Concise (secular) argument against pornography/modern views of sexuality

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Hello CAF! If this topic is in the wrong place, or has been repeated before, I do apologize, and would ask that you redirect me to the proper place.

I come to you today with a request. Recently, the topic of sexuality has caught my interest. I have started reading up (very slowly) on the Church’s view of sexuality, specifically through Blessed John Paul II’s book Love and Responsibility and then eventually by reading all of his Theology of the Body audiences.

While this does give me a good theological view of sexuality, I would like suggestions as to how to argue for the Catholic view of sexuality in a secular way. So many times in my environment (secular college campus, you do the math) I come across views about human sexuality that differ from the Church’s, and which even differ from just plain common sense. I know these views are wrong, and I have a general idea why they are wrong (from a secular standpoint), but I haven’t been able to come up with a clear, concise secular response to such views of human sexuality.

Are there any books, blogs, movies, or websites you can suggest that would present a secular argument for the chaste life that I could study to better educate myself to respond to those around me? I am looking for both rational, objective arguments, and more emotional arguments (like those of Jason and Christina Evert, whom I have seen give a talk). Any help? As always, feel free to give your viewpoints as well (within reason and with charity, of course). Prayers are always welcome!

Thank you in advance and God Bless.
 
Because both the “performer” and the consumer are being exploited by the producers in the basest ways for money.
 
Della said:
Because it doesn’t make people truly happy: Chesterton and the Defense of Marriage.
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Ummmmm…that’s hardly secular.

Look, to make a secular argument the first thing you have to do is accept that the people that you are making the argument to do not share the same basic moral assumptions that you do. Case in point: That article assumes that the reader is against same-sex marriage. That’s a bad assumption to start with when 2010 was the first year that over half of Americans supported marriage equality.

I can’t give you a secular argument for why Catholic sexual morality is right for everyone, including non-Catholics. But I am fairly conservative when it comes to sexual morals. What I can do is give a decent secular argument against many practices that Catholics find offensive. I firmly believe that pornography is wrong-but only for people in relationships (unless their partner is ok with it). I can give you a secular argument against casual sex and adultery. I can give you a decent argument against cohabitation, or at least the way that most people do it. (And if you are interested in talking about it more PM me, I don’t want to start a whole big thing on the thread.)

I can’t argue against gay marriage, all premarital sex, birth control, all cohabitation, or all pornography use. There just aren’t sound secular arguments against those. But the great thing about living in this country is that while others are free to engage in those things, you are equally free not to. You also have the freedom to express to others that you feel those things are wrong and why.

I think that the problem that a lot of religions are having now is that in order to change people’s actions, you have to change their beliefs. No one is just going to change their mind and suddenly believe that having sex with their long-term partner is wrong because they aren’t married. They would first have to believe in a good reason for believing that (god, or a specific religion), and it’s just getting harder to evangelize to the masses.
 
BlueEyedLady makes a wonderful point.

I had the reverse problem with my parents (also LDS like me). They disapproved of many things that my friends did, and honest to goodnes could not understand why they would do those things. Despite me trying to explain to them, they never could see past their own morals to understand that if someone does not feel they have ever been given a good reason not to do something, then they have no reason not to do it. The statement seems like stating the obvious, but I find it astounding how many religious people just don’t seem to understand it.

As BlueEyedLady points out, without the same moral standpoint as you, there really is no common ground to start explaining things on.
For example, those of us who are religious view today’s society as very permissive in things that would not have been acceptable 20-30 years ago (things like violence, profanity and sex in movies and on TV; women’s outfits becoming more and more revealing - even schoolgirl’s skirts are getting shorter and shorter; drinking to excess becoming more and more prevalent etc.). While we consider that this is all to the detriment of society, there is really no way to objectively evidence this, and most people who are not religious consider much of this to be a good thing because people are be owing more and more free to express themselves and do things that they enjoy.
There isn’t really anything that both sides will agree on.
 
Well, I give it a shot.
  1. Gay relationships cannot produce children. By it’s very nature, you must go outside the “marriage” to produce children. If this is true, then adultery no longer a valid reason for divorce. Certainly polygamy should be more acceptable.
  2. Society used to value children. We say we still do, but we don’t. Today we’ve successfully broken the link between marriage, sex and children. Women who have children and are not married are portrayed as “strong women,” not someone who has made a mistake. Sex has become nothing more than self indulgence without regard to to what the act is actually for, i.e., making babies. Marriage has become nothing more than an official proclamation about with whom you’re having sex. And children, they’ve become disposable. If they’re conceived at an inconvenient time, we can kill them.
  3. Raising children is hard and expensive. Most benefits we give married people are benefits that are meant to make raising children easier, not because we’re glad they found “the one.” Prior to fertility tests, you couldn’t tell who could have children or not so we went with the benefit of a doubt and assume every couple would attempt to have children. Gay-marriage advocates don’t consider the child part of marriage when demanding equality.
When you remove procreation from marriage, yes, gay marriage makes sense.
 
“At a 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, two thirds of the 350 divorce lawyers who attended said the Internet played a significant role in the divorces in the past year, with excessive interest in online porn contributing to more than half such cases. Pornography had an almost non-existent role in divorce just seven or eight years ago.” (Divorcewizards.com)

The Internet was a significant factor in 2 out of 3 divorces (American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers in 2003 - divorcewizards.com).
 
_Abyssinia said:
“At a 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, two thirds of the 350 divorce lawyers who attended said the Internet played a significant role in the divorces in the past year, with excessive interest in online porn contributing to more than half such cases. Pornography had an almost non-existent role in divorce just seven or eight years ago.” (Divorcewizards.com)

The Internet was a significant factor in 2 out of 3 divorces (American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers in 2003 - divorcewizards.com).
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Did the internet do it, or did pornography? Every time I’ve heard about the internet being involved in divorce its because people were starting relationships, rekindling with old lovers, or sending inappropriate messages or emails to other people.

You are equating the internet with pornography. While porn in a marriage isn’t a good thing, your argument isn’t holding up.
 
paperbackwinter said:
Well, I give it a shot.
  1. Gay relationships cannot produce children. By it’s very nature, you must go outside the “marriage” to produce children. If this is true, then adultery no longer a valid reason for divorce. Certainly polygamy should be more acceptable.
My mother is menopausal and just got married. Her marriage cannot produce children. Not to mention her husband had a vasectomy 30 years ago. Should they not be allowed to marry. And that statement about how going outside of a marriage for children justifies adultery is offensive to the many infertile couples who adopt children, or even the people like me who see having my own children as wrong when there are so many out there that need families. I plan to adopt. Should I not be allowed to marry?
  1. Society used to value children. We say we still do, but we don’t. Today we’ve successfully broken the link between marriage, sex and children. Women who have children and are not married are portrayed as “strong women,” not someone who has made a mistake. Sex has become nothing more than self indulgence without regard to to what the act is actually for, i.e., making babies. Marriage has become nothing more than an official proclamation about with whom you’re having sex. And children, they’ve become disposable. If they’re conceived at an inconvenient time, we can kill them.
That’s how you perceive the world. Nothing about that rant was a secular argument for Catholic sexual morality.
  1. Raising children is hard and expensive. Most benefits we give married people are benefits that are meant to make raising children easier, not because we’re glad they found “the one.” Prior to fertility tests, you couldn’t tell who could have children or not so we went with the benefit of a doubt and assume every couple would attempt to have children. Gay-marriage advocates don’t consider the child part of marriage when demanding equality.
    And that is based on the assumption that children are part of a marriage. Many people no longer have that assumption, myself included. This is also not an argument for Catholic sexual morality. How would you convince someone like me that I should be open to having my own children when I don’t share your religious views on the importance of having biological ones with my husband? Furthermore, should we deny infertile couples legal benefits?
When you remove procreation from marriage, yes, gay marriage makes sense.
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And you still have to make a secular argument for why procreation and marriage should go hand in hand. Without that foundation, the rest of your argument doesn’t stand up. And because its supposed to be a secular one, a religious argument won’t make sense here.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
Ummmmm…that’s hardly secular.

Look, to make a secular argument the first thing you have to do is accept that the people that you are making the argument to do not share the same basic moral assumptions that you do. Case in point: That article assumes that the reader is against same-sex marriage. That’s a bad assumption to start with when 2010 was the first year that over half of Americans supported marriage equality.

I can’t give you a secular argument for why Catholic sexual morality is right for everyone, including non-Catholics. But I am fairly conservative when it comes to sexual morals. What I can do is give a decent secular argument against many practices that Catholics find offensive. I firmly believe that pornography is wrong-but only for people in relationships (unless their partner is ok with it). I can give you a secular argument against casual sex and adultery. I can give you a decent argument against cohabitation, or at least the way that most people do it. (And if you are interested in talking about it more PM me, I don’t want to start a whole big thing on the thread.)

I can’t argue against gay marriage, all premarital sex, birth control, all cohabitation, or all pornography use. There just aren’t sound secular arguments against those. But the great thing about living in this country is that while others are free to engage in those things, you are equally free not to. You also have the freedom to express to others that you feel those things are wrong and why.

I think that the problem that a lot of religions are having now is that in order to change people’s actions, you have to change their beliefs. No one is just going to change their mind and suddenly believe that having sex with their long-term partner is wrong because they aren’t married. They would first have to believe in a good reason for believing that (god, or a specific religion), and it’s just getting harder to evangelize to the masses.
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There are secular cases against gay ‘marriage,’ here is one:

tech.mit.edu/V124/N5/kolasinski.5c.html

There are secular arguments against birth control, they are not reliable for the reasons that most people use them for; for reducing the chance of STDs and ‘‘unplanned’’ pregnancy. According to the Guttmacher Institute (research arm of Planned parenthood), 54% of women that got an abortion had used contraception. Who knows how many kept the baby, but had got pregnant after using contraception. Contraception has failure rates. Second argument is the health impact of birth control: there are many different types of contraception from birth control pills to condoms which have negative health effects on the body.

Good argument against cohabitation is the fact that many studies have found that living together before marriage raises the risk of divorce among other things:
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* People who lived together before marriage have a higher rate of divorce than those who did not live together.
* People who lived together before marriage report that it is more likely they will divorce than people who did not live together.
* People who lived together before marriage have more negative communication in their marriages than those who did not live together.
* People who lived together before marriage have lower levels of marital satisfaction than those who did not live together.
* Infidelity during marriage is more common among people who lived together prior to marriage than those who did not.
* Physical aggression is more common among married individuals who lived together before marriage than those who did not.
boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001126.cfm

When a man is married as a virgin, his divorce rate is 63 percent lower than a non-virgin. For women, it’s 76 percent lower. Edward O. Laumann, et al., The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 503.
 
Marriage is a religious institution. So why should it require a secular argument?
 
BlueEyedLady said:
Did the internet do it, or did pornography? Every time I’ve heard about the internet being involved in divorce its because people were starting relationships, rekindling with old lovers, or sending inappropriate messages or emails to other people.

You are equating the internet with pornography. While porn in a marriage isn’t a good thing, your argument isn’t holding up.
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Pornography was the cause of 2 out of 3 divorces according to those divorce lawyers, they would know. If you ask people who counsel couples, they would say that porn has impact on marriages and increases the divorce rate.

This study found sales of Playboy magazine is significantly related to increase in divorce rates:

tinyurl.com/7fhp9pz
 
Secular social scientists have concluded that the best anti-poverty “program” is to get married, stay married, and only have children within marriage. So, anyone who wants to help the poor get out of poverty, the traditional approach to sexuality, sex-in-marriage-only, is the best. The anything-goes-approach to sexuality is a major cause of poverty. Both liberals and conservatives want an end to poverty (though perhaps many conservatives really just want an end of programs that assist people in poverty and don’t mind seeing millions mired down in poverty).

Here’s one article about this:

heritage.org/research/reports/2010/09/marriage-america-s-greatest-weapon-against-child-poverty

Here’s another source:

npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5675687

But may I add my personal opinion? Arguments, either from a secular point of view, or based on religion, theology or philosophy, never change anyone’s heart, never bring them to repentance or faith, and only by coming to repentance and faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior will most people give up the loose sexual mores of our dominant culture. Porno is everywhere, and sex is now a normal part of dating and partying for most Americans, as can be seen in virtually all the TV shows, movies, and pop songs. So, I would say that the wise and caring people will promote old-fashioned evangelization. I think the wiser people are now seeing that the Culture War, politics, elections, lobbying, passing laws, etc., just doesn’t accomplish anything. The old time saints, evangelists and missionaries showed the way.
 
BlueEyedLady, you bring up a very good point, that I can’t begin to make an argument with someone who doesn’t see things the way I do unless we share a common ground (duh), and the the problem with this is that much of society holds the complete opposite assumptions of what the Catholic Church holds. I suppose the biggest challenge is finding some common ground that we can both work with, which, I will admit, is getting increasingly difficult in our ever-permissive society.

To try and refocus the discussion, please note that I am looking more for secular arguments against things like casual and extra-marital sex, pornography, and the general societal trend away from traditional sexual morals. I’m not looking for arguments against gay marriage or abortion, which can be related, but not what I’m really looking for. I feel if I can find common ground with people on things like casual sex and pornography, it might be easier to lead them to more Catholic teachings.

Thank you for your responses so far. If anyone has any suggestions for things like books that I can read, that would be more helpful to me (your responses are great, but a book would just make an argument easier for me to digest).

EDIT: I just remembered a book I heard about a while ago. It was a book done by the authors of a big study that showed the effects of modern society on young girls and women, and how things like contraception, birth control, and pornography affected them. If anyone knows about this, please share it with me.
 
Firstly, I did offer a succient secular reason–it does not make people truly happy. That’s the gist of it right there. People think they are doing what will make them happy but end up miserable, burned out, and disillusioned when they engage in casual sex as if there are no consequences.

I am not saying that there aren’t troubles within marriage, but that too is because people have poor expectations and really don’t know what marriage is intended for.

And G. K. Chesterton was not arguing from the moral point of view, but rather gave very good reasons why immorality/the “free love” lifestyle (call it what you will) isn’t good for human beings. The article touched on his reasoning but he wrote exstensively about it. His writings are easily accessible online.
 
jilly4ski said:
lifesitenews.com/news/children-sexually-molesting-other-children-and-porn-is-at-the-root-australi

Here is an article by lifesitenews (so take it how you will) that some counselors in Australia are linking children sexually preying on other children because of the influence of porn.
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In South Africa, it’s common for elementary school kids to prey on other kids sexually. Just several weeks ago, someone who is a teacher told me how a girl with two boys used a hammer to force another girl to have sex with one of the boys at school These kids were 11-12yo.

The problem lies in that many people sleep in close proximity. You have one shack with 8 kids and their parents and the parents have sex near the kids. There is no other way of course. I’m sure this is an issue in all developing nations.
 
Della said:
Firstly, I did offer a succient secular reason–it does not make people truly happy. That’s the gist of it right there. People think they are doing what will make them happy but end up miserable, burned out, and disillusioned when they engage in casual sex as if there are no consequences.

I am not saying that there aren’t troubles within marriage, but that too is because people have poor expectations and really don’t know what marriage is intended for.

And G. K. Chesterton was not arguing from the moral point of view, but rather gave very good reasons why immorality/the “free love” lifestyle (call it what you will) isn’t good for human beings. The article touched on his reasoning but he wrote exstensively about it. His writings are easily accessible online.
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Della, I would agree with you. However, this argument is essentially emotional (it’s not objective because happiness is subjective). While that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad argument, one just has to realize that it can only go so far. Few people are going to stop having casual sex because someone tells them they aren’t happy (or, rather, that they can be happier), primarily because in the then and there, all the person sees is the immediate pleasure and happiness they get from their casual encounters. It takes them a while to fully realize that they might just not be happy with their lifestyle of casual sex and no-strings-attached hookups. Something like this is experience-based: they have to find out about it on their own.

I suppose to make something like this be a little more objective, I could use arguments that show that not only does casual sex make one more unhappy (higher risk of STD’s and STI’s, pregnancy scares (and abortions), and have sex under the influence of drugs and alcohol, etc.), but that living chastely makes one happier (nytimes.com/2011/03/07/opinion/07douthat.html).

Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut.
 
CatholicTrekkie said:
Della, I would agree with you. However, this argument is essentially emotional (it’s not objective because happiness is subjective). While that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad argument, one just has to realize that it can only go so far. Few people are going to stop having casual sex because someone tells them they aren’t happy (or, rather, that they can be happier), primarily because in the then and there, all the person sees is the immediate pleasure and happiness they get from their casual encounters. It takes them a while to fully realize that they might just not be happy with their lifestyle of casual sex and no-strings-attached hookups. Something like this is experience-based: they have to find out about it on their own.

I suppose to make something like this be a little more objective, I could use arguments that show that not only does casual sex make one more unhappy (higher risk of STD’s and STI’s, pregnancy scares (and abortions), and have sex under the influence of drugs and alcohol, etc.), but that living chastely makes one happier (nytimes.com/2011/03/07/opinion/07douthat.html).

Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut.
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I disagree that this is an emotional agrument. It’s quite practical. There is plenty of statistical evidence that people in a committed relationship, i. e. marriage live longer and are more stable in their lives. It is up to educators to tell young people this instead of pandering to their hormones. Casual sex lasts a moment, but happiness is a life-long need that cannot be met by indulging in promicious behavior. It’s been proven time and time again. It’s our society that does not want to believe it, and I can hardly blame them when every medium of communication keeps blaring the message that instant “happiness” is all that matters. It simply isn’t true. Plain and simple.
 
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