The pornography industry has never garnered the applause of faith leaders, so when Rabbi Shmuley Boteach spoke out against the multibillion dollar business in an Aug. 31 op-ed, no one flinched.
But when readers saw former Playboy model and actress Pamela Anderson’s name alongside Boteach’s in The Wall Street Journal byline, news outlets across the nation took notice.
“Porn is for losers,” Boteach and Anderson said in the op-ed. “[It] is a boring, wasteful and dead-end outlet for people too lazy to reap the ample rewards of healthy sexuality.”
Quoting statistics from the American Psychological Association, Boteach and Anderson noted that between 50 and 99 percent of men consume porn while between 30 and 86 percent of women do.
An Alabama Baptist pastor said in an unrelated interview with The Alabama Baptist that a fair question to ask a male candidate for a ministry position is “When was the last time you viewed porn?” not “Have you ever viewed porn?”
Boteach and Anderson believe the porn problem will only get worse. “The incidence of porn addiction will only spiral as the children now being raised in an environment of wall-to-wall, digitized sexual images become adults inured to intimacy and in need of even greater graphic stimulation,” they wrote. “They are the crack babies of porn.
“What is required is an honest dialogue about what we are witnessing … and an honor code to tamp it down in the collective interests of our well-being as individuals, as families and as communities.” (TAB)
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