By CASEY CHALK
Porn addiction and exploitation is a public-health crisis affecting millions of Americans, and the cultural and political consequences of unfettered lust affect everyoneânot just Christians.
âWomen are the major beneficiaries of getting rid of the hypocritical old notions about sex,â said pornographer Hugh Hefner. Though, he added, âOne of the unintended by-products of the womenâs movement is the association of the erotic impulse with wanting to hurt somebody.â To put it more precisely, an unintendedâbut entirely predictableâconsequence of the sexual revolution Hefner spearheaded was that it hurt exponentially more than it ostensibly helped. Even the ancientsâboth East and Westâknew that the unchecked proliferation of lustful passions was a recipe for social and political catastrophe.
Apparently, our current generation needs to learn that lesson all over again. Pop singer Billie Eilish recently admitted that porn is a âdisgraceâ that âreally destroyedâ her brain. Eilish divulged that she started watching porn when she was 11 years old (which, alarmingly, is the average age at which American children are exposed to it). She also described how violent and abusive porn normalized such behaviors in her first sexual encounters. Sheâs not alone in finding porn to be more of a prison than a panaceaâRussell Brand, John Mayer, Charlie Sheen, Tiger Woods, and Chris Rock are among the many celebrities who have suffered from porn addiction.