So I'm sure anyone who is actually reading this is probably one of my friends and will probably already agree with most of this because of religious value and what not, but I'm doing a research paper for a National Convention on whether or not prostitution should be legalized by the United Nations and I just thought I'd share some of my feeling about my research:
Most religious conversations antagonize porn because it degrades women and weakens the family structure and destroys a healthy sexual relationship between a man and a woman...but does anyone ever consider what it actually takes to create porn? Well, obviously you need some naked people (whether adults, male, female, or even children), and in some cases you need some sex act going on (child abuse, anyone?) and then you need some producer that is motivated by making money and is willing to do whatever it takes to make a profit, even if it's at the expense of the people in the pornographic material, whether it be videos or photographs. Interestingly enough, some of these "actors" or "actresses" don't actually want to be in these films. They may have been promised at one point that they were going to make lots of money, or perhaps they were just lucky enough to be born into poverty or abusive and vulnerable situations in which they were sold into pornography straight up. There was a story about one girl who was kidnapped and then taken to Florida where somebody beat the crap out of her until she consented to making a movie...
This situation is not unique. In fact, it even has a name now. It's called human sex trafficking and it is one of the fastest growing organized crime industries in the world. Why is it growing so fast? Oh yeah, it's because people are willing to rationalize things like pornography and prostitution as ways to express their sexual selves. Gross.
So, the next time you think about pornography, obviously it is something that harms families, but if you don't have a family, then just realize that you're basically witnessing/endorsing a rape crime on the internet. Rationalize that.
