It's the stigma, stupid
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Here’s another study showing that the shame and stigma around porn, not the porn itself, is harmful to men who watch pornography. Apparently most people in the study (61.7%) said pornography had no impact on their sex lives, positive or negative. This study follows existing research showing pornography addiction is driven by sexual shame, often stemming from religious teachings.
I’m listening to Jesus and John Wayne on Audible and there’s a section on the famous GQ interview of one of the Duck Dynasty guys:
What, in your mind, is sinful?
"Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.”
Pretty blatantly self-serving of Mr. Phil Robertson to start with a sin he, presumably, doesn’t struggle with. Forget pride or gossip or overeating or any other behavior the Bible says is sinful. Let’s target the gays.
But the interesting part to me is the empirical claim. Somehow you “start” with homosexuality, which, by the way, has been with humanity since the dawn of time. And then somehow you “morph out” to bestiality. Which, to be fair, has also been with humanity since the dawn of time. Luckily, bestiality is attractive to a much smaller percentage of the population. Now, on what basis is Robertson connecting homosexuality with bestiality? The connection isn’t obvious. First, the former describes an orientation while the latter describes a behavior.
Evangelicals like Robertson like to claim that if society accepts homosexuality it will lead to widespread practice and eventually acceptance of non-consensual sexual behaviors.
The fact that Robertson is conflating homosexual sex and the rape of animals speaks to the general Evangelical rejection of the concept of consent. They don’t judge whether a sexual behavior is moral or not based on whether it’s consensual. And so consent doesn’t loom very large in their worldview. This is one of many ways in which Evangelical cultural norms and the norms of cultures with lots of sexual assault and abuse overlap.
Another interesting thing about the claim that the normalization of gay sex somehow leads to animal rape is that it’s… demonstrably untrue. Over the past twenty years stigma against people who have gay sex has declined precipitously in America.
Yet, somehow, last I checked, we had not entered an animal rape epidemic. Nor is bestiality any less stigmatized than it was before. The evidence is very strong that homophobia has absolutely zero ability to protect animals from sexual assault.
Which brings me back to the “porn is addictive” claims Evangelicals are still making, despite the fact that the evidence is clear that they, not the porn, are causing people who watch porn to feel depressed and anxious.
Why does anyone still trust anything Evangelicals have to say about sex? They were demonstrably wrong about homosexuality. And, as far as I can tell, have never apologized or walked back their incredibly hurtful and untrue comments. So why do they have any credibility on the topic of sex with anyone? And I think the answer is because the Evangelical church teaches its adherents to ignore reason and science when they contradict what church leaders have to say. Which is a super fucked-up system! It’s almost like they designed a system meant to keep people as ignorant as possible for as long as possible.
“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord.” -the Bible
What, in your mind, is sinful?
It’s fucking telling people not to use their brains to evaluate evidence and reject claims that are false and hurtful.