Man using phone late at night to illustrate the dangers of pornography access on mobile devices. By terovesalainen/stock.adobe.com
God designed humans as sexual beings, and sex carries powerful, joyous, life-giving potential. Biologically, psychologically, and spiritually, sex is one of the most dominating forces in the human experience. To protect and elevate sex, the Bible’s ethic prohibits sex outside the boundaries of marriage.
Sex is supposed to be a source of vitality, intimacy, love, and beauty.
Instead, sex has been hijacked by pornography in the modern world, mechanized and digitalized into oblivion.
The world talks about pornography as though it were a private, personal decision, but that’s a cunning lie from history’s best deceiver.
And even secular institutions are beginning to recognize its harms.
The public harms of pornography
Porn, like a virus, latches onto a person’s brain and spiritual flesh. It degrades sex into a cheap commodity and people (mostly women) into objects for pleasure. More than that, pornography preys on the vulnerable, fuels sex trafficking, and funds the modern slave trade. Its content is often racist, violent, and grossly dehumanizing.
The statistics on the widespread use of porn are shocking. However, the contents of “hard core porn” are so foul, even describing them vaguely seems inappropriate. As one Gen Z author writes, “The porn children view today makes Playboy look like an American Girl doll catalog.”
With so many harms, it’s shocking that more people in our “enlightened” Western society don’t speak against its obvious harms, especially in the way it affects how men view women (and the way women view themselves). That dissonance is what Christine Emba writes about in a recent opinion essay for the NYT titled, “The Delusion of Porn’s Harmlessness.”
“As a society, we are allowing our desires to continue to be molded in experimental ways, for profit, by an industry that does not have our best interests at heart. We want to prove that we’re chill and modern. . . But we aren’t paying attention to how we’re making things worse for ourselves.” It is such a fantastical, obvious delusion, I would argue, that only the world’s most savvy, powerful liar could have pulled it off.
Sweden passes “OnlyFans bill”
In a happy coincidence, the NYT ran Embra’s essay, Sweden passed a law restricting certain kinds of porn, and Trump’s administration passed the bi-partisan “Take It Down Act” all in the same week.
Let’s unpack Sweden’s bill. According to USA Today, “Under [Sweden’s] new law, it will be illegal to offer compensation to another person to perform a sexual act remotely online.” It’s often called the “OnlyFans” bill, because the law clearly targets the massively popular site that uses livestreams and live payments to solicit online sex acts.
In essence, to curb sex trafficking and exploitation, the law will make digital prostitution illegal. A small, but important, policy step that US lawmakers should consider.
Trump signs “Take it Down Act” into law
This week, the Take it Down Act passed with rare bipartisan support. Championed by the First Lady, Melania Trump, the law requires certain companies to remove nonconsensual, explicit videos of people when they request it.
In particular, the law targets “revenge porn,” which refers to the act of posting an explicit image or video of someone to humiliate and shame them. As I’ve written about in the past, many teens are pressured to send nude pictures of themselves to their significant others. These photos are then often later leaked in retribution.
As if this weren’t troubling enough, AI now allows people to create fake porn videos using people’s likeness. Explicit AI-generated videos of Taylor Swift, for example, flooded the internet last year. As Fortune reported last year, “Sexual exploitation and the normalization of violent imagery are on the rise, with AI opening up new ways to exploit and harass women.”
The absolutely vital law, which drew overwhelming support from both parties, was signed into law by President Trump this week.
These are relatively small steps, but they are battles won in the war against the exploitative porn industry. Sex work takes advantage of the most broken, vulnerable people.
Recently, on The Denison Forum podcast, Leigh Scarborough, founder of Shield of the Children, gave a sobering account of the modern sex slave industry. He recounts meeting a seven-year-old girl who tried to sell him sex in Vietnam. Porn is one arm of the sex slave industry that crosses borders.
The appeal of porn is deceptive
The root of porn and prostitution, and other forms of twisted sexuality, is its appeal to human intimacy and connection. Even the shadow of sexual intimacy is powerful enough to pull people into sexual addictions.
In its essence, pornography is deceitful, making the user feel an empty, hollow, relational connection through the screen. In Sex and Marriage, Chris Legg and I unpack research that suggests even people soliciting prostitution want to pretend like they’re in a real relationship.
The solution to unwanted porn consumption isn’t shame, but grace. As Dr. Stringer discusses in Unwanted, shame creates a deeper cycle of addiction and desire to numb it through participation in things that caused the shame in the first place.
Sexual sin is sin—it’s a broken, hollow, and twisted version of what God intended for sex. But it’s important to remember why so many people run to it: It creates a strong illusion of connection.
What can you do?
Perhaps it’s unrealistic to hope for a legal ban on pornography, but there are still opportunities for bipartisan, united efforts to tackle sexual exploitation.
We’ve linked to a few ministries and organizations that aim to undermine the exploitative sex industry:
If you use porn, are addicted to porn, or are close with someone who is, we’ve included a list of resources below:
- What does the Bible say about pornography? Can you break free from sexual temptation?
- God’s power and grace to break sexual addiction
- Fighting pornography and sexual sin: A conversation with Matt Jacobson
- Covenant Eyes
- Freedom Course
Meanwhile, we know God’s tender grace extends to sex workers, sex addicts, and those of us who, often hypocritically, judge the former two. Pornography is entirely incompatible with the life God has called us to live and should have no place in a Christian’s life (or the lives of anyone else, for that matter).
So, again, if you or someone you know is struggling with pornography, please seek help from the Lord, believers you’re close with whom you trust, and perhaps even a counselor to break free from its chains.
Christ offers a path to freedom from all sins, pornography included. Will you embrace that freedom today?
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