt DeBenedictis of PFY\u2026.

My first exposure to pornography came when I was 15 years old. Like many others’ first experiences, I was exposed to porn when one of my peers introduced it to me. Pornography didn’t seem to me to be anything of great interest at first, but then puberty hit (and all of the begging questions concerning sexuality that come with it). Pornography seemed to provide an answer to those questions, in a way that was easily accessible. So it was that I began to view pornography every once in a while in order to fulfill my sexual curiosities.

By the time I was 17 the fantasy world of pornography had become the place in which I could hide from all my struggles in life. Not only was I learning how to act in a sexual way from the pornography I engaged in, but I was also seeing my whole worldview (including the context in which I viewed other people) being changed by pornography. The types of pornography I had first involved myself with became mediocre and boring to me in time, and so I moved on to pornography of a more hardcore nature, and so on and so forth. In accordance with my engaging in more and more hardcore pornography, my worldview again was being warped and changed. My whole life was being shaped and changed in subtle, deep-reaching ways by something that I had looked to at first for simple education.

I soon began to question the whole sexual ideology that I had embraced. I went to the writings of scholars and current sexologists, only to find again and again the reoccurring theme and phrase of “If you enjoy it, then it’s healthy for you”. That idea just didn’t add up to me, so I did some research. Eventually I found facts and truths concerning pornography that were not based on biases. I soon began to realize that all I had been taught to embrace sexually was not only hurting myself, but was also causing a downward slope of degradation within our society as a whole.

I eventually started to see through the lies we have been taught by the media and the sexual education system regarding pornography. We are being taught that pornography is harmless and, in the end, is actually beneficial to society. That mindset cannot be further from the truth. Pornography takes the most powerful form of communication (that of a sexual nature) and treats sex like a commodity to be bought and sold, pre-packaged and in whatever form you want it. Pornography tries to say that it does not have negative affects on anyone, and teaches that everyone and anyone can simply be viewed as an object with which to pursue one’s own sexual satisfaction. This is not a healthy or beneficial lesson for any society.

PFY seeks to shed light on these lies, and others concerning pornography and sexuality, because we do not want others to have to go through what we have been through. Everyone on the PFY staff has had their lives scarred in some way by pornography, and its resulting sexual ideology and expectations. In that, we know what it is for someone to struggle with sexual addiction, and the pain and destruction it can cause in one’s life. For that reason, Porn Free Youth does not involve itself in the picketing of porn shops, strip clubs, or other businesses of a sexually-oriented nature. We do not see the people who own, work at, or frequent these stores as the enemy, nor do we view the people (actors, actresses, directors, etc.) within the porn industry itself as enemies to be attacked. We see these people as simply men and women that we want to help; people who have been misled and lied to by the very business that they are involved in.
PFY is not a militant organization, nor are we a political one. We believe that genuine change occurs not through the passing of laws or the siding with political parties, but through expressing the truth to people in love, and helping them in any way we can.

–PFY<\/a>

The thought that I would like to add to this, is something that constantly sticks out to me, and that C.S. Lewis touched on in the book “Mere Christianity”. And that is this… one of the facts that you can read about in the PFY brochures… is that there are nearly THREE TIMES as many porn outlets in the United States as there are McDonalds in the united States. Think about that. You see a McDonalds every couple of blocks in most cities. So here’s the point. The obsession with sex that American society (and others) has is NOT a healthy thing. Food is something that you need to survive. Sex is something that is needed to survive, in that, it is how humans reproduce. Now, think about this. Sex is certainly needed… because, well, humanity certainly needs to go on… but it is needed in the proper context… just as food is needed in the proper context. If you eat ALL the time, it is unhealthy, if you eat the wrong things, it is unhealthy. There is nothing wrong with eating, it’s a good thing… the problem comes in the ABUSE of eating. It is the same way with sex. To borrow C.S. Lewis’ example… picture a society in which people sit and look through magazines filled with food and drool over them and are basically obsessed with them. Something is wrong there. It’s not healthy, it’s perverse, just as pornography is a perversion of sex.

Comments and thoughts are welcome.

And thanks to Age<\/a> for the shoutout from her site \ud83d\ude09

Godspeed.

(note: tomorrow I will post the list of facts they give concerning pornography.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So apparently the pornography thing is a big topic at the moment… at least among a few sites that I read….. so here’s another one here. First, I’m going to post another one of the pamphlets from Porn Free Youth, and then, I am going to write a little bit.Here’s the pamphlet:Shedding Light On the … Continue reading <\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}