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Listen to the 10 min audio
Read the transcript:
PORNOGRAPHY’S RECENT SUICIDE SPIRAL
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry there are times that we have to deal with stories that are rather sensitive. Perhaps there are sensitive young ears around the radio or the smartphone or the tablet – we just want to give a heads-up to Mom or Dad that today’s subject is one of those. We’re going to deal with the fallout of those who find themselves involved in an immoral industry, the adult film industry.
Harry, The Daily Wire reported recently that a lonely actress in this industry, at age 20, took her life. She stated over Christmas that she was lonely during the holidays and she was also grieving the death of her boyfriend, who died from a drug overdose. What’s even sadder about this story, Harry, is this is the fourth young lady who has passed away – several of these because of suicide – that are involved in this industry.
DR. REEDER: Let me just use the term one time: this pornographic industry, “adult entertainment.” There’s nothing adult about it. I actually see it as an adolescent industry because of what it preys upon – the young people of our society – both in terms of those who participate and those who are purveyors.
NOT A VICTIMLESS CRIME
Tom, one of the things that’s constantly said to us is that we have matured to a society so that we have recognized that this should not be criminalized because, if it was a crime, it’s a victimless crime.
Well, so much for that notion. What we are looking at is the multi-faceted destructive elements of this particular industry, which America, by far, is the most prolific producer of this adult entertainment. It’s like a tsunami wave through the internet into the lives of people.
We are now opening up entire counseling clinics based upon addressing the addictions of this industry, which it is designed to be addictive and it is designed to produce a downward spiral into the clutches of this industry. We now have them at junior high age – entire counseling centers that are there because of the addictions at the junior high age.
It is now said that 70 percent of men are engaged in this activity in our society – over 70 percent. The statistics on when young people are exposed to this have now identified the elementary age as the point of contact and then, once somebody sees something, you can’t unsee it anymore. There’s actually a chemical dynamic that burns the images into your brain.
What we need to realize is that this is not a victimless crime. Tom, honestly, we talked about whether to do this program or not. One of the reasons I finally was persuaded to do it is because this news item not only reminds us of the victims of broken homes and broken families because of the addiction to the products of the pornographic industry, but also the people that participate, the destruction in the lives of these young women, the objectivization of women in general because of this, the loss of the beauty and blessing of God’s gift of the sanctity of sexuality within marriage, the idea that sexuality exists for personal gratification and the other person becomes an object and there are no ethical parameters that are to surround the sanctity of the gift of sexuality by God to us.
WE MUST CONTINUE TO HOLD SHARED MORALS IN SOCIETY
This last week, Tom, I was in a forum dealing with a public ordinance that would penalize people if they will not extend civil rights to sexual activities, sexual orientation, and self-identification of gender. In that particular forum, at the end of it, a person asked this question: “Listen, can’t we just realize that there are some morals that we ought to all agree just to set aside for the sake of peace in the community?”
And the indication was that one of those morals we ought to not be prohibited from making ordinances about how people conduct themselves sexually in the apartment building that I live in and that I ought not to have any moral codes in the apartment buildings that I rent out or the businesses that we put in place. I just said to everyone, “Wait just a minute. You are now in the throes of a sexual revolution – a tsunami of degradation is taking place. You have just now gone through the #metoo, where women are being objectified, where they are being coerced by the powerful into objects of a person’s pleasure and that’s what’s happening in the sexual revolution which, by the way, exists to declare that there should be no parameters concerning sexual morality.”
Let me ask you a question: how is that working for us now to remove parameters? That’s why many of us are saying you must understand that the free practice of religion and the freedom of speech allows people to make the point that there are parameters for these things and, when you set them aside, it has destruction.
WOMEN ARE TREATED AS OBJECTS, JUST LIKE #METOO
Here are these women, most of them were in a vulnerable state, are drawn into the industry, told that it really doesn’t matter, but what they begin to find out is, “I don’t matter. All I am is an object for people to look at and to use,” and that empties their life.
And so, you’ve now had these four public cases, as many of us were celebrating the Advent season of rejoicing and the gift of God through His Son, Jesus Christ, to save us from our sins, there were those who were caught up in this rebellion against God that has become this profitable entertainment industry and the people that are in it are being killed. That just breaks my heart. These women aren’t just names – they’re somebody’s daughter, they’re somebody’s sister – women made in the image of God that have become nothing more than objects of prurient voyeurism and then destruction.
THERE IS HOPE – AND HELP
If you are somehow listening to us and you have become a participant in this industry, I want you to know there’s a God who loves you, who gave His Son who died for you that you could have forgiveness, and you are somebody because God made you to be somebody and God’s Son can save you from your sins and you can have eternal life. And there are people we can help put you in contact with that were where you are and God, by His grace, has transformed them.
And, if you are a purveyor of this, it is nothing but a death spiral. This is going to take you to emptiness and there are casualties not only concerning your life, but your marriage and your ability to have relationships. There is a God who can work in your life so that you can see the glory and majesty of what it means to know Him and love Him and what is good and beautiful and true and we would love to connect you to people who are able to help you with this Gospel uplifting, transforming truth. You can be forgiven of all of your sins and you can be transformed so that your life can be totally renovated by the grace of God and it’ll be a glorious progress as God brings you from the clutches of this.
Maybe, as you’re listening to us, you have this secret life that’s not going to be secret very long – it is ultimately going to be exposed because the consequences of it will demand its exposure – but there is one who can expose your heart, and heal it, and give you a new heart and a new life and you can become a new creation in Christ where the old passes away and the new life has come.
Friends, listen: On the scale of public policy, the adult industry is not an industry with victimless crime. It actually is killing the people that are providing this entertainment and it is killing the people that are buying into this as entertainment – killing the heart and the soul – but there is One who can deliver you in heart, soul and body.
This is the will of God, that you abstain from sexual immorality and that you know how to present your body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which becomes your glorious spiritual service of worship. Life can be worship. The marriage bed can be held in honor and God can be glorified in every aspect of His good gifts to us in life.
Dr. Harry L. Reeder III is the Senior Pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.
This podcast was transcribed by Jessica Havin. Jessica is editorial assistant for Yellowhammer News. Jessica has transcribed some of the top podcasts in the country and her work has been featured in a New York Times Bestseller.
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