Called on a porn-fighting mission?

[Hagoth]

Our GD lesson today was about the handcart pioneers and how we can weigh the hardships in our own lives against theirs. Somewhere along the way the teacher mentioned that his sister-in-law and her husband have just been called to Cache Valley on a porn-fighting mission.

Has anybody else heard of such a thing? Maybe it's just me, but it seems like there are a lot of people in this world with a lot of needs that outweigh the urgency of sending out missionary couples specifically to combat pornography. Also, I didn't know that Cache Valley is a hotbed of pornography.

[Zack Tacorin Dos]

You know, the aspect about porn that bothers me the most is that there is a lot of human trafficking of those "starring" in the porn, as I understand it anyway. It's sickening to me. It goes against every fiber of my morality.

But do the Church's efforts against porn have any effect on that human trafficking? I don't thinks so. Ideally they would be reducing the demand for porn, so there would be less of a porn market, but as far as I can tell, the Church's shame approach (the ease with which they apply the label "addiction" to even light or moderate porn use, the shame, the idea that it's a sin next to murder, having adult male leaders talk one-on-one with youth about it behind closed doors) makes things worse. They almost constantly tell the poor kids, and adults too, to stop thinking about it, to the point that it's a running joke for the disaffected. Well damn it, if they'd stop talking about it so much, maybe Mormons wouldn't think about it quite so much. I think the Church's leaders would do well to learn from Buddhism's mindfulness approach to training the mind instead of floundering in a fight against natural thoughts with their current approach.

In case you couldn't tell, I think this is an area in which the Church does a lot of harm to a lot of it's most faithful adherents.

Edited to add: I think the Church's approach to porn
- Promotes an obsessive and compulsive prob with porn for a lot of believers,
- Demoralizes a lot of the faithful,
- Teaches a lot of believers to lie since the shaming is so strong,
- Creates stronger control over the members because of the shame and sense of helplessness the Church fosters, and
- Does little or nothing to end any human trafficking associated with the porn industry

[EternityIsNow]

Yup, heard of it. A couple who are family friends spent several years on an anti-Porn mission on Provo. This was one of those part-time missions, I believe they still had a teenager or two at home in fact. So they would go and 'counsel' with BYU students who had porn problems. I believe they made some presentations also.

Don't know if or how they were trained, but this couple had no background related to counseling, so probably just another calling with a few hours of meetings and a manual. They are great 'people person's and easy to talk with, so probably on that basis someone thought they could help students. They told me how many porn addicts they believed were attending BYU, I don't recall the exact number but it was in the thousands. This was a few years ago, so this has been an active program for awhile. So if your teacher's relative is going to Logan, it is probably to counsel with LDS students at Utah State University.

[Give It Time]

Well, if a couple got called on a porn fighting mission like Liam Neeson's in Taken, that would be danged cool.

[wtfluff]

#mormonismkillslove

Hey COB / SCMC lurkers: It doesn't matter how much you try, you can't change normal human beings in to into asexual clones of GA's. It just doesn't work that way.

Focus on positive things that make people's live better instead of constantly yelling and screaming about something you can do nothing about. (And in fact, anecdotally, all the yelling and screaming does the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you think it does.)

[2bizE]

Students, today I am going to show you what porn is and porn is not...
The first slide is of the statue nod David. See his nakedness. Anything that excites you is porn. Yes, David is porn.
The next slide is of a young woman in a 3/4 length dress. Although the dress is modest, it does not cover up her ankles. This is porn...

On this next slide is a mature woman in a a one piece swim suit. Notice her shoulders. Her porn shoulders... yes this too is porn.
See this YouTube video of kittens, that is not porn...

[LostGirl]

You know, the aspect about porn that bothers me the most is that there is a lot of human trafficking of those "starring" in the porn, as I understand it anyway. It's sickening to me. It goes against every fiber of my morality.

This is also the problem that I have with it, and when it has come up with my kids I choose to focus more on the human side of it. These are someone's daughters, someone's sisters, someone's sons. It is an industry that I struggle to understand from my sheltered corner of the world.

[Enoch Witty]

I hope they call me on a mission
To demoralize a new generation of youth
I hope they call me on a mission
To teach and preach and screech our doctrinal poop

[Red Ryder]

I was wondering why every time I sat down to watch porn there would be a knock on my door and a senior couple was standing there. Now I know...

[Rob4Hope]

There are mission like this.

In SL county, there are 12-step meetings that are supposed to help combat this problem--and they are revolving doors for people who come back year after year (I'm not making this up--I know people who attend and they report consistently the same thing). These groups are headed by missionaries and are supposed to have "facilitators" who assist (those who have significant recovery)--but the missionaries preside at the meeting.

Until the church does something about its repressive one-sided anti-sensual and anti-sexual stance, I don't see this problem ever going away. The church is schizophrenic in its approach and has so many contradictory ideals. The same idea raises its crazy head as you consider the LDS approach for gay individuals--"Oh, just be celibate for the rest of your life, and wait until the next life to 'figure it out'. BUT,...KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS OR ELSE YOU WILL BE DAMNED....".

But wait,...isn't keeping the commandments and being alone and unfulfilled in an intimate relationship being damned now?

Church is so one-sided in its vision. It amazes me.

[Rob4Hope]

I was wondering why every time I sat down to watch porn there would be a knock on my door and a senior couple was standing there. Now I know...

If the church ever comes out and provides a porn-filter or suggests one at a higher level (they probably already have),...I'm gunna shake my head BIG TIME.

I have yet to hear a single LDS GA say that refusing your spouse is a sin. The message in the temple about chastity is about like this:

"Thou shalt have no sexual relations except with your husband or wife...."

Maybe if the church got the h3ll OUT OF the bedroom and people's personal lives, and their computer lives as well, some of this problem would shrink. But its too late--the damage is done, and now they have to mitigate the mess they have caused in the repressive culture they themselves have promulgated.

PS. I gotta build on this....sorry. WHY DOES THE CHURCH NOT suggest that a good defense against porn use in heterosexual marriages (gay marriages is something the church will never reconcile with IMHO) is maintaining healthy bodies and healthy marriages? GAWD!....this one baffles me!... The message is so lopsided and one-tracked....

Oh...this is a joke...lets get Bednar up there to undo some of the stigma about masterbation being a serious sin. SWK said it wasn't serious in his book--but it certainly seemed serious if you can't go on a mission because you did it. Hunh?...sorry, got a little schitzo there again....

[2bizE]

Hello. My name is Elder Price. I want to share with you little bit of advice.
Hello. My name is Sister Grant. I want to tell you that if you look at porn you'll go to hell.
Hello. I wanted to share that if you masturbate you will go blind.
It's true. We've come to visit you so porn won't ruin your life....

[Jeffret]

You know, the aspect about porn that bothers me the most is that there is a lot of human trafficking of those "starring" in the porn, as I understand it anyway. It's sickening to me. It goes against every fiber of my morality.

I'd like to see some documentation for this claim. I realize this is a standard talking point from Fight the New Drug, but since I've yet to find anything they actually get right, I'm skeptical of their claims on this. Though I've seen them state this many times, I've yet to see them cite any support.

I suspect that a significant part of this is playing soft and loose with biases, prejudices, and definitions. Folks like FTND, and Mormons in general, consider all porn exploitative, of the audience and the actors. They feel the audience is being exploited because of their addictions (which mostly don't really exist). They believe women or men who are being viewed or allowing themselves to be viewed in a sexual manner are being exploited. A lot of this gets involved with the standards for female modesty and insistence that women be at once sexually desirable and sexually pure and wholesome. If someone looks at a woman in a sexual way they consider she is being exploited. If she dresses in a sexually provocative manner she is being exploited and exploitative. In many cases FTND would say that she is being exploited by having to work in the porn industry, but when you get to that level, many jobs are exploitative. Not sexually, perhaps, but businesses generally exploit their workers as much as they can.

Now, I'm sure there are cases in which the subjects (actors) in a porn movie are not free and being validly exploited. By definition, this is the case for child porn. There must certainly be other cases with adult actors. But, separate from the issue of porn, these things are illegal. You can't force people to do things they don't want to (as a general rule) and you can't involve children in sexual acts or depictions. If you were going to be involved in the creation and distribution of porn (which is generally legal in the U.S. and many other parts of the world these days) would you want to take on the additional risk of dealing in explicitly and obviously illegal acts and materials? That seems like a heavy risk.

There is a tendency for some massage parlors to be kind of shady or merely fronts for prostitution. Many of these use women who are forced into it. In contrast, there are lots of legitimate massage therapists. (I got worked over well by my deep tissue massage therapist today.) Inevitably there is some of the same sort of thing going on in the porn industry but I don't know that we have any reliable evidence it is a significant proportion. Porn is generally legal, whereas prostitution is generally illegal. (In other words, you can pay to watch someone else do it but you can't pay to do it yourself. I think that's how it works.) Where an activity is outlawed anyone involved is operating outside the law to one degree or another, which tends to make the whole thing more secretive and susceptible to abuse. Where it is legal, there is an incentive for those that acting within the law to maintain their legal operation.

I'm not convinced that our approach to prostitution has really been all that successful. I'm not clear on what would be a good approach, but there are identifiable problems and limitations to what we have been doing.

I'm quite convinced that the approach to porn from Fight the New Drug and Mormons in general is wrong and frequently harmful. It is counter-productive and not really capable of achieving their goals. I have little reason to believe that the claims they use to back up their harmful messages are well-supported or accurate.

[Hagoth]

I used to work in an entertainment industry. One time I was at a trade show in Las Vegas and unwittingly walked into a hall that I assumed was part of the conference that I was attending, but it turned out to be the trade show for the adult film industry. Once I recovered from the initial shock the thing that really amazed me was how ordinary and familiar this gathering was. Many of the booths had celebrities signing autographs, posing for selfies and making deals with agents. I remember one "actress" who was juggling two cell phones and seemed to be very much a competent business woman. While I have no doubt there are people out there being taken advantage of by shady characters, it appears to be business as usual for others. I was an immodesty-traumatized TBM at the time, so this encounter was eye-opening in more ways than one.

[wtfluff]

<snip>

I won't quote the entirety of your awesome post Jeffret, but I do want to thank you for bringing that up.

[Rob4Hope]

Lots of this blatantly illegal stuff happens on the "dark web".

I read something a few years ago and I wished I would have written it down. It was a FBI report about human trafficking. The men and older women are forced into work servitude, the younger girls and boys are forced into prostitution, and a sick part of it was organ harvesting and other disgusting things.

The position of the church is that ALL PORN is evil and wrong, but they are so zealous over the topic they criminalize everything in their minds, and I think they miss a bigger portion: some people like to watch and engage in sex--of their own free will; some don't. The church doesn't care--ALL OF THEM are wrong, unless its the couple having non-oral sex ONLY AFTER they have had a temple marriage, and are paying their 10% to the coffers of the collective.

So, all this energy is going into anti-porn---the kind most LDS TBMs probably get into which is the legal side. And the church misses the bigger issue of where the real problems are happening.

I think, as far as the church is concerned, its a lost cause. The success rates from those 12step meetings the church has is dismal. I know someone who was a founder and primary influence in that movement when it started over a decade ago--and he gave up with the church. They have no sponsorship, the only person you are to talk to about some of this is an untrained bishop (who often just shames you further), and my goodness,...you ever touch yourself...OH MY!...some things are just so despicable you can't talk about them!!!!

[SeeNoEvil]

Students, today I am going to show you what porn is and porn is not...
The first slide is of the statue nod David. See his nakedness. Anything that excites you is porn. Yes, David is porn.
The next slide is of a young woman in a 3/4 length dress. Although the dress is modest, it does not cover up her ankles. This is porn...

On this next slide is a mature woman in a a one piece swim suit. Notice her shoulders. Her porn shoulders... yes this too is porn.
See this YouTube video of kittens, that is not porn...

This is what I don't get. About 2 years ago my boss in Utah who was a bishop told me he spent one Saturday in an all day conference on porn.
I'm thinking gesh! Porn, porn and more porn for 8 hours .... wouldn't that make you want to go home and watch it!!

[Newme]

You know, the aspect about porn that bothers me the most is that there is a lot of human trafficking of those "starring" in the porn, as I understand it anyway. It's sickening to me. It goes against every fiber of my morality.

But do the Church's efforts against porn have any effect on that human trafficking? I don't thinks so. Ideally they would be reducing the demand for porn, so there would be less of a porn market, but as far as I can tell, the Church's shame approach (the ease with which they apply the label "addiction" to even light or moderate porn use, the shame, the idea that it's a sin next to murder, having adult male leaders talk one-on-one with youth about it behind closed doors) makes things worse. They almost constantly tell the poor kids, and adults too, to stop thinking about it, to the point that it's a running joke for the disaffected. Well damn it, if they'd stop talking about it so much, maybe Mormons wouldn't think about it quite so much. I think the Church's leaders would do well to learn from Buddhism's mindfulness approach to training the mind instead of floundering in a fight against natural thoughts with their current approach.

In case you couldn't tell, I think this is an area in which the Church does a lot of harm to a lot of it's most faithful adherents.

Edited to add: I think the Church's approach to porn
- Promotes an obsessive and compulsive prob with porn for a lot of believers,
- Demoralizes a lot of the faithful,
- Teaches a lot of believers to lie since the shaming is so strong,
- Creates stronger control over the members because of the shame and sense of helplessness the Church fosters, and
- Does little or nothing to end any human trafficking associated with the porn industry

Good points.
It's like the war on drugs - or trying to fight fire with fire.
My sister & her hubbie are almost divorcing over this & I've tried to tell her to not make such a big deal about it & it will become less a big deal. But there comes a time when addiction does set in, even if the initial cause was a simple over-focus mixed with shaming to make it something secret & addicting.

Behind addiction are sometimes deeper issues. But it's so sad that a lot of it could be avoided by having a more affirming attitude about natural sexuality, rather than shaming because of catastrophizing fears.

[2bizE]

Does watching a little porn on occasion act as a vaccination for spending every day lounging on porn?

[moksha]

My DH and I have been called on to serve at the Salt Lake Victoria Secrets Mission