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THE INTERNET PLAGUE #2

IS THE SOFT STUFF SAFER?

Can a guy subscribe to a magazine like Playboy, receive it month after month for ten or twenty years, and indulge in that soft-core porn habit without having it escalate out of control? Maybe that's a question that came to some of you yesterday as we began this very unusual week of Voice of Prophecy radio programs. Yes, we all nod our heads to agree that hard-core, triple-X, Internet pornography is evil, that it kills marriages. But what's wrong with the kind of mainstream material you can buy in almost any bookstore or convenience mart?

There's a disturbing story we found in the recent book, Addicted to "Love" by Stephen Arterburn. He chronicles the life experience of a kid named Mark; in fact, he takes a whole 15 pages in his book to take us through this person's journey beginning at childhood and his first glimpses of so-called dirty pictures.

All through grade school and high school the habit escalated, slowly but steadily getting worse. The magazines got more hard-core, the photos more explicit, the visits to the adult bookstore more frequent. Finally, after about six pages of the story, this Mark found himself one day standing in front of an X-rated movie theater. He was terrified and ashamed; his heart was pounding, but he finally got up the courage to buy a ticket and go inside.

And he was stunned by what he saw up on the screen. Men and women in living color, moving and talking, were doing the very things he'd read about and fantasized about for years. Here it was right in front of him. And Stephen Arterburn, co-founder of the Minirth Meier New Life Clinic, writes how he reacted:

"He felt as though a line had been crossed, as though he had done something that could never be undone. It was as though this new experience had catapulted him to a higher level of stimulation, and he somehow knew he could never again be satisfied with what he had known before. Magazines and books wouldn't be enough anymore. He would have to have this experience again."

But now let me tell you something. The "Mark vignette" in Arterburn's book runs another nine pages! What came next? Well, Mark, managing to hide his addiction, was able to finagle himself a wife. He thought to himself that the pattern of pornography and masturbation would quit once he went on his honeymoon, but was stunned and discouraged to find that he was more hooked than ever. Less than two weeks after getting married, he found himself at the old X-rated haunts.

And did it spiral down even worse? Yes, before long adult films weren't enough; soon it was live dancers and strip clubs. Then, during an out-of-town business trip, his first affair. More nude dancers coming to his table, then to his motel room. Before the story was over, this man lost everything on an addiction that began with soft-core porn and ended up with hookers, a lost job, and a broken marriage.

What is it about pornography that inevitably takes a person to ruin? Why can't a little stay a little? This Mark, just one of millions who have gone through the entire cycle from A to X, had experience after experience where he saw something new, something rawer, more explicit than he'd ever imagined. "But it never seemed to be enough," Stephen Arterburn writes in telling the story. "Each new discovery, each new level of explicitness, only seemed to heighten his thirst for more."

This excellent book describes a number of various addictions, which pornography certainly is. And the author makes a telling point about this particular addiction:

"Like all addictions, sex addiction grows worse over time. The addict does not reach a certain level and then stay there. There is a built-in dynamic that always drives the addict to the next level, and the next, and the next." Now notice these next two conditions: "Unless the addict seeks help and makes a commitment to recovery, the end of the spiral is insanity or even death. . . . Greater and greater stimulation is required to produce ever-diminishing gratification. The addict has a tolerance for sex that leaves others aghast. Ten sexual experiences a day still leaves a sex addict unsatisfied; indeed, the appetite grows stronger, not weaker, with each attempt to satisfy it." He then concludes: "Sex addiction, like all addictions, escalates."

Friend, I hope you've never experienced personally — or as a spouse — what we're talking about today. But all sin is like that. The reality of one thing leading to another is fixed, absolute, unavoidable. I mentioned yesterday the powerful and shocking book, An Affair of the Mind, by Laurie Hall. She writes from firsthand knowledge about her own husband's long, horrible addiction to pornography. And she writes in a diary letter to her separated husband with some understandable bitterness:

"Lust never has enough. When the magazines weren't enough, you went to strip shows; and when they weren't enough, you bought the girls and took them back to your hotel room. And it didn't matter how many of them you had, it was never enough."

I want to make two important points as we go along here. First of all, as we consider the inevitable addiction, that helpless spiral down to destruction, friend, it becomes imperative that we stay away from even the first stages of pornography. Wouldn't you agree with that? We want to spend time tomorrow talking about the terrible effects of sexual fantasy, of pornographic mind games. And one of the writers we're borrowing from this week described fantasy as "the first step onto a moving sidewalk away from commitment." Maybe that first mental image, one we allow because it seems harmless, is just a fleeting thing. We permit ourselves to mentally caress a certain romantic possibility; we recall a groping premarital experience from high school or college. Especially when married life to the same old girl has been humming along or humdrumming along for 30 or so years, that can be a temptation. But this metaphor is a powerful warning: "the first step onto a moving sidewalk away from commitment."

Let's go back for a minute to the question of soft-core stuff. Playboy. Penthouse. Magazines like those, which are often sold right there at your supermarket. Aren't these somewhat safe, at least for the average among us? Laurie Hall, in doing her research, found that the average user of porn fit this demographic: "Predominantly white, middle-class, middle-aged, married male dressed in business suit or neat casual attire." And naturally, we think about an air-brushed Playboy magazine being read on an airplane, and it's filled with ads for Nissan and articles about politicians and advice on what kinds of car stereos to buy here in 1999. How dangerous can this mainstream stuff really be?

Well, consider these two points. First, that moving sidewalk. And the men's magazines, as we call them, might well be the first steps onto that sidewalk. The personal anecdotes in these books are too real to think otherwise. What a huge risk we take with the very first look.

But Laurie Hall makes an even more compelling point. A lot of hard-core porn, the triple-X variety, goes way beyond the limits of what most people experience in real life. Sado-masochistic behavior. Ugly, kinky, degrading sexual practices: bondage, pain, sex with children or even animals. But soft-core porn, because it stays within a certain realm of possibility, because it's closer to where we actually are, has more potential to hook us. "It causes viewers," she writes, "to experience a greater change in values than hard-core porn does." In fact, earlier in her book she makes this statement:

"Not only are R-rated movies a hook" — not X or NC-17, notice, but R — "not only are R-rated movies a hook, leading to harder stuff — as in Jack's case — but initially soft-core pornography causes more damage to the value system of the viewer than does hard-core porn. This is especially true in movies where sex is consensual."

That's a disturbing suggestion, isn't it, and hits close to home. Some magazines carefully avoid the "piece of meat" stigma; their girls are beautiful, young, friendly. She's looking right at you. The photo spreads are called bio features, where you can read all about this pretty young woman and where she went to college, what she likes to eat, what hobbies she might even have in common with you. And because the sex portrayed is close to what your own experience is, you're drawn in. You're pulled onto that moving sidewalk because your first reaction was a mild "Hmmmm" instead of a shudder of "Gross! Sick! Where's the trash can?" Let me say again, friend, let's invite God to rule in our lives and protect us from even those first steps toward danger.

It's a huge challenge, I know. Stephen Arterburn makes the point that even mainstream media sources push us toward that moving sidewalk. Here's a thought-provoking assertion:

"Our society helps condition us toward addictive sex. The media have helped make the unusual appear to be the norm. Multiple sex partners, repeated affairs, sex on every first date: these behaviors no longer shock the regular viewer of prime-time television."

Some of that might well ring a bell for us. Friend, we need the Lord's help every hour, don't we, not only when we walk past the magazine rack, but when we turn on our TVs at night. Let's close today with this challenge from Proverbs 4:23:

"Above all, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."