McMINNVILLE, Ore. (BP)–“Everybody has sex. The only difference is that Jenna lets you watch and makes a lot of money” is how the father of a porn star summed up his daughter’s career in a recent New York Times article.
In a puff piece titled, “Off Camera, Cashmere and Crosses,” The Times portrayed prominent pornography figure Jenna Jameson in a most favorable light. Featured in the article are Jameson’s wealth, her husband, a director of pornographic movies, fabulous Arizona home and artwork –- some of which is religious in nature. Jameson was touted as the consummate girl next door.
On their chosen profession, Jameson’s husband said porn is lucrative and fun. “It’s not torture going to work. It’s creative.”
As The Times piece was being printed, a story was breaking in Chatsworth, Calif., home to a variety of pornography production companies. It seems that two porn performers had been diagnosed with HIV. The discovery of the virus that can result in AIDS sparked a voluntary quarantine of at least 45 persons who had direct or indirect contact with the infected pair.
Some industry experts estimate that a single porn performer could have as many as 50 sexual contacts in one day. Given that statistic, the situation in California could be much worse. While the recent development in the world of porn is concerned only with the dreaded HIV, an article in the January 12, 2003, edition of The Los Angeles times indicated that at any given time, 40 percent of those working in pornography could well be infected with at least one sexually transmitted disease.
Even though some porn production companies require performers to use condoms, safe-sex is an illusion. A 2001 report released by the Centers for Disease Control concluded that, at best, condoms are 85 percent effective at reducing the risk of contracting HIV. The report also concluded that there is no scientific proof to the claim that condoms provide protection against other sexually transmitted disease.
In spite of the fact that pornography is destructive to those who make it, as well as harmful to those who consume it, much of the media -– as evidenced by The New York Times piece on Jenna Jameson -– bend over backward in an effort to portray it as a normal and healthy aspect of society. Producing pornography is no different than being a teacher or a working in a grocery store, with one exception — you get paid better in porn.
It is not only the American media that wants pornography accepted as legitimate. Last month the Liberal Democrat party in England pushed for legislation that would make it legal for 16-year-olds to not only purchase “explicit” pornography but also allow teens to appear in porn productions as well.
You have to wonder about the effort to legitimize an industry that has no redeeming value. Pornography reduces individuals, especially women, to the sum total of their body parts. The sex act is divorced from intimacy and becomes nothing more than a spectator sport rife with sexual athletes. Pornography reduces men and women to animals who are slaves to the instinct of lust.
The motivating force underlying every “relationship” depicted in a pornographic movie is the sex drive. Also prominent is the portrayal of sexual activity with strangers as well as in groups. Suffice to say most of what takes place in a porn production cannot be discussed in polite company.
Pornography leaves a scar on the soul of anyone who embraces it. Producers and consumers alike are affected. Lives are destroyed, some by physical disease and others by emotional or spiritual maladies.
Sex is a marvelous gift from God to be enjoyed between one man and one woman in the context of an exclusive and committed relationship. It is designed to be physically, emotionally and spiritually fulfilling. Outside of marriage, it is dangerous, degrading and empty.
Nothing can change the destructive nature of pornography. Not a father’s rationalization, not money, not condoms, not legislation and certainly not media puff pieces.
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Kelly Boggs, whose column appears each Friday in Baptist Press, is pastor of the Portland-area Valley Baptist Church in McMinnville, Ore.
