I once asked a detective friend of mine who had worked in sex crimes what pornography was. He replied: “Pornography is like the truth, you know it when you see it.” But the recent incident in Spokane where two Japanese students at the Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute were kidnapped and sexually assaulted, bring home loud and clear that pornography is absolutely nothing like the truth. Absolutely nothing.
Pornography is lies and lying where someone says one thing is something that it truly is not and can never be. Pornography says that violence, humiliation and degradation is sexy, natural and loving. It’s a pure, flat-out lie. Love, kindness, self-worth and honesty are sexy, real and infinitely powerful. If people immerse their lives or any part of it in lies and liars, they will only know more lies and liars, but never the truth and never love and kindness. If we believe that immersing ourselves in bad logic and lies does not harm the core of our being and the being of another, then we perpetuate the lie of pornography, which says violence and degradation is sexy and erotic. As human beings, we always have choice, and our actions speak louder than our noble sentiments or pious words.
Thoreau once said, “It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, the other to hear.” We do not exist in this present day society alone, and what we choose to hear and to see or to associate ourselves with is always based on our own free choices. But a little more simple logic and a little more common sense wouldn’t hurt either, because pornography in any form will always be a perverse lie.
Lake Stevens
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