SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – September 15, 2015 (Gephardt Daily) – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is taking aim at pornography and the dangers the church says it poses to children. The controversial subject matter is front and center in the newly released LDS Church video, What Should I Do When I See Pornography.
According to the video, there are three basic steps children need to go through should they be exposed to pornographic material:
First, recognize and call the material exactly what it is – pornography.
Second, assuming the material is seen on the web, turn the images off and “turn away.”
Third, tell a trusted adult about what you have seen.
This new initiative in the war on porn is the latest attempt to cope with a prominent problem in the Mormon community, a problem which goes back years.
The issue was addressed openly more than a decade ago back in 2005, when pornography addiction was the focus of an LDS General Conference address delivered by Quorum of Twelve Apostle Elder Dallin H. Oaks. “For many years our Church leaders have warned against the dangers of images and words intended to arouse sexual desires,” Oaks said. “Now the corrupting influence of pornography, produced and disseminated for commercial gain, is sweeping over our society like an avalanche of evil.”
LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley addressed the pornography issue as well. In November, 2004 he told General Conference goers “this is a very serious problem, even among us.” Hinckley also spoke of the analogy he frequently shared with BYU students as he urged them to avoid “promotional literature of illicit sexual relations.”
“Pornographic or erotic stories and pictures are worse than filthy or polluted food,” Hinckley said. “The body has defenses to rid itself of unwholesome food. With a few fatal exceptions, bad food will only make you sick but do no permanent harm. In contrast, a person who feasts upon filthy stories or pornographic or erotic pictures and literature records them in this marvelous retrieval system we call a brain. The brain won’t vomit back filth. Once recorded, it will always remain subject to recall, flashing its perverted images across your mind and drawing you away from the wholesome things in life.”
In recent years the LDS Church has repeatedly attempted to address porn addiction within its membership. It has established a series of online networks and other social services offering help to those coping with pornography related issues.
A 2009 Harvard University study published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives underscored the depth of the challenge facing the LDS Church in Utah. The study found the state, which is home to the LDS Church, has the highest use of adult entertainment sites per capita in the U.S.
Utah tried to tackle the pornography problem itself back in 2001, when then-Attorney General Mark Shurtleff appointed former prosecutor Paula Houston to be Utah’s Obscenity and Pornography Complaints Ombudsman aka the “porn czar.”
The position was eliminated due to budget cuts in 2003.
The reason porn is bad is that it instills an imaginery concept of PERFECTION in eroticism in a persons brain. Thereafter NO interaction with another human (humans are imperfect)
Will ever be able to match or equal that imagined concept leaving the affected person dissatisfied and always searching for something never able to be achieved. Effectively setting the person up for lifelong failure.