The Power of Pornography

On Site At The Lion’s Den Adult Bookstore

2/4/07

 

 

Why are we doing this?

 

The church is the greatest deterrent against evil and we do nothing!

 

We have to break the “go to church” mentality!

 

We need to engage the darkness where the darkness is!

 

It’s one thing to address abortion inside the church walls, it’s another to address at Hope Clinic.

 

Being out here sends a message to the community.  The church needs to be visible!

 

We are also here to send a message to those who would patronize the Lion’s Den.

 

Pornography is a wicked power, an evil addiction in our world.

 

Countless thousands of lives have been either greatly abused or totally destroyed by the power of pornography!

 

It’s wrong to try to distinguish between soft-core and hard-core pornography.

 

The addition to pornography is just as powerful as cocaine or meth!

 

Robert Ellis is a therapist at Greenhouse Counseling Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, under the auspices of Fifth Reformed Church. He specializes in addictive issues.  He writes the following…

 

Use of pornography creates an exotic combination of internal stimulants which cascade through the bloodstream like liquid flesh.

To the addict, the mere thought of using pornography stimulates an internal rush of exhilarating, must-do feelings.

 

Pornography supercharges the sinful nature of man!

 

Pornography says that women want to be hurt.

 

Pornography says women want to be raped, battered, kidnapped, maimed.

 

Pornography says women want to be humiliated, shamed, defamed.

 

Pornography says that women say No but mean Yes--Yes to violence, Yes to pain.

 

Pornography says that women are things.

 

Pornography says that being used as things fulfills the erotic nature of women.

 

Pornography says that women are the things men use.

 

Pornography shows women as body parts.

 

Pornography is an industry that buys and sells women.

 

Pornography grossly distorts the standard for female sexuality.

 

Pornography encourages and promotes violence against women.

 

Pornography dehumanizes women used in pornography.

 

Pornography is made by men who sanction, use, celebrate, and promote violence against women.

 

Pornography exploits children of both sexes, and encourages violence against children.

 

Pornography numbs the conscience.

 

Pornography makes one increasingly callous to cruelty, to the infliction of pain, to violence against persons.

 

Pornography gives us no future.

 

Pornography robs us of hope as well as dignity.

 

Pornography further lessens our human value in the society at large and our human potential.

 

God created sex to be enjoyed in a pure way.

 

Heb. 13:4 Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.

 

Rom. 13:13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. ¹⁴Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

 

Eph. 5:3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality…

 

Col. 3:5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires…

 

A certain man spent the first 14 years of his marriage addicted to pornography. Over that span, he graduated from magazines to videotapes to computer pornography. His addiction to pornography alienated him from his three children, from God, and almost cost him his marriage.

 

Pornography is a sin that is not only invading our society…it is invading our churches…it is invading Christians. It is destroying families and relationships with God

 

Facts about pornography.

 

In 1993, the pornography industry grew to the astronomical figure of eight to ten billion dollars a year. This is more than Hollywood’s domestic box office receipts and more than twice as much as major league baseball.

 

Pornography is the third largest revenue for organized crime in the United States just behind drugs and gambling.

 

85% of revenue from pornographic magazines and videos goes into the pockets of organized crime.

 

Some estimate that as many as 80% of video stores now rent pornography. Many "mom and pop" stores are drawing revenues from pornography in order to compete with the larger video chains.

 

According to Adult Video News, a hard-core pornography industry magazine, adult video rentals increased from 75 million in 1985 to 490 million in 1992. The total climbed to 665 million in 1996, an all-time high. The United States is the world’s leading producer of pornography, churning out about 150 new titles a week or about 8,000 titles a year.

 

There are now more outlets for hard-core pornography than there are McDonald’s restaurants.

 

Based on U.S. Census estimates of the number of adult women in America, one out of every eight adult women, or at least 12.1 million American women, has been or will be the victim of forcible rape in her lifetime.

 

In one study, 86% of rapists admitted to regular use of pornography, with 57% admitting actual imitation of pornography scenes in commission of sex crimes.

 

Rape has risen by 500% in the United States since in 1960, which is a higher rate than non-sexual crimes has increased. This increase directly parallels the increase in availability and the severity of pornography.

 

82% of rape victims knew the person who assaulted them.

 

The largest consumers of pornography are boys from ages 12 to 17. One in five boys and one in ten girls have had their first exposure to pornography by age 12.

 

There are about four million child molesters in the United States, that is about twice the population of Arkansas.

 

Female adults who are sexually abused as children reported that their abuse lasted 7.6 years on average and began at age six.

 

No single characteristic of pedophilia is more pervasive that the obsession with child pornography.

 

U.S. Postal Inspectors have found that 80% of the child pornography collectors they investigate abuse children sexually. (

 

There are between 260 and 280 monthly magazines that cater to pedophiles…people who get their kicks by looking at the nude bodies of children 8 years old and younger. These magazines are full of stories telling their readers that all women and children secretly desire sex, and that to seduce or rape then is to do them a favor. They even suggest that when a victim resists by screaming…their screams are screams of pleasure and that in a matter of minutes those victims will become willing and passionate lovers.

 

Pornography is a cancer that is producing sexual perverts, destroying the traditional family unit and is eating at the very roots of our country.

 

 

Pornography denies the purity of sex. It takes a beautiful creation of God and drags it through the filthiest perverted dirt that Satan can dig up.

 

The Bible says, "Can a man take fire into his bosom and not be burned." The answer to that is…no. No man, how pure, how clean, how wholesome, how strong, can get around the stench of pornography and not get the smell on him. He cannot touch the filth of pornography without getting dirty or burned. He cannot jump into the lake of sexual immorality without getting wet

 

To defeat pornography we must determine in our hearts not to engage in it!

 

Ps. 101:3 I will set before my eyes no vile thing.

 

To defeat pornography you must grow in spirit.

 

Mat. 26:41 “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”

 

Rom. 8:13 For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live,

 

Pornography is just one symptom of a deeper problem: drifting away from God.

 

Remember, garbage in garbage out!

 

To defeat pornography speak up.

 

Places that you do business with, gas stations, convenience stores, department stores or any other business, if they sell pornographic material, tell them you will no longer do business there as long as they continue to sell these materials.

 

What happens when Christians do nothing?

 

That’s what Christians do now.

 

In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court said it was OK to kill unborn babies. Since then, we have killed more than the entire population of Canada. And it continues. A woman’s choice? Half of those who have died in their mothers’ wombs have been women. They didn’t have a choice. It is called abortion.

 

Me? I go to church, the minister preaches, I go home. That’s what Christians do now.

 

First it was in dingy, dirty theaters. Then, convenience stores. Then, grocery stores. Then on television. Now it is in the homes of millions via the Internet. It is called pornography.

 

Me? I go to church, the minister preaches, I go home. That’s what Christians do now.

 

They called it no-fault. Why should we blame anyone when something so tragic happens? Haven’t they already suffered enough? Half of the marriages in America end this way. The children suffer. The family breaks down. It is called divorce.

 

Me? I go to church, the minister preaches, I go home. That’s what Christians do now.

 

At one time it was a perversion. We kept it secret. We offered help and hope for those who practiced it. Now it is praised. We have parades celebrating it, and elected officials give it their blessings. Now it is endowed with special privileges and protected by special laws. Even some Christian leaders and denominations praise it. It is called homosexuality.

 

Me? I go to church, the minister preaches, I go home. That’s what Christians do now.

 

 

It used to be an embarrassment. A shame. Now a third of all births are to mothers who aren’t married. Two-thirds of all African-American children are born into a home without a father. The state usually pays the tab. That is why we pay our taxes, so that the government can take the place of parents. After all, government bureaucrats know how to raise children much better than parents do. It is called illegitimacy.

 

Me? I go to church, the minister preaches, I go home. That’s what Christians do now.

 

 

At one time it was wrong. But then the state decided to legalize it, promote it and tax it. It has ripped apart families and destroyed lives. But just look at all the money the state has raised. No longer do we have to teach our children to study and work hard. Now we teach them they can get something for nothing. We spend millions encouraging people to join the fun and excitement. Just look at the big sums that people are winning. They will never have to work again! It is called gambling.

 

Me? I go to church, the minister preaches, I go home. That’s what Christians do now.

 

Not long ago, Christians were the good guys. We are now depicted as the bad guys – greedy, narrow-minded hypocrites. The teacher can’t have a Bible on her desk but can have Playboy. We don’t have Christmas and Easter holidays – just winter and spring break. We can’t pray in school but can use foul language. It’s called being tolerant.

 

Me? I go to church, the minister preaches, I go home. That’s what Christians do now.

 

Yes, all these things came to pass within 30 years. Where were the Christians? Why, they were in church. All these things are for someone else to deal with. Times have changed. Involvement has been replaced with apathy.

 

But don’t blame me. I didn’t do anything. I go to church, the minister preaches, I go home. That’s what Christians do now.

 

Fatal Addiction

 

Ted Bundy's Final Interview Ted Bundy, an infamous serial killer, granted an interview to psychologist James Dobson just before he was executed on January 24, 1989. In that interview, he described the agony of his addiction to pornography. Bundy goes back to his roots, explaining the development of his compulsive behavior. He reveals his addiction to hard-core pornography and how it fueled the terrible crimes he committed.

A road that leads to nowhere
When Ted Bundy was thirteen years old, he discovered “dirty magazines” in a dump near his home. He was instantly captivated by them. In time, Bundy became more and more addicted to violent images in magazines and videos. He got his kicks from seeing women being tortured and murdered. When he tired of that, there was only one place his addiction could go - from fantasy to reality.

Bundy, a good-looking, intelligent law student, learned to lure women into his car by various forms of deception. He would put a cast on his arm or leg, then walk across a university campus carrying several books. When he saw an interesting coed standing or walking alone, he’d “accidentally” drop the books near her. The girl would help him gather them and take them to his car. Then he would entice her or push her into the vehicle where she was taken captive. After he had molested the girl and the rage of passion had passed, she would be killed and Bundy would dump her body in a region where it would not be found for months. This went on for years.

By the time he was apprehended, Bundy had killed at least twenty-eight young women and girls in acts too horrible to contemplate. He was finally convicted and sentenced to death for killing a twelve-year-old girl and dumping her body in a pigsty. After more than ten years of appeals and legal maneuvering, a judge gave the order for Bundy’s execution. That week, he asked an attorney to call me and request that I come to Florida State Prison for a final interview.

When I arrived, I discovered a circus-like atmosphere outside the prison. Teenagers carried signs saying “Burn, Bundy, Burn,” and “You’re Dead, Ted.” Also in the crowd were more than 300 reporters who had come to get a story on the killer’s last hours, but Bundy wouldn’t talk to them. He had something important to say, and he believed the media couldn’t be trusted to report it accurately. Therefore, I was invited to bring a camera crew to record his last comments from death.

I’ll never forget that experience. I went through seven steel doors and metal detectors so sensitive that my tie tack and the nails in my shoes were enough to set off an alarm. Finally, I reached an inner chamber where Bundy and I were to meet. He was brought in, strip-searched, and then surrounded by six prison guards while he talked to me. Midway through our conversation, the lights suddenly went dim.

Ted said, “Just wait a moment, and they will come back on.”

I didn’t realize until later what had happened. The prisoner knew that his executioners were testing the electric chair that would take his life the next morning.

Ted Bundy wanted to tell the world about pornography
What was it that Ted Bundy was so anxious to say? He felt he owed it to society to warn of the dangers of hard-core pornography and to explain how it had led him to murder so many innocent women and girls. With tears in his eyes, he described the monster that took possession of him when he had been drinking. His craze to kill was always inflamed by violent pornography. Quoted below is an edited transcript of the conversation that occurred just seventeen hours before Ted was led to the electric chair.

James C. Dobson: It is about 2:30 in the afternoon. You are scheduled to be executed tomorrow morning at 7:00, if you don’t receive another stay. What is going through your mind? What thoughts have you had in these last few days?

Ted: I won’t kid you to say it is something I feel I’m in control of or have come to terms with. It’s a moment-by-moment thing. Sometimes I feel very tranquil and other times I don’t feel tranquil at all. What’s going through my mind right now is to use the minutes and hours I have left as fruitfully as possible. It helps to live in the moment, in the essence that we use it productively. Right now I’m feeling calm, in large part because I’m here with you.

JCD: For the record, you are guilty of killing many women and girls.

Ted: Yes, that’s true.

JCD: How did it happen? Take me back. What are the antecedents of the behavior that we’ve seen? You were raised in what you consider to be a healthy home. You were not physically, sexually or emotionally abused.

Ted: No. And that’s part of the tragedy of this whole situation. I grew up in a wonderful home with two dedicated and loving parents, as one of 5 brothers and sisters. We, as children, were the focus of my parent’s lives. We regularly attended church. My parents did not drink or smoke or gamble. There was no physical abuse or fighting in the home. I’m not saying it was “Leave it to Beaver”, but it was a fine, solid Christian home. I hope no one will try to take the easy way out of this and accuse my family of contributing to this. I know, and I’m trying to tell you as honestly as I know how, what happened.

As a young boy of 12 or 13, I encountered, outside the home, in the local grocery and drug stores, soft-core pornography. Young boys explore the sideways and byways of their neighborhoods, and in our neighborhood, people would dump the garbage. From time to time, we would come across books of a harder nature - more graphic. This also included detective magazines, etc., and I want to emphasize this. The most damaging kind of pornography - and I’m talking from hard, real, personal experience - is that that involves violence and sexual violence. The wedding of those two forces - as I know only too well - brings about behavior that is too terrible to describe.

JCD: Walk me through that. What was going on in your mind at that time?

Ted: Before we go any further, it is important to me that people believe what I’m saying. I’m not blaming pornography. I’m not saying it caused me to go out and do certain things. I take full responsibility for all the things that I’ve done. That’s not the question here. The issue is how this kind of literature contributed and helped mold and shape the kinds of violent behavior.

JCD: It fueled your fantasies.

Ted: In the beginning, it fuels this kind of thought process. Then, at a certain time, it is instrumental in crystallizing it, making it into something that is almost a separate entity inside.

JCD: You had gone about as far as you could go in your own fantasy life, with printed material, photos, videos, etc., and then there was the urge to take that step over to a physical event.

I was a normal person. I had good friends. I led a normal life, except for this one, small but very potent and destructive segment that I kept very secret and close to myself.

Ted: Once you become addicted to it, and I look at this as a kind of addiction, you look for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of material. Like an addiction, you keep craving something which is harder and gives you a greater sense of excitement, until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far - that jumping off point where you begin to think maybe actually doing it will give you that which is just beyond reading about it and looking at it.

JCD: How long did you stay at that point before you actually assaulted someone?

Ted: A couple of years. I was dealing with very strong inhibitions against criminal and violent behavior. That had been conditioned and bred into me from my neighborhood, environment, church, and schools.

I knew it was wrong to think about it, and certainly, to do it was wrong. I was on the edge, and the last vestiges of restraint were being tested constantly, and assailed through the kind of fantasy life that was fueled, largely, by pornography.

JCD: Do you remember what pushed you over that edge? Do you remember the decision to “go for it”? Do you remember where you decided to throw caution to the wind?

Ted: It’s a very difficult thing to describe - the sensation of reaching that point where I knew I couldn’t control it anymore. The barriers I had learned as a child were not enough to hold me back from seeking out and harming somebody.

JCD: Would it be accurate to call that a sexual frenzy?

Ted: That’s one way to describe it - a compulsion, a building up of this destructive energy. Another fact I haven’t mentioned is the use of alcohol. In conjunction with my exposure to pornography, alcohol reduced my inhibitions and pornography eroded them further.

JCD: After you committed your first murder, what was the emotional effect? What happened in the days after that?

Ted: Even all these years later, it is difficult to talk about. Reliving it through talking about it is difficult to say the least, but I want you to understand what happened. It was like coming out of some horrible trance or dream. I can only liken it to (and I don’t want to over dramatize it) being possessed by something so awful and alien, and the next morning waking up and remembering what happened and realizing that in the eyes of the law, and certainly in the eyes of God, you’re responsible. To wake up in the morning and realize what I had done with a clear mind, with all my essential moral and ethical feelings intact, absolutely horrified me.

JCD: You hadn’t known you were capable of that before?

Ted: There is no way to describe the brutal urge to do that, and once it has been satisfied, or spent, and that energy level recedes, I became myself again. Basically, I was a normal person.

There are those loose in their towns and communities, like me, whose dangerous impulses are being fueled, day in and day out, by violence in the media in its various forms - particularly sexualized violence.

Ted: I wasn’t some guy hanging out in bars, or a bum. I wasn’t a pervert in the sense that people look at somebody and say, “I know there’s something wrong with him.” I was a normal person. I had good friends. I led a normal life, except for this one, small but very potent and destructive segment that I kept very secret and close to myself. Those of us who have been so influenced by violence in the media, particularly pornographic violence, are not some kind of inherent monsters. We are your sons and husbands. We grew up in regular families. Pornography can reach in and snatch a kid out of any house today. It snatched me out of my home 20 or 30 years ago. As diligent as my parents were, and they were diligent in protecting their children, and as good a Christian home as we had, there is no protection against the kinds of influences that are loose in a society that tolerates....

JCD: Outside these walls, there are several hundred reporters that wanted to talk to you, and you asked me to come because you had something you wanted to say. You feel that hardcore pornography, and the door to it, soft-core pornography, is doing untold damage to other people and causing other women to be abused and killed the way you did.

Ted: I’m no social scientist, and I don’t pretend to believe what John Q. Citizen thinks about this, but I’ve lived in prison for a long time now, and I’ve met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence. Without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography - deeply consumed by the addiction. The F.B.I.’s own study on serial homicide shows that the most common interest among serial killers is pornographers. It’s true.

JCD: What would your life have been like without that influence?

Ted: I know it would have been far better, not just for me, but for a lot of other people - victims and families. There’s no question that it would have been a better life. I’m absolutely certain it would not have involved this kind of violence.

JCD: If I were able to ask the kind of questions that are being asked, one would be, “Are you thinking about all those victims and their families that are so wounded? Years later, their lives aren’t normal. They will never be normal. Is there remorse?”

Ted: I know people will accuse me of being self-serving, but through God’s help, I have been able to come to the point, much too late, where I can feel the hurt and the pain I am responsible for. Yes. Absolutely! During the past few days, myself and a number of investigators have been talking about unsolved cases - murders I was involved in. It’s hard to talk about all these years later, because it revives all the terrible feelings and thoughts that I have steadfastly and diligently dealt with - I think successfully. It has been reopened and I have felt the pain and the horror of that.

I hope that those who I have caused so much grief, even if they don’t believe my expression of sorrow, will believe what I’m saying now; there are those loose in their towns and communities, like me, whose dangerous impulses are being fueled, day in and day out, by violence in the media in its various forms - particularly sexualized violence. What scares me is when I see what’s on cable T.V. Some of the violence in the movies that come into homes today is stuff they wouldn’t show in X-rated adult theatres 30 years ago.

JCD: The slasher movies?

Ted: That is the most graphic violence on screen, especially when children are unattended or unaware that they could be a Ted Bundy; that they could have a predisposition to that kind of behavior.

JCD: One of the final murders you committed was 12-year-old Kimberly Leach. I think the public outcry is greater there because an innocent child was taken from a playground. What did you feel after that? Were they the normal emotions after that?

Ted: I can’t really talk about that right now. It’s too painful. I would like to be able to convey to you what that experience is like, but I won’t be able to talk about that. I can’t begin to understand the pain that the parents of these children and young women that I have harmed feel. And I can’t restore much to them, if anything. I won’t pretend to, and I don’t even expect them to forgive me. I’m not asking for it. That kind of forgiveness is of God; if they have it, they have it, and if they don’t, maybe they’ll find it someday.

JCD: Do you deserve the punishment the state has inflicted upon you?

Ted: That’s a very good question. I don’t want to die; I won’t kid you. I deserve, certainly, the most extreme punishment society has. And I think society deserves to be protected from me and from others like me. That’s for sure. What I hope will come of our discussion is that I think society deserves to be protected from itself. As we have been talking, there are forces at loose in this country, especially this kind of violent pornography, where, on one hand, well-meaning people will condemn the behavior of a Ted Bundy while they’re walking past a magazine rack full of the very kinds of things that send young kids down the road to being Ted Bundys. That’s the irony.

I’m talking about going beyond retribution, which is what people want with me. There is no way in the world that killing me is going to restore those beautiful children to their parents and correct and soothe the pain. But there are lots of other kids playing in streets around the country today who are going to be dead tomorrow, and the next day, because other young people are reading and seeing the kinds of things that are available in the media today.

JCD: There is tremendous cynicism about you on the outside, I suppose, for good reason. I’m not sure there’s anything you could say that people would believe, yet you told me (and I have heard this through our mutual friend, John Tanner) that you have accepted the forgiveness of Jesus Christ and are a follower and believer in Him. Do you draw strength from that as you approach these final hours?

Ted: I do. I can’t say that being in the Valley of the Shadow of Death is something I’ve become all that accustomed to, and that I’m strong and nothing’s bothering me. It’s no fun. It gets kind of lonely, yet I have to remind myself that every one of us will go through this someday in one way or another.

JCD: It’s appointed unto man.

Ted: Countless millions who have walked this earth before us have gone through this, so this is just an experience we all share.

Ted Bundy was executed at 7:15 am the day after this conversation was recorded.


Audio and video cassettes of Dr. Dobson’s interview with Ted Bundy can be requested from Focus on the Family by calling 1-800-A-FAMILY.

Life on the Edge, Dr. James Dobson, Copyright © 1995 Word Publishing, Nashville, Tennessee. All rights reserved

Copyright © 2004 Pure Intimacy® is property of Focus on the Family.
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