October 2, 2015 | Sex & Society

Porn haters up their game

Porn kills love, don't you know?

You may have thought the war on porn was over, and porn had won. For many years religious conservatives fought the spread of pornography on the Internet, demanding controls and censorship measures of one sort or another. But in Western countries, constitutions guaranteeing freedom of expression overrode concerns that easy access to skin flicks would lead to the imminent decay of society. And guess what? Society is just fine, or at least its ills cannot be linked to dirty movies.

Conservative religious groups still consider porn to be evil, and now a group called Fight the New Drug, likely funded by the Mormons, has launched a multipronged campaign for the hearts and minds of Americans, called  Porn Kills Love.

According to the campaign's very slickly produced website, pornography is harmful in countless ways. Some pretty broad accusations are made, with little objective proof.  Under the "Get the Facts" section we discover:

- porn is like a drug;
- porn kills love;
- porn ruins your sex life;
- porn leaves you lonely;
- porn hurts your partner;
- porn leads to violence;
- porn hates families;

Yipes! If there were any truth to these accusations we'd be feeling pretty bad about now.

In addition to the snazzily illustrated website, there is tons of swag, notably some quite trendy (but for the message) t-shirts. There's also a blog, a call for grassroots volunteers and lots of pictures of enthusiastic porn-hating youth. Website visitors are encouraged to take "The Fighter Pledge," which emphasizes persuading others of the harmful effects of porn while remaining non-judmental (quite the challenge).

We have to hand it to the Mormons, or whoever is behind the website: it's a lovely work of propaganda. Too bad the result will be making people feel bad about something as harmless as whacking off to images of other people having sex.