Editor’s warning: Some people may find the content of this article disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.
October 4, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Each time I write about the extent to which pornography is poisoning our society, there are always people who respond by telling me that I must be exaggerating. There is no way, they tell me, that porn is as ubiquitous as I say it is, and it is simply not possible that pornography is having such a mind-altering effect on so many people. Despite mounting evidence, many people simply prefer to believe that we are still living in a world where porn is a handful of old Playboys stuffed under a bed or hidden in a chest of drawers. Considering the scope of the problem we face, this view represents almost criminal negligence.
One of the reasons people prefer to plunge their heads in the sand when it comes to porn is because the numbers are in some ways too staggering to fully comprehend. In 2016, for example, people watched more than an accumulated 500,000 years of pornography on PornHub, which is roughly 12 porn videos for every man, woman, and child on planet earth. Is it true that explicit sexual material was found in every previous culture? Of course. But never in recorded human history have so many people had access to hardcore pornography from virtually the time they can grasp a smartphone.
And never in recorded human history have so many people been addicted to such sickening and evil content.
PornHub’s habit of bragging about the number of their users and the content their users are watching holds up a mirror to our society, and the reflection of what we do in private is truly grotesque. One of the genres of pornography that has been consistently exploding over the past decade portrays incest, and it is a simultaneously nauseating and revealing picture of the confusion that accompanies broken families. (Mary Eberstadt discusses the bewildering nature of the modern family, with biologically unrelated people moving in and out of people’s lives, in her chilling book Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics.)
Earlier this week, the anti-porn organization Fight the New Drug tweeted the latest stats from PornHub to draw attention to this trend. This week’s number one top viewed video on the site—with over seven million views—is titled “My Stepbrother Brazenly Took Advantage of My Helplessness.” In it, a girl gets stuck, and her stepbrother rapes her while she begs him to stop, tells him that she’s afraid, says no, and tells him that “it hurts.” Seven million people watched that video this week alone for recreation and entertainment. They watched a girl get raped by a family member to experience arousal and enjoyment. Think about that for a moment.
This is not some fringe genre of porn anymore, either. According to Fight the New Drug, incest-related categories rank near PornHub’s top searches nearly every year now. As other anti-porn activists have pointed out, these genres just get darker and darker—as well as more popular as the years go on. Again, this information tells us something profoundly disturbing about the broken nature of our society, the state of the family, and the extent to which pornography is an increasingly toxic poison slowly seeping through every layer of our culture. We can pretend this isn’t happening, but it is. And it is happening in our families, our communities, our churches—and to our children.
Frankly, I hate writing columns about pornography, and I wish those who claim I am exaggerating were correct. Unfortunately, they are not. I am not pointing out these facts simply to shock or disturb people—there are many, many far worse things about the pornography industry that I would never write because people do not need to dive all the way to the bottom of this sewer to know that it is vile filth all the way down. But people desperately need to wake up and realize that for Christian communities, the porn threat is an existential one—and the industry that is coming for our children and spreading its tentacles into our families is tremendously more evil—and powerful—than the glossy magazines that parents once feared.
Jonathon’s new podcast, The Van Maren Show, is dedicated to telling the stories of the pro-life and pro-family movement. In his latest episode, he interviews Fr. Frank Pavone, the National Director of Priests for Life, the largest pro-life ministry in the Catholic Church. Van Maren speaks with Fr. Pavone about his experiences as a pro-life priest and leader. Fr. Pavone shares how his dedication to the pro-life movement began in high-school and continued while he was in seminary. After he was ordained a priest, he preached about abortion almost every weekend from the pulpit, leading to a profound impact on his parish.
You can subscribe here and listen to the episode below: