Ilion's blog recently pointed me to Auster's [somewhat problematic] discussion of the Big Lie/Big Truth paradox:
Just as the Big Lie is [NB: as Hitler defined it] a lie so outrageous that people can't believe that someone would tell such a lie, and so they believe the lie, the Big Truth is a truth so threatening to both left and right that both left and right reject it. The Big Truth is threatening to the left, obviously, because it shows what the left's projects really consist of and where they are really heading, which, if people understood, they would stop going along with the left's projects and start seriously resisting them instead. The Big Truth is threatening to the right because the right is invested in the basic goodness and harmony of our existing society and in maintaining a general consensus concerning that goodness. A dawning understanding of the true radicalism of the left would force the right to fight the left . . .
The immediate context for this was a citation from a certain Philip M:
Last night I was thinking about your statement, "The institutionalization of homosexuality ... is leading and must lead to the official elimination of the concepts of mother and father," and thinking about how amazingly controversial this is. I stuck it on as my Facebook update just to see the response, and I've never had so many people tell me I'm opening a "can of worms" . . . . It is not really the offense to homosexuals that is the problem here, rather it is so brazenly exposing the workings and direction of one of the leftists' ultimate goals--the elimination of the family. And I think on some level people, particularly conservatives, know this, and it is the enormity of the crime that scares them into remaining silent; otherwise they would be exposing an ongoing left-wing takeover of our entire lives, and then what? Fight? Perhaps you could call it the "Big Truth." A truth so frightening that people dare not admit even the possibility of it?
This issue of truths too big, too threatening to accept goes far beyond the left/right politics talking points, or even the increasingly obvious agenda of the homosexualists and their fellow travellers to delegitimise Creation-Order based marriage, family and those who would defend such, especially on a Judaeo-Christian foundation. It goes beyond the porn agenda that is the main focus of this post, and the Marlboro man image over substance mentality that so often bends our hearts and minds to the will, greed, power lusts and agendas of the ad men, the PR spin doctors and their sponsors.
Indeed, it reaches all the way back to a fateful exchange of Jesus with his critics in C1 Judaea.
At length, Jesus was forced to observe, with an unmistakable sadness:
Jn 8: 43Why do you misunderstand what I say? It is because you are unable to hear what I am saying. [You cannot bear to listen to My message; your ears are shut to My teaching.] . . . .
45But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me [do not trust Me, do not rely on Me, or adhere to Me].
46Who of you convicts Me of wrongdoing or finds Me guilty of sin? Then if I speak truth, why do you not believe Me [trust Me, rely on, and adhere to Me]?
47Whoever is of God listens to God. [Those who belong to God hear the words of God.] This is the reason that you do not listen [to those words, to Me]: because you do not belong to God and are not of God or in harmony with Him. [AMP]
So, indeed, there are "Big truths," truths so big, so humbling to our self-indulgent, self-centred pride, so upsetting of our comfort zones, so demanding of repentance and a right about turn in our lives and communities, that we find them hard or even all but impossible to believe.
Often, the Gospel is one of those Big Truths, and that is why -- never mind how well warranted it is -- we are so often tempted to resort to selectively hyperskeptical dismissals.
Paul aptly summed up our challenge as Christian Disciples:
Ephesians 4:17-24 (Amplified Bible)
17So this I say and solemnly testify in [the name of] the Lord [as in His presence], that you must no longer live as the heathen (the Gentiles) do in their perverseness [in the folly, vanity, and emptiness of their souls and the futility] of their minds.
18Their [a]moral understanding is darkened and their reasoning is beclouded. [They are] alienated (estranged, self-banished) from the life of God [with no share in it; this is] because of the ignorance (the want of knowledge and perception, the willful blindness) that is [b]deep-seated in them, due to their hardness of heart [to the insensitiveness of their moral nature].
19In their spiritual apathy they have become callous and past feeling and reckless and have abandoned themselves [a prey] to unbridled sensuality, eager and greedy to indulge in every form of impurity [that their depraved desires may suggest and demand].
20But you did not so learn Christ!
21Assuming that you have really heard Him and been taught by Him, as [all] Truth is in Jesus [embodied and personified in Him], 22Strip yourselves of your former nature [put off and discard your old unrenewed self] which characterized your previous manner of life and becomes corrupt through lusts and desires that spring from delusion;
23And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind [having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude], 24And put on the new nature (the regenerate self) created in God's image, [Godlike] in true righteousness and holiness.
Footnotes:
- Ephesians 4:18 Marvin Vincent, Word Studies.
- Ephesians 4:18 Marvin Vincent, Word Studies.
One of the big truths we need to look at, and will now turn to, has to deal with the corrosive myths used to promote the Porn Agenda, which is one of the key strategies being used to addict us to evil in our civilisation.
For that, I have discovered the refreshing site, theporneffect.com, and will cite a former porn star, April Garris, as she speaks out of her pain and her struggle to recover. Video:
A potted biography from her list of articles will help establish credentials to speak as one who knows personally whereof she speaks:
April Garris was involved in the porn industry in 2001 for approximately 6 months, and made somewhere between 15 and 20 movies. She left the porn industry at the end of 2001, but continued to struggle with substance abuse, mental illness, and severe depression.
It wasn't until April came to the Lord in 2005 that she experienced true healing, and has been living in freedom ever since.
First and foremost, we must shred the free, harmless speech talking point, citing from her 10 Myths of Porn Exposed article:
I have yet to meet a single girl who actually enjoyed making pornography. Having been in the industry, I can tell you that it is not a pleasurable experience. The sex itself is painful, and the girls are exposed to all kinds of abuses, both by the pornographers and the people on set. It is beyond degrading, and for many of us, the only way we could endure the shoots was by numbing ourselves with drugs or alcohol, telling ourselves that it will all be over in a couple of hours, and completely zoning out, sort of disconnecting ourselves from the whole experience . . . .
Most girls who enter this industry do one video and quit. The experience is so painful, horrifying, embarrassing, humiliating for them that they never do it again . . . .
A lot of times, the girls are threatened or manipulated by the pornographers. This happened to me, and I’ve seen it happen to other girls also. They are told they will be doing one thing, but when they arrive onset, they are told that they will be doing something else, and if they refuse, they forfeit their pay. A lot of the girls are young and inexperienced, and they feel like they are obligated to go through with the scene....a scene that they did not agree to, and do not want to do. They may be scared of the pornographers, or they may be scared that they won’t be able to work anymore. They feel trapped . . . .
The majority of porn performers have one or more STDs, and many girls have reported contracting cervical cancer and HPV from their time in the porn industry. The girls who come into porn are not made aware of these risks by the pornographers. Just this year, the L.A. County Health Department shut down production of the mainstream porn due to several reported cases of HIV. The porn industry knew about the HIV, but never reported it, because they didn’t want to shut down production.
Most of the girls in porn are prostituted women, which means that they can contract HIV or some other disease from one of their johns, and give it to one of their co-stars whom they work with. The pornographers will say that the performers always use condoms, but that is a lie. It is very easy to catch a sexually transmitted disease in the porn industry, although the pornographers and performers will tell you that it is completely safe . . . .
A person cannot just do a porn and forget about it. The experience is so humiliating and degrading that it takes months, even years (depending on the severity of the experience), to recover. There are several factors at work.
First of all, there is anxiety of knowing that your movies are out there for anyone to see. Then there are the emotional effects. You feel violated and ashamed. Many of the girls go through some form of PTSD, and there’s the fear that someone they know might stumble upon it. Guilt and fear are the main causes of post-porn anxiety.
That is about as plain as it gets: porn is exploitative, damaging and unhealthy, starting with the people caught up in the industry as its labour force. And, if one is being manipulated into degrading and damaging acts that one would not otherwise agree to, it is no surprise to see also:
Drugs are all over in the porn industry. It’s rare to find a set that doesn’t have drugs or alcohol, and many of the people are addicts. Drugs are something you use to endure the humiliation and hardcore sex, and for many it’s what you use to numb yourself. The money that you make in porn you spend trying to numb yourself from the lifestyle.
This is of course a major reason why the income from porn "acting" tends to evaporate.
But, isn't this all just freedom of expression in action, a fundamental human right?
Not quite:
. . . that’s not how it works. The girls are not “expressing themselves” sexually – they are acting out what they are told to do. It’s the complete opposite of liberating. On a porn set, you don’t get to pick and choose what you want to do, even if you did want to be there, you have very little control over what goes on. Instead, you are told who you will be with, in what position, for how long, what to say, etc. It is not freedom, because you no longer have any say so in regards to your own body. You are told by the producer how to use it.
Not only that, but oftentimes, if a girl is in the middle of a scene, even if she wants to stop, even if it is hurting her, they will keep rolling despite her wishes. This is not liberty – this is forced penetration. There is sexual and physical abuse that occurs, and girls are often coerced into doing things that they don’t really want to do . . . .
Dr. Judith Reisman, in the movie Traffic Control, said “Porn is not speech. Porn is stimuli.” A person does not need to talk in order to make porn. I guess it would be more along the lines of “freedom of expression,” but as far as I know, the First Amendment (in the USA) doesn’t protect freedom of expression. A person cannot walk down the street and expose himself/herself to someone, then just say they were expressing themselves.
The porn industry hides behind the First Amendment, and many people argue that we can’t do anything about it because we need to uphold freedom of speech, that everyone is entitled to say what they want when they want, but what if that freedom is imposing on the liberty of others?
It is a myth to believe that porn is merely a form of speech. On the contrary, porn enslaves people, those who watch and those who make it.
Remember, all of this is from the recovering, gravely wounded horse's mouth.
Porn -- arguably one of the most effective swords in the hands of the enemies of chastity, creation order marriage and sound, stable families -- is exposed for all to see.
To get a picture of the scope of the challenge, let us note from a 2004 book on Internet porn edited by Dennis Waskul:
To get a picture of the scope of the challenge, let us note from a 2004 book on Internet porn edited by Dennis Waskul:
"It's clear from log file traffic analysis that a very large number of our DSL customers have purchased the higher bandwidth services in order to view pornography," said a network supervisor at Pacific Bell, a division of SBC Corp. "It's never been a secret that our IP [Internet] backbone traffic is at least half porn if you measure it according to the file transfer amounts." . . . Estimates of how much porn consumes of the Web's total bandwidth range as high as 80 percent but none puts it lower than 40 percent -- a staggering percentage for a market segment that most in the adult field would prefer to keep hidden in a closet just so long as it kept slipping large payments under the door every month. ["EroticaBiz," Lewis Perdue, in Net.seXXX (NY: Peter Lang, 2004), p. 266.]
Perhaps the franction of the 'net used for porn has fallen, but it is certain that the absolute volume of net filth traffic has only risen, especially now that porn sites are beginning to go High Definition.
Porn, then, is a destructive lie and corrosive, oppressive large-scale industry that willfully creates and financially drains millions of addicts that are benumbed in their consciences and damaged in their families. Thus also, creating a climate in the culture hostile to sexual purity and morality, and in the end destructive to true liberty under the civil peace of justice:
Civil liberty, is the liberty of men in a state of society, or natural liberty, so far only abridged and restrained, as is necessary and expedient for the safety and interest of the society, state or nation. A restraint of natural liberty, not necessary or expedient for the public, is tyranny or oppression. Civil liberty is an exemption from the arbitrary will of others, which exemption is secured by established laws, which restrain every man from injuring or controlling another. Hence the restraints of law are essential to civil liberty. [Webster's Dictionary, 1828.]
We must face a big, unpalatable truth, expose some big lies and fight for true liberty with all our might. END
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