Perverting pleasure

I have a very strong, almost visceral opposition to something many Americans, I think, consider rather harmless. I see it as a scourge, a poison . . . anthrax for the soul and spirit. I see an oozing, cancerous boil that spreads rapidly if left unchecked, devouring purity and goodness like a flesh-eating disease. A slimy, strangling web that promises pleasure but delivers filth, entrapment, and slavery.

And on THE web, it is often a premeditated attack on the unsuspecting. It’s purposely introducing e-coli into the food supply. It’s tainting the nation’s blood supply with AIDS. It’s crouching on top of a building picking off innocent pedestrians with a high-powered rifle.

It’s pornography, and though my analogies may be a bit extreme, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s very harmful and very wrong. I believe most of those who partake of it sense that as well, but suppress the pangs of conscience until they don’t feel them anymore . . . just like hunger pangs eventually cease to call attention to our need, though the need remains.

Pornography, like most sin, takes what is good and beautiful and perverts it. The female body was designed to be attractive and even stimulating, and sex to be pleasurable and exciting. So what makes a photo of a naked woman in a suggestive pose a perversion? It has to be because it takes what is good and beautiful outside the purpose and parameters of the designer.

Consider a beautifully decorated, scrumptious birthday cake you spent all afternoon creating to bless your son on his special day and the family members who would gather to help him celebrate. Now imagine that your son and his little buddy next door stole the cake off the kitchen table before the party and hid under the back porch with it where they devoured the whole thing. Would that be acceptable to you? Why not? You made it for his pleasure; you made it to be pleasing to his eye and sweet and delicious on his tongue, and it was. But you also made it to be shared and enjoyed among family members and to be eaten in moderation so as not to overload the body on sugar. You had a good purpose and design for the cake and your son perverted it.

This, of course, presupposes design of and purpose for the body and sex, and requires a Designer, which many are unwilling these days to accept, and why my argument against pornography will likely be largely dismissed.

I suppose there are greater threats to our society and mankind. But no one would deny that a society is composed of interconnected elements that build on and support each other and when one element is removed or becomes severely deteriorated, the others are affected and the structure as a whole is compromised. Like it or not, a society’s sexual mores are part of its foundation. And when they’re loose, the foundation is likewise.