Pornography = the scourge of our generation

The Deseret News has been running a series of articles detailing the real and damaging effects of pornography on our society. It's compelling reading. We've heard it for years from our church leaders and now more and more of society is getting on board, realizing the societal costs. Parents need to be fully aware of the evil that is so accessible in the comfort of their own homes. I feel that parents need to take every precaution that is necessary to protect their families from this hideous and descructive vice. It ruins marriages, families and the spirit and psyche of people who participate in it. It's the scourge of our modern society that leads to many of the other social ills that are becoming more and more common.

"A recently released study of pornography cites its damaging effects on mind, body and heart.

Titled "The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and Community," the study was authored by Patrick F. Fagan, a Family Research Council senior fellow and director of its Center for Research on Marriage and Religion.

"Pornography is a visual representation of sexuality which distorts an individual's concept of the nature of conjugal relations," wrote Fagan. "This, in turn, alters both sexual attitudes and behavior. It is a major threat to marriage, to family, to children and to individual happiness. In undermining marriage, it is one of the factors in undermining social stability."

Study says porn damages mind, heart - link here.

New initiative sheds light on pornography's impact on families - link here

Is porn a real addiction? - link here

Pornography 'grips you with claws' - link here

A generation gap in understanding porn of today - link here

Pornography research generates hate mail - link here.

"Those who are fearful, those who are addicted, those who are anxious are powerfully working against (efforts to understand pornography's effects)," she said. "There is an attempt in the industry to silence anyone who will talk. So every time I do an interview with a reporter, every time there's an article in the newspaper, I'll get hate mail.

"I'm an academic — and I get hate mail!"

Joseph Price, a BYU economics professor who specializes in distilling down large data sets dealing with pornography consumption, concurs with Layden's assessment that a gap still remains between establishing correlation and proving causation in the context of pornography's ability to harm the human psyche. Price, though, goes on to suggest that pornography research could follow a path to proving causation of negative consequences similar to that taken by the tobacco studies of yesteryear.

"Current studies don't necessarily speak to a causal effect of pornography, but they are suggestive of that," Price said. "I think that future research is going to better help us understand the causal effect of pornography on people. And in that sense, I view it as very similar to the research that was done a long time ago about tobacco. It actually took us a long time to come to an understanding of the causal impact of smoking on people's health."

Regardless of the road academics tread while continuing to study pornography's effects on individuals and society, Layden expects her steady flow of unhappy e-mails and letters to continue unabated.

"There's a backlash against those of us who speak out and say, 'Here's the research,' or those who do the research (about pornography)," she said. "Either interests that are moneyed or interests that are addicted or interests that are fearful or interests that are ignorant of the effect — they're all working against this."

The LDS church has launched a new web site called "Combating Pornography - replacing darkness with light" Check it out here. It has many good resources for addicts, spouses, families and others who are trying to help.