Chapter
17: The Long, Long Longcut of Pornography
When I was in training to become a museum docent, an
expert in how the brain learns and remembers spoke to us. He taught techniques
to maximize visitors’ learning so they would remember more of what they experienced
in the museum. He showed slides of the amazing brain and how the brain filters
out the unimportant and irrelevant. At some point a docent asked: “If all this
is true, why is pornography such a problem? Why doesn’t the brain just filter
it out like it does with so many other things?” The expert smiled and said
something such as: “The filters work for everything and anything, except if it
has to do with reproduction. It seems the human species is programmed to
reproduce to the point that everything to do with procreation has no filters
and stays in the brain forever.”
Pornography is, according to Mary
Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology
Program at the University of
Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Therapy, the "most
concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today."
She explained why pornography is most concerning by likening it to a drug. She said:
"The Internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous,
aroused, and have role models for these behaviors…. To have drug pumped into
your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups
know how to use it. It's a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole
generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their
mind" (www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/11/65772).
Mark Kastelman, a researcher and expert in
the mind-body science field, wrote: “Pornography
is powerful because it takes advantage of and taps into intense emotional,
biological and chemical connections throughout the brain and the entire body.
We are born with many of these connections ‘pre-wired’ or ‘pre-set’ to switch
on at certain times in our development. Pornography seeks to twist the truth
and ‘mimic’ or ‘counterfeit’ this built-in attraction. Its goal is to ignite,
excite and exploit these natural built-in urges and desires… . Internet porn is
a drug and pornographers are drug dealers.” He asserts that pornography makes
men stupid by narrowing the male brain and robbing them of “logic, reason and
sound judgment (regardless of his age).” He says that pornography is so
powerful that “nothing else matters but satisfying the fiery urges the porn has
ignited” (www.contentwatch.com/learn_center/article/126).
Some argue
that pornography is a victimless hobby. To this Kastelman countered: “I would
create a monument to all of pornography's tragic victims: the women, the
children, the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters, the little boys, sons and
brothers—all innocent bystanders from whom the thief took so much. The men,
fathers and husbands who could have been so much more and given so much more,
were it not for the thief called pornography” (www.contentwatch.com/learn_center/article/135). All this evidence and yet
thirty-eight percent of adults polled feel there isn’t anything wrong with viewing
pornography.
The pornography
thief can be so addicting so quickly that one hour of Internet porn can hook
another victim. Kastelman said: “The power that drives men to procreate, to
mate, to commit themselves to a wife and family is one of the most powerful
forces in the universe. Compound this with the fact that teenage boys and girls
are equipped at puberty with dormant cells containing sexual commands and
instructions, just waiting to be activated. How these cells are activated and
the images, emotions and attitudes stored there initially will have a direct
impact on the teenagers' future sexual attitudes and practices. Pornographers
use this natural biological phenomenon to their advantage…. Pornographers don't
want males to think, they want them to react. Instinct is the key to unlocking
the male appetite-not rational logic and thought…. But it isn't simply sexual
drive that impels teenage boys to get hooked on Internet porn and masturbation.
There are countless things going on in the brain and body of a teenage boy, any
of which can trigger his need to ‘self-medicate.’ Think about the teen
years-zits, extreme self-centeredness, bodily changes, peer pressure, girl
problems, shyness, and the list goes on. The entire male teen mindbody is in
upheaval, a state of constant flux. And then, Bam! Like the marijuana, crack or
heroine dealer, the Internet pornographer is there to ‘make it all better.’
This faceless porn-dealer offers the already vulnerable and troubled teen an
instant and easy recipe for escape. The teen is given all the ‘drugs’ he could
ever want, all at his beck and call and in the privacy of his own room. He can
completely immerse himself in the fantasy filthy world of nudity, sex, perversion
and the self-medication of repeated masturbation. This teen, trapped in the
blurry world of puberty, becomes a client for life, assuring the Internet
pornographers of obscene profits well into the future” (www.contentwatch.com/learn_center/article/149). "Pornography is not just a 'bad
habit. It links directly to such a dark underbelly of humanity. It has direct
ties to organized crime, prostitution, slavery … It's troubling to see the
global spread of material that degrades, demeans and undermines the role of
women in society and in families,” said Jill Manning, marriage and family
therapist. (See www.deseretnews.com/.../LDS-therapist-helps-women-learn-to-talk-about-pornography.html.)
Since pornography
is the hardest addiction to overcome because the images stay in the brain,
forever, how can we stop our young men and
women from taking that first look or spending that first life-altering hour
viewing Internet pornography? For those who have not succumbed to this most
pervasive longcut, prevention offers the most hope. Prevention means making
pornography as difficult as possible to access on all computers in our homes. Filters
and software programs are essential. Prevention means there are no computers or
televisions in bedrooms or private areas. All screens face outward so anyone in
the room can see what’s on the screen. Prevention means not staying up late, alone.
Prevention means watching only those television shows you decide in advance to
watch. When that show ends, immediately turn off the television. Prevention
means never channel surfing or being alone in a room with a computer with
Internet access. Prevention means focusing on other activities—mind games,
exercise and playing sports, interactions with real people, and making things
with your hands such as scrapbooks, furniture, pottery, sewing, giving service
and helping others to name only a few.
How can we
help the millions who did take that first look and are now addicted? Is there
an eraser to rub it out or a soap to scrub out a brain polluted with perverted
images and ideas? Today the only hope for those who have partaken of the
“forbidden fruit” is therapy, counseling, a 12-step program, and the prayers of
those who love them. Please consider some possible solutions.
Solution 1: Zero Tolerance for Internet Porn in the
Workplace
You will probably remember the financial crisis of
2007-2010 when crude oil prices tripled, food prices jumped,
and sub-prime losses and over-inflated home prices caused famous investment
companies such as Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch to fail. You’ll recall the
major panic in the banking industry. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008 and
one-hundred forty met their demise in 2009. The stock market dropped thousands
of points and retirement accounts lost half their value and no one knew how bad
it would get or how long the recession/depression would last. While the
financial world was in commotion, the Securities and Exchange Commission who
oversees and has responsibility to keep the world of finance steady was, so to
speak, asleep at the wheel. The people responsible to guard the till didn’t do
their job to protect the country from financial devastation, as this ABC News
story explains.
The
Securities and Exchange Commission is the sheriff of the financial industry, looking
for crimes such as Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, but a new government report obtained by ABC News
has concluded that some senior employees spent hours on the agency's computers
looking at [Internet porn sites] as the financial crisis was unfolding. Report
exposes financial regulators surfing for porn on government time.
"These guys in the middle of a
financial crisis are spending their time looking at prurient material on the
Internet," said Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland
and former director of the Office of Economics at the U.S. International Trade
Commission.
"It's
reckless, and indicates a contempt for the taxpayer and the taxpayer's interest
in monitoring financial markets," Morici said.
“The investigation, which was
conducted by the SEC's internal watchdog at the request of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, found 31 serious offenders during the past two
and a half years. That's less than 1 percent of the agency's 3,500 employees
but 17 of the alleged offenders were senior SEC officers whose salaries ranged
from $100,000 to $222,000 per year.”
The article continues with
specifics. One SEC attorney spent eight hours a day looking at porn. A SEC
accountant had six hundred pornographic images on her computer and tried to log
on 1,800 times in two weeks. In one month, another accountant tried to log on
porn cites 16,000 times. (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/sec-pornography-employees-spent-hours-surfing-porn-sites/story?id=10452544).
Why are employers paying for their
employees Internet porn time? Why don’t employers make accessing porn on the
job a firing offense? Why isn’t the standard that if an employee attempts to
access porn during work hours, the employee is warned on the first offence and terminated
if there’s a second infringement. This should be an absolute standard for
government workers. Otherwise, taxpayers like you and me are paying for
government employees’ porn time. The government should set its house in order,
especially the SEC whose role is essential to stability in the economy.
Solution 2: Petition
Congress to Enforce Existing Obscenity Laws
Patrick A. Trueman, former chief of Child Exploitation
and Obscenity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice spoke at a U.S. Capitol
Briefing on June 15, 2010, on illegal pornography. He said: “Our efforts today
are not partisan because the protection of children, violence against women,
addiction and sexual trafficking are not partisan issues. Nor are we here today
to quarrel with Attorney General Holder. The Attorney General has previously
indicated his support for the enforcement of obscenity laws. Yet we are asking
that the prosecution of obscenity, which seems to be on hold in the Obama
Administration be given a high priority because of the widespread harm we now
know that obscene material is causing.
The harms that we are talking about today would, to a great
extent, NOT be present if we were vigorously enforcing the law. I want to
highlight one of those harms.”
Mr. Trueman
said that seventeen years ago when he left the Department of Justice, there
were relatively few child pornographers and gives a reason why today it is out
of control. “One reason is that the Internet is, in a sense, ‘creating’ child
pornographers. Those who look at pornography first begin by viewing mild
material but because of the way the human brain works, they seek out harder and
harder material. The brain cannot be satisfied ever with pornography that is
consumed, it demands more and more.” He said child pornography is at a crisis
point all over the world. “You will NEVER solve the problem of child
pornography unless you vigorously prosecute adult pornography,” he said.
“There are many things that Congress can do. We are not
asking for new laws. We have all we need. A letter to the Attorney General is
circulating in both the House and Senate setting forth the harm from illegal
Pornography and asking that obscenity prosecution be given a higher priority.
All members of the House and Senate will be asked to sign.”
Mr. Trueman also spoke in Salt Lake City, Utah, March 27,
2010. He suggested three things the average citizen can do to fight
pornography: strengthen the family, survey communities, and lobby public
officials. He said parents must know what their children are doing. He said
only sixteen percent of households
have Internet blocking software. He said every family needs it whether there
are children in the home or not. He said, “So many marriages are breaking up
today because the man unknowingly thinks this is fun. He thinks, 'I can look at
a couple of pictures,' and then they get trapped in it" (Church News, April
3, 2010). He also said many children and teens use Facebook and set up two
sites—a dummy site, their parents will see, and one their parents won’t know
about.
His
second suggestion, to survey your community, means finding out where
pornography is sold. He gave the example of going into a convenience store that
sells objectionable material and nicely telling the owner that you won’t be
shopping there until specific material is removed. He said after five to ten
people do this, the owners will remove the pornography. His third suggestion,
to lobby public officials, means again that ordinary citizens must get involved
by calling, writing, e-mailing congressmen and senators in the state and
nation, encouraging them to enforce existing laws. His specific concerns were
about hotels and cable and satellite stations where hardcore pornography is
plentiful and easily accessed. He said, “We have to get our public officials to
enforce the laws.” (ibid).
Suggestion 3: Big Companies
Can and Must Help
Steve Jobs, as you may know, is the CEO of Apple, Inc.
Apple is big business. Currently, Apple and Microsoft are running neck and neck
in market share and revenues. And Steve Jobs has made a choice, set a course,
that other companies should follow. In The Heritage Foundation bulletin, an
article by Jennifer A. Marshall, June 13, 2010, explained that Steve Jobs
received an e-mail from a blogger who was angry about an iPad ad that said the
iPad was starting a revolution. The blogger said revolutions are about freedom.
Jobs wrote back: "Yep, freedom
from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash
your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a-changin.”
Ms. Marshall wrote: “There are 200,000 iPad applications, ‘apps,’ where you can
find almost anything from The Wall Street Journal to Weber grill recipes to air
hockey. But you won't find porn. That bothers the tech blogger. So do other
standards Apple set for developers who want to use its platform to reach
consumers. The blogger "worries about Apple's growing power to limit
self-expression." So the blogger shot back: "I don't want 'freedom
from porn.' Porn is just fine!"
Ms. Marshall continued: “Jobs
suggested the blogger might grow concerned about porn when he has children.
He's right. Parents have good reason to care about pornography. Production and
consumption of porn are rampant, and children are particularly vulnerable.
About 116,000 online searches for child pornography happen daily, according to
"The Social Costs of Pornography," a recent report from the
Witherspoon Institute. Every second, more than 28,000 Internet users are
viewing porn. That includes young people who trip on it accidentally.”
She cites studies about adolescence.
One-third said they had accidentally seen porn while online. Forty-five percent
said they had friends who viewed porn regularly. She said psychologists are
finding more boys addicted to porn are acting out in sexual aggression. She
quotes author Pamela Paul, author of the book Pornified, who said 11,000 porn movies are made a year compared to
400 from Hollywood. At the end of the
article she quotes Steve Jobs answer to the blogger who wanted porn. “It's
about Apple trying to do the right thing for its users. ... (W)e're just doing
what we can to try and make (and preserve) the user experience we envision. You
can disagree with us, but our motives are pure” (Deseret News, Sunday, June 13,
2010, G3). If other CEOs would step forward as Steve Jobs has done, perhaps our
youth can be saved.
Besides teens, women are being
targeted, and as an article in the Washington Times said on July 11, 2010,
“More Women Apt to Porn Addiction.” The Times reports that one in six women are
“caught up in steamy Web.” Rachel B. Duke wrote: “Researchers
have long known that the Internet has contributed to pornography addiction by
making it so easily accessible — no need to go out in a raincoat, pull a hat
down over the face, and sneak furtively into the red-light district. But that
ease of access also has leveled the playing field between the sexes….
Psychologists and researchers have seen an increasing number of women becoming
addicted to pornography on the Internet over the past 10 years.”
Ms. Duke continues citing study after study, confirming
that “one in three visitors to pornography sites were women.” She quotes a
licensed psychologist who said because women enjoy relationship and the
Internet provides a private place to go and chat, “developing relationships and
acting out sexually." The article cites a poll that found “9.4 million
women access adult websites each month, and 13 percent of women admit to
accessing pornography at work.” She said there are more than 1.3 million porn
sites which brought in $13 billion in 2006. To put that number in perspective,
that’s more than Miccrosoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, Netflix, and
Earthlink all combined. Ms. Duke then quoted Donna Rice Hughes, president of
Enough Is Enough, who said, "Pornography is the drug of the millennium and
more addictive than crack cocaine. Our goal is that there be as much protection
online as there is offline. Ninety percent of pornography addiction begins at
home” (© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC).
“According to the Internet Filter Review
(2006), every second of every hour of every day $3,075 is being spent on
pornography, and every 39 minutes a new pornographic video is made in the
United States.... According to one source, AT&T, MCI, Time-Warner, Comcast,
Echo Star Communications, GM’s DirecTV, Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton, Radisson,
VISA, MasterCard, and American Express all profit financially from the sale of
pornography. Pornography is bigger business than the NFL, NBA, and pro
baseball combined. America’s big corporations are complicit in a massive
public health hazard (Hilton, He Restoreth My Soul, 15, 17). In a U.S. Senate
committee meeting entitled “Hearing on the Brain Science Behind Pornography
Addiction and Effects of Addiction on Families and Communities” (November 18,
2004), Dr. Jeffery Satinover said: “With advent of the computer, the delivery
system for this addictive stimulus has become nearly resistance-free. It
is as though we have devised a form of heroin 100 times more powerful than
before, usable in the privacy of one’s own home and injected directly to the brain
through the eyes. It’s now available in unlimited supply via a
self-replicating distribution network, glorified as art and protected by the
Constitution” (Hilton, 51-52).
Pornography is
a drug! It is substance abuse as literally as nicotine, alcohol,
marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines which are ingested by mouth or injected
into a vein. Pornography ups the ante by infusing the substance directly
into the brain. As with all addictions but even more so with pornography, the
amount that satisfied last month is not enough today. C.S. Lewis expressed this truth about
downward spiraling addictive behaviors as "an ever-increasing
craving for an ever-diminishing pleasure.” This happens
because pornography causes changes in the brain’s neural
circuitry. The pathways created in the brain are like ruts in dirt roads, and
the grooves keep going in deeper and deeper. If you travel to the Oregon Trail
in Wyoming, the ruts made by covered wagons can still be seen. Those grooves
were made over one hundred and fifty years ago as wagon after wagon travelled
the same path. The pornography ruts in the human brain are just as real and
long lasting.
If you suspect someone you love is
involved in pornography, the sooner you intervene the more likely the person
will respond to treatment and be able to get out of the ruts. Signs of
pornography use can include secretive behavior, unusual attachment to and
protection of his/her computer (which may include carrying his/her computer
everywhere or locking it up), indirect or no eye contact, increased time alone,
up late at night, detachment from life, fatigue, moodiness, irritability, and disrespectful,
erratic, and aggressive behavior. Signs of addiction may include: anger when
the subject is brought up, failed attempts to stop, continued use despite
dire
consequences such as impending loss of marriage and/or job.
Thinking
and writing about pornography for six weeks has been a negative experience,
honestly, a very negative experience for me. As I did search after search to
learn more and more, I became overwhelmed by the pollution. If it were visible,
if the smut was hanging in the sky over our cities, governments around the
world would join together to clean up the air as a top priority. Just because
pornography happens alone and in the dark, the magnitude of the problem isn’t
seen. Most of us are oblivious to the fact that this hidden pollution is
ruinung our society faster than the toxicity in the air. The thought keeps running
in my mind: How can we stand against the tide? Will any come through unscathed?
Will there be young men to marry young women who will cleave to each other in
happy, stable marriages? Will they want children? Will family as the basic unit
of society survive? Then I realized the onslaught of evil via pornography is not
a tide; it’s a tsunami. Just as Noah foresaw the coming flood, another flood is
in progress, and the pornography water is already above millions of heads. How bad does it have to get before we unite and do
something about it? What ark can be built to save us?
In researching pornography I also
read about iphone, Facebook, eBay, and video game additions. I know people who leave
their televisions on all day as background to life. I read two recent studies
showing the average person spends between 8.5 and 9 hours a day using media.
Suddenly, I saw the commonality in all visual media. “Eureka!” I thought. “It’s
the screens! Screens in and of themselves may be addictive!” After thinking
this was an original idea, I decided to Google it just in case someone else had
already had the idea. Sure enough, other people have, and the idea has merit
and needs exploring. We don’t want to unplug ourselves from screens. Technology
cannot be turned back and is the life-blood of our economy and lifestyle. But if
there were a way to rid ourselves of the bad screens—pornography, violent video
games, raunchy and violent television, movies that teach prurient behavior and
replace them with good screens, society would not only survive but thrive. How can
we take the bad screen time and turn it into productive screen time? What could
be done on screens that would be beneficial? I’ve had two ideas.
Genealogy can be a gripping hobby. The
Internet makes searching for ancestors intellectually challenging, like solving
a mystery. Online genealogical research would satisfy the screen aspect in a positive way, and interest in family would be
helpful so on many levels. Idea two: Money used to create pornography could be redirected
to discover ways to beckon Internet users to learn. What if you could study the
universe by traveling holographically and interactively to the depths of the
oceans or to destinations in space? What if you could learn a foreign language
by a virtual study abroad experience? What if you could hike the Grand Canyon
in a virtual reality that caused perspiration to drip off your exhausted body?
What if you could learn to conduct a symphony or built a house or make movies,
write scripts, musical scores, or books or take lessons on any musical
instrument? What if you could learn to paint from the masters?
When John F. Kennedy challenged NASA
in 1962 to go to the moon in the next decade, the world gasp. He lay down the
challenge: “But why, some
say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the
highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?....We choose to go to
the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,
not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will
serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that
challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
postpone, and one which we intend to win.” If
we can go to the moon and beyond, we can find beneficial uses of screens. Like
the moon challenge, discovering positive and beneficial uses of screens as a
substitute for screen addictions of all kinds will be hard and take our best
energies and skills, our collective genius. Will we accept this challenge and
not postpone this opportunity to save our society? We must win this one or we
will all pay a price beyond our worst fears. Our challenge is twofold:
1. Curtail the wild-fire speed with which screen
addictions are spreading by discovering equally compelling and beneficial uses
of screens; and
2. Discover therapies or antidotes to reclaim those
already addicted.
If you have children in your home or
children who visit you, please make your computers as safe as possible. Here
are two places to start http://www.GetNetWise.org/ and http://kids.getnetwise.org/tools.
Agency-Preserving
Principles
Never believe you will be the exception to the
laws of nature.
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Pornography is no
respecter of gender, age, education, socio-economic groups, race, religion,
etc. Pornography is the most
addicting behavior or substance. Protect yourself and your children and other
people’s children. There are no casual users. The images keep coming back and
back, creating an insatiable appetite for more and more.
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Know you will harvest what
you sow.
|
“Talking
about sex and pornography has quickly become a top priority for parents and
their children, and with research indicating that adolescents today appear to
be using pornography much more than any other age group (Arnett, 2006),
silence is not golden. Parents need to know how to talk about pornography,
and how to recognize signs that their child may be already struggling with
pornography.” Before a couple gets engaged and certainly before marriage,
pornography must be openly discussed.
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Learn the lessons of history so you won’t repeat
the mistakes.
|
Pornography is big
business and is making a lot of conspiring and evil men and woman wealthy.
Never in the history of the world has pornography been so available to so
many. Pornography has significantly and irreversibly weakened the next
generation. Just as alcohol impairs
one's perception of reality, pornography distorts a healthy view of human
sexual intimacy and the true purposes of life.
|
Find
the power in resisting impulse, persisting, and delaying gratification.
|
The median age is 11-13
when boys first use of pornography. For girls the median age is 12-14. The
power to resist and to persist in resisting must be taught early. And since
pornography is so available and so pervasive, parents must actively do all
they can to prevent that first use.
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Develop
personal integrity and make moral decisions.
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Pornography affects every
aspect of life. Pornography is a poison. If you pick up a poisonous snake
even for a moment, it can kill you. The worst thing about pornography is the
loss of potential. Men and women addicted to porn are slaves in chains,
sailing on a slave ship, and sharks are following close behind.
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Know
that others see things you don’t and welcome their perspectives.
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The experts cited see
dangers and patterns we don’t see. We don’t see the perspective that almost
fifty percent of Americans say that pornography is a problem in their homes.
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Make
goals, write them down, use failure avoidance, prioritize, avoid procrastination.
|
Make
preventing pornography use in your home a top priority by placing filters and
passwords on your computers. Use failure avoidance to keep pornographic
images out of your mind from whatever source they come. Pornography is a
subject we can’t procrastinate doing something about.
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Value
yourself. Know you can make a difference. Do good to feel good.
|
Pornography robs the user of his or her
self-esteem and self-worth. The more pornography men watch, the more likely
they are to disrespect women and see them in sexualized terms. It’s
impossible to do pornography and feel good about yourself.
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Develop
a
happy inner core.
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Pornography and happiness
are polar opposites. If you take pornography into your mind, please do
whatever it takes to be free of the addiction and reclaim your agency.
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Become
a lighthouse to yourself and others.
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Lighthouses are needed to
light up the dark places pornography is found. Be a lighthouse in your family
and community.
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Develop
the backbone to say “NO!”
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If you test drive
pornography, it will drive you. Say no to pornography.
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