As director of education at my parish, I came across faith formation resources on sexuality provided by the synod. “There has been a need in our church for entering into conversations about sexuality with our youth.” My own sexual education as a youth can be summed up in that old anti-drug slogan: “Just Say No.” Of course, given the conservative makeup of the congregation, were I to propose any such curriculum, I’d probably be relieved of my position.
I’d venture to say that the response of “Sally” would be typical in the parish. Sally was a classmate of mine in college. I first noticed her in chapel. Tall and slender with light brown hair, she emitted a devout, cheerful wholesomeness. Naturally I developed a crush on her which went unconsummated in even the slightest way; we simply remained “friends.” She was the quintessential virginal, unattainable girl.
I hadn’t thought about her in quite some time until I recently stumbled upon a profile of her online. I discovered she had earned a Ph.D. in Christian ethics, specializing in marriage and family life. She had married and already had a quiver full of kids. She was featured in a news article opposing a sex education bill at her state capitol.
Naturally she’s vociferously anti-porn. She called it a “toxin” and compared it with the coronavirus. “A pure gaze focuses our desire alone on our spouse.” An impure gaze she said is like Lot’s wife looking back to Sodom and Gomorrah. She bemoaned the fact that porn negatively impacts a couple’s “lovemaking.” (Perhaps these husbands turn to porn frustrated by the infrequency of “lovemaking” confined to the bed in the dark in the missionary position.) Her Twitter posts are abuzz with purity talk:
Those who believe they’ve found liberation in sex positivity are deceived.
Lust objectifies women.
The biggest impediment to evangelization right now is pornography.
I would say personally that porn has been invaluable as a source of sex education. “[Porn] has drastic limitations in representing real sex,” sex educator Gigi Engle told that esteemed academic journal Teen Vogue. “Porn is like real sex on steroids.” She also complained, “Porn films don’t show the power of intimate and emotional connectivity.” That lack of intimacy and emotional connection is a significant part of porn’s appeal for me. The same goes for its ugliness. It’s aesthetic (if it can be called that) is what porn scholar Linda Williams calls the “frenzy of the visible.” Porn sex is marked by its unabashed physicality. It displays lust. The “lovemaking” Sally extols is not to be found. A review in Variety of a film based on the contemporary L.A. porn scene bemoans what porn has become in the Internet age:
In porn, extreme is the new normal…. I’m talking about the “rough” vibe that now courses through so much online pornography, and how it has turned porn into an increasingly dark arena for acting out a kind of ritualized, eroticized aggression. Porn used to depict, more or less, what was known as vanilla sex. Now, to put it bluntly, more and more of it is about hate-fucking…. Porn, when it’s just a click away, can no longer be called underground, yet the emotions of porn, which increasingly fuse lust and brutality, adoration and degradation, are something that as a society we still tend to bury.
The gauzy, cheesy sex of Deep Throat has yielded to something darker. The performers, the review continues, are “letting out their ids, tapping their inner sexual beings. And what they’re now encouraged to channel is a sadomasochism of the spirit.”
Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges.
Camille Paglia
Porn exposes sex at its rawest and most honest. In porn, it’s all about the fuck and nothing more. Personal gratification is valued to the exclusion of other goods. The aggression inherent in male sexuality is exposed. Orgasm is exalted above commitment and romance. The selfishness of porn appeals to me. There’s a radical freedom portrayed in porn. As a Parisian libertine has said, “Fucking is our liberty.”
Porn scenarios are outlandish (I generally prefer my porn “straight,” that is, without scripts or storylines), but they can hint at psychic shadows. In one memorable scene, a church-going blonde MILF prays on her knees for “strength” to not give into temptation. She does, of course, explicitly. After getting thoroughly fucked like the slut she is, overwhelmed by her sin, she tearfully gets back on her knees. It’s actually a fine (if sexually idealized) depiction of the guilt-arousal cycle.
The anti-porn zeal of Sally typifies the repression of the flesh that characterizes Western Judeo-Christian culture. Feminist critic Camille Paglia observed, “The problem with America is that there’s too little sex, not too much. The more our instincts are repressed, the more we need pornography.” Porn deflowers the ideal of female chastity. The female figure in porn is decidedly carnal. According to Roger Horrocks, “To masturbate over her is a kind of black sabbath.” The sentimentality and romanticism which define Western femininity are perverted. There is something about watching a girl get fucked that is subversive. It’s what one sex blogger calls “the ultimate kink”: the lure of the forbidden.
Lutheran Guilt 