02-07-2007, 03:24 PM | #31 | |
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And as to Indy's comment, I agree that pornography is a problem for many. But I argue that it's also a symptom of a much more complex male-female dynamic in the Church and that simply giving talks that condemn it as though it were a problem that exists in a vacuum, or lazily suggesting it is simply the result of an ill-defined "smutty world," won't help much in the aggregate. In some sense I see the kind of easy thoughtlessness in the usual approach to condemning pornography that I see in the monthly "Do your home teaching" lecture. At some point, Church leaders should have learned that: A. Lecturing to people and trying to make them feel guilty isn't working, hasn't worked and won't work (at least, not on this issue and not in the aggregate). In fact, it's demoralizing for many and can reinforce an assumption of all-talk and no-action. and B. There is a deeper difficulty that isn't being understood, much less addressed. and C. Most everyone seems to recognize these things, but no one's doing anything about them so the implication is that no one, including leaders, either cares or expects to make a difference. and D. This all fits nicely into the apocalyptic, "the world is ending and we can't do anything to improve things so why try" rhetoric that gets bandied about. I see something of what socio-psychologists call a "bystander effect." Lots of people are standing around and shouting "Oh no! Oh no! Someone do something! Someone needs to help! Please sir, stop dying!" while the guy having the coronary dies, on the street, surrounded by people. BTW, the fireside I'm giving on sexuality and the media is scheduled for three weeks for Sunday.
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02-07-2007, 03:49 PM | #32 | |
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I don't think you can blame the church for creating a male-female dynamic that creates an environment for porn problems. This is a nationwide/worldwide epidemic. I just saw something on TV last night that had a few on a panel, including a divorce lawyer in Dallas, that talked about it from a non-religious, national perspective and said that divorces naming porn as a contributing cause were exploding. I have an opinion on church leaders constant barrage of "avoid pornography" but at the same time giving no hope or no help to those caught in the trap. It's unfortunate that church leaders do this, but I don't blame them. I think by hammering the topic they scare a certain % of members away from it, which is a good result from a bad tactic. It's a big and scary problem and I don't think they know what to do about it, other than scare people into avoiding it. If this scare tactic helps keep my sons from porn, then yappari I will probably be grateful for the help as a parent. If one of my sons becomes addicted to porn, then I will probably be angry at the church's tactic because at that point I think their methods do more harm than good. |
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02-07-2007, 04:09 PM | #33 | |
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Take a moment and consider what I've written. There's more than a little truth to it.
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"Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; " 1 Thess. 5:21 (NRSV) We all trust our own unorthodoxies. Last edited by Sleeping in EQ; 02-07-2007 at 04:13 PM. |
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02-07-2007, 04:16 PM | #34 | |
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02-07-2007, 04:23 PM | #35 | |
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I'm no expert, but about the only way I see that you could lessen the strangle hold porn has on our youth is to tell them sex before marriage is OK. Then they'd be too busy with the real thing like the rest of their peers to be concerned with porn. |
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02-07-2007, 04:24 PM | #36 |
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This is perhaps the first time I've read an interesting discussion on the topic. I tend to agree with SEIQ's observations, but haven't given it the deep thought he apparently has.
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02-07-2007, 04:25 PM | #37 |
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It's just a hunch, but I am going to go out on a limb and predict that this particular option won't fly with the brethren.
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02-07-2007, 04:30 PM | #38 | |
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Just as a gal suggested that the Church should allow boys and girls between 18 and 25 to have all the sex they wanted and then to be faithful after marriage. But in essence, to address the "problem", the Church does need to address a healthy viewpoint of sexuality. Its intellectuals such as SEIQ do, but its leaders do not. It's again focusing upon the negative and not going to the root of the problem. Pornography is a symptom of larger dysfunctions in sexuality. The Church has done absolutely nothing to develop healthy sexual perspectives. (Well I suppose the abstinence to avoid STDs is healthy but other than that, I hadn't considered our repression in light of the Victorians).
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02-07-2007, 04:35 PM | #39 | |
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Many North American Mormons are suffering from a case of hyper-Victorianism. The Victorians attacked us over our sexual deviance (polygamy) and in our defeat we compulsively serve the ideologies of those who defeated us. Victorianism has influenced the larger American culture (the 1950s stereotypes are rife with it and so is the Mars/Venus material), but it is more acute with Mormons because we have been bludgeoned. This is what I mean by Uncle Tom-ism. Therein we go back to Victorian sex norms like a person going to an astrology book to find himself. We take what we find there and obsessively try to mold ourselves into it. Stereotypes about maleness and femaleness are considered to be universally and objectively true and their cultural constructedness is ignored. The angel-whore dichotomy (which keeps women as objects), the true cult of womanhood thinking, the hyper-enforced sex divisions, the myth of the rugged Western male, the idea that the body is dirty and something to be encaged (Victorian dresses literally put women in a kind of iron cage)--these are all part of it. Sure, biology plays a role in some of these things, but many of them are culturally specific and are not demanded by scipture or a Godly sense of right and wrong. The Victorians dressed modestly and new how to host in the parlor, but there was a whore house being run out back.
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"Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; " 1 Thess. 5:21 (NRSV) We all trust our own unorthodoxies. Last edited by Sleeping in EQ; 02-07-2007 at 04:37 PM. |
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02-07-2007, 04:39 PM | #40 |
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so Mormons get the parlor hosting skills and no whorehouse.
I knew something was wrong. |
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