Symposium: Liberated for Slavery

This article is in response to “What Can Pornography Teach Us About Love?” by Michael Bradley and is part of the symposium, “Sex and the Polis: Perspectives on Marriage, Family, and Sexual Ethics.”

The governing logic for sexuality in the affluent, Western world today works in terms of individual self-expression: As in the economic realm, you should be free to consume any good you desire, as long as all parties to the contract consent. This is presented as radically emancipating. The strictures of religious, moral, or cultural restraint have been exposed as “repressive” and “regressive,” and now we are all free to cater to our own sexual desires. This set of ideas, largely originating in the West since the Sexual Revolution, is now considered the civilized norm for the entire world and aggressively promoted by United Nations policy.

The emancipation rhetoric was never particularly compelling. It was always intended to line the pockets of those—from Hugh Hefner to Planned Parenthood—well-positioned to exploit the fallout from the validation of lust. From declining female happiness to below-replacement fertility rates across Europe, we have paid a high price for our freedom.

But the ironies are at their most vicious in pornography. I haven’t seen “Don Jon,” but the story it tells rings true. Yet the ideology of sexual self-expression is very powerful here. It all seems consensual and voluntary (though pornography and sex trafficking are deeply and sordidly linked). It all seems private, personal, nothing for anyone else to worry about. Yet as Michael Bradley points out, and as “Don Jon” plays out, pornography consumption ingrains deep habits which inevitably affect every dimension of life. For an addict, real people and real life become less and less interesting. Perverse fictions sap the majesty of everyday life in this wonderful world.

Pornography is indeed objectification—treating human persons, with all their sacred, imago dei dignity, as means to the end of physical gratification. But it is also profoundly idolatrous: an apotheosis of the naturally good impulse of sexual desire.

The rapper Lecrae provides a powerful antidote to the selfish slavery of pornography in his “Truth.” We have to face the hard questions and commit our lives to purposes beyond our own desires, and only then will we discover that we are free:

“I promise everybody is asking the same questions
“Who am I? What is my purpose and my direction?”
You probably believe that you exist for no other reason
Than self-satisfaction, hedonism and pleasing things.”

As Michael so rightly said, “In order to find yourself, you have to give yourself away. Nothing is less conducive to the cultivation of charity than pornography.”