Last month I attended the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation in Washington, D.C. where Morality in Media’s new president Patrick Trueman and assistant Dawn Hawkins gathered anti-pornography leaders from all over the country for the first time in 27 years. They have ignited a fire in anti-pornography fighters and have achieved outstanding successes this year.
As the rape rate between men and women in the military soared, Morality in Media convinced the military to stop selling pornography on all their bases and Google to drop all pornography ads. Google has implemented a new advertising policy which eliminates pornographic and sexually explicit ads and they will no longer link to sites that contain such materials. When the Federal Communications Commission decided to lower standards on television, MIM visited the FCC and convinced its new head not to do it. They also publicize a Dirty Dozen List of organizations that promote pornography. Listed organizations are asking what they must do to be removed from that list.
With these successes behind them, MIM convened the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation. Opening the summit at the National Press Club, they presented pornography as a Public Health Crisis and caught worldwide attention. News articles appeared on every continent.
The energy of the conference was electric! Young leaders with full technical know-how are producing movies, videos, and YouTubes about the horrors of pornography and writing helpful books. Good Pictures Bad Pictures by Kristen A. Jenson and Gail Poyner teaches adults how to talk to children when they are exposed to porn and how to resist the temptation to look at pornography when they see it. What Can I Do About Him? Me? by Rhyll Anne Croshaw tells those struggling with sexual addiction how couples can work through the long recovery process to heal both the betrayed wife and the addicted husband. My easy-to-read novel An Island Just for Us educates women about the effects of pornography and encourages them to start talking about it in book club and church groups. Covenant Eyes and Net Nanny described technology that protects children from seeing porn on the Internet, Ipads or Iphones.
Radical feminists spoke passionately and eloquently about what the porn industry is doing to women. Thirty percent of visits to Internet porn are from women. Formerly addicted women are working to rescue female consumers and those who work in porn films.
PornProofKids.com offers a Smart Plan to deal with exposure to porn and trains the whole family to reject it. Their helpful website offers tips and tools to protect young minds and prevent your children from using porn when they are bored, lonely, angry, stressed and tired. Suggestions for how to talk to your children about pornography are invaluable.
Ministers are being called to fight this issue. They find that 40% to 80% of their men secretly look at pornography. Jay Dennis, a minister from Lakeland, Florida, has written a book to help ministers tackle the issue in their own churches. He tells fellow ministers how to free men from dependence on pornography and become the spiritual leaders they are meant to be. He is seeking one million men and one million women who will commit to leading a porn-free life and respond to requests for action. These contacts produce results that tell us pornography can be beaten back. I returned home full of optimism that this war is winnable.
A former porn producer told us he walked the malls looking for pretty women who were alone. When he approached them, he told them how beautiful they were. By the way they responded he could tell which ones he could flatter and lure into his studio. Once they walked through that door, they were captives who were held prisoner. Drugged, filled with alcohol, often beaten, they were forced to perform on film until they were broken, contracted a disease or became physically unfit to perform. It is such a dark world we find it hard to believe that such cruelty exists today, but we must all work to bring it out in the open where healing can begin.
So much porn is now free on the Internet, the pornography industry would fail financially without human sex trafficking. We must realize that different types of sexual exploitation are thoroughly intertwined. Pornography is a major factor in creating the demand for trafficked women and children. Until we curb the demand for pornography, we will not solve the problem of trafficking. I encourage you to join the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation. Please email me for further information: barbhat@infionline.net.
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