FacebookMySpaceTwitterDiggDeliciousStumbleuponRSS Feed

Expired
Details

If you’re older, a Boomer like me, when you hear about pornography you probably think of men and what we used to call “dirty magazines,” but this era is long gone, and among younger generations, including Christians, pornography is ubiquitous, insidious, and noxious.

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #243 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

 

 

There are a few topics that I do not like to think, research, write, or speak about. Among these topics are LGBTQ+ and pornography. For want of a more sophisticated way of explaining my feelings, these topics are too “icky,” too disturbing for me, too much of a yuk factor.

Both these topics, in different ways, stem from sexual perversion. Now, icky or not, I feel compelled to speak again about pornography.

Let’s set the stage with some statistics:

  1. “Over 40 million Americans are regular visitors to porn sites. The average visit lasts 6 minutes and 29 seconds.
  2. There are around 42 million porn websites, which totals around 370 million pages of porn.
  3. The porn industry’s annual revenue is MORE than the NFL, NBA, and MLB combined. It is also more than the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC.
  4. 47% of families in the United States reported that pornography is a problem in their home.
  5. Pornography use increases the marital infidelity rate by more than 300%.
  6. Eleven is the average age that a child is first exposed to porn, and 94% of children will see porn by the age of 14.
  7. 56% of American divorcesinvolve one party having an “obsessive interest” in pornographic websites.”

A 2013 article in ExtremeTech magazine estimated that 30% of the internet’s data usage was for porn. This is a multi-billion-dollar business worldwide.

What about among those who self-identify as Christians? “Beyond The Porn Phenomenon,” published in 2024 by The Barna Group and Pure Desire Ministries, provides the most current data we have about Christians and porn use compared to the rest of the United States. According to this study:

  1. 61% of the general population (aged 13 and up) watches porn compared to 54% of practicing Christians.
  2. 75% of Christian men view pornography, compared to 78% of the general population.
  3. 40% of Christian women view pornography, compared to 44% of the general population.
  4. Two-thirds of pastors (68%) have struggled or currently struggle with pornography.

“If we combined these percentages with US census data, we can see just how many people this is: 45,174,658 Christian men watch porn, and 24,135,395 Christian women watch porn.”

Another study found that “Men are still more likely to watch porn than women in general, but the number of female porn users increases as they get younger.”

  1. “33% of women aged 25-and-under search for porn at least once per month.
  2. Only 13% of self-identified Christian women say they never watch porn –87% of Christian women have watched porn.”

Of these women watching porn,

  1. “88% attend church regularly, 81% pray regularly, and 72% read their Bible regularly
  2. Only 6.7% of respondents had heard female porn use discussed in a sermon.

Women are not immune to porn. The old dichotomy that men are visually stimulated and women are relationally stimulated is less than helpful when it comes to pornography use.”

I haven’t bothered to define pornography. Reason is, it’s like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous quote on obscenity, from the 1964 case Jacobellis v. Ohio, in which he noted: "I know it when I see it." He used this phrase to explain that while he couldn't precisely define "hard-core" pornography, he recognized it when he encountered it.

I’m assuming the same thing here. You know what pornography is.

The Bible doesn't mention pornography directly, but condemns the lust, sexual immorality (porneia), and objectification it involves, emphasizing sex within marriage. Key teachings include a call for purity in thoughts and actions (Ephesians 5:3, Philippians 4:8), viewing pornography as a destructive force against God's design for intimacy, leading to addiction, shame, and broken relationships. 

Human beings, human hearts, are no different now than those in the ancient past or in our past. People are created by God as sexual beings, but we are also fallen, sinful creatures who are born in sin and must deal with sin throughout our lives.

What’s different today from the past, even our past if like me you are an older Baby Boomer, is that the internet – first widely available in the mid-1990s – and the smart phone – first released on the market in 2007 – puts pornography in our hands, instantaneously, a lot of it for free.

I mentioned what we used to call dirty magazines, Playboy, and the like that featured unclothed women. When I was a kid the only way men accessed porn was to buy these magazines at newsstands, hide them in brown paper bags from the women in their lives, and sneak peek. I know this not because I did this, but I certainly saw friends do it.

Now, on one’s laptop or on that smart phone in your hand, you can instantly access, for free, one of those 42+ million pornography websites. This is what I mean about ubiquitous. Porn is everywhere.

And as of the mid-2010s, just 10 years ago, the modern era of independent, creator-driven adult content subscription sites began. Adult content creators—or if you prefer, pornographers—may be anyone who is willing to post licentious media of themselves: maybe your neighbors, or actresses who discover they can make more money posting than acting, or individuals who develop a brand presence like golf or swimsuit, i.e., seeking a following for their niche content that morphs over to paywalled adult content.

Adult-content sites offer content creators a platform they do not have to build and maintain, allows them to create accounts, post their pictures and videos, use paywalls and set their own fees requiring viewer-customers to purchase subscriptions for access to certain levels or kinds of content, then the websites return to the content creators as much as 80% of the revenues.

Many of these adult content creators are also active on social media like Twitter—the widest open to sexual voyeurism—Instagram, Facebook, and more, which typically are governed by restrictive parameters vis-à-vis nudity. The value of these sites to the adult content creator is brand promotion, name recognition, enticing more followers to links that feature more prurient content.

Remember this. Porn is not just on worst sites such that if you avoid these sites, you’re in the clear. No, adult content creators or their teams are continuously trolling on otherwise harmless sites. They use what in business is called a marketing funnel, meaning many might be engaged on the top end, and fewer take the next step, fewer still the next step in the funnel, but a certain percentage get all the way to the paywall sites and subscribe.

I have not visited adult content websites, but I know how they work. A typical marketing funnel involves: Awareness – you see an Instagram post featuring a person you find attractive; Interest – you check their advertised website; Decision - you buy a subscription, say $15 per month, giving you access to that person wearing less clothing or engaging in specific sexually enticing activity. Meanwhile, you are getting hooked on explicit pornography, and the content creator is making money based upon your addictive behavior.

So, I’d say, protect yourself. I’ve twice stopped using social media platforms that kept exposing me to enticements (trolling) to pornography. I got out because the social media platform was more of a threat than a help to me. Pornography is now as big a problem in the Christian Church as it is in culture.

The Bible warns against being mastered by anything, calling for freedom from damaging behaviors (1 Corinthians 6:12) and telling us “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” (1 Cor. 10:13).

There is no temptation and no addiction more powerful than the Holy Spirit.

 

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2026  

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/ or my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.

Expired
Details

Did you realize—actually I hope not—that pornography, along with gambling, are among the biggest money-making schemes on the internet?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #72 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Years ago, I made the unprovable claim that unforgiveness was the #1 sin in the Christian Church. It might be and I could be correct, but it’s not the kind of thing one can measure.

Now, though, with the development of the Internet since the late 1990s, the #1 sin in the Christian Church might just be pornography. That’s right, looking at salacious pictures. Christians? Yes, Christians and just about everyone else.

Common sense, and certainly moral values, tell you pornography is insidious. It is beguiling, alluring, treacherous, and it entraps both the willing and the unsuspecting because it keys on otherwise normal human curiosity and inclinations regarding sexuality. “Brain scans have shown that pornography has the same effect on the brain as cocaine.” So, yes, pornography is insidious.

Pornography is now also ubiquitous, meaning it is virtually everywhere, and via the Internet, accessible 24/7 to anyone with a smart phone. 

It is also increasingly in our face, in print or billboard advertisements, in media commercials, in online popups, in entertainment like cinema, television, plays, videos, online games, and more.

When I was a kid, guys would sneak around to buy what we called “dirty magazines” at the newsstand. Then they’d have to find somewhere to look at the pages and, even more challenging, figure out where to discard the magazines so their mothers would not find them.

Needless to say, this anecdote is from the Dark Ages. Fewer people than ever buy “dirty magazines” because the porn they are after is available on thousands of websites on the World Wide Web. “Porn sites receive more website traffic in the U.S. than Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, Pinterest and LinkedIn combined. 

More than a dozen states in the US declared pornography a public health crisis in 2019…Hollywood produces about 3,000 movies a year; the porn industry films around 12,000.”

“Porn usage surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. One pornographic site found that the more restrictive the COVID rules, the greater the increase in porn viewership.”

“New Pew Research Center data has found that nowadays, 63% of men under 30 are electively single, up from 51% in 2019 — and experts blame erotic alone time online as a major culprit.”

Every second:

  • 28,258 users are watching pornography on the internet.
  • $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography on the internet.

Every Day:

  • 68 million search queries related to pornography- 25% of total searches- are generated. 
  • 116,000 queries related to child pornography are received.

How Online Pornography Affects Americans:

  • 40 million American people regularly visit porn sites.
  • There are over 42 million porn websites, which totals around 370 million pages of porn.
  • The porn industry’s annual revenue is more than the NFL, NBA, and MLB combined. It is also more than the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC.
  • 11 is the average age that a child is first exposed to porn, and 94% of children will see porn by the age of 14.
  • 56% of American divorces involve one party having an “obsessive interest” in pornographic websites.
  • 68% of church-going men and over 50% of pastors view porn on a regular basis. Of young Christian adults 18-24 years old, 76% actively search for porn.
  • 33% of women aged 25 and under search for porn at least once per month.
  • Only 13% of self-identified Christian women say they never watch porn—87% of Christian women have watched porn.
  • 55% of married men and 25% of married women say they watch porn at least once a month.
  • 57% of pastors say porn addiction is the most damaging issue in their congregation. 69% say porn has adversely impacted the church.
  • One-third of porn viewers are women.

Consider these statistics:

With the increase in porn consumption in the workplace, it translates to lost productivity, and in some cases, lost jobs and lost careers.

Pornography is not just harmless titillation. 

Viewing porn leads to addiction, warped ideas about sexuality and women, a decreased ability to maintain healthy relationships, and an increase in teen pregnancy, the pursuit of degrading, uncommon or aggressive sexual behaviors, and a loss of self-control and self-esteem.

The cost of pornography to society is immense. “In the US alone, the porn industry is a huge industry that estimates $16.9 billion each year…Porn can affect the mental well-being of kids, adults, families. Families can face problems like infidelity, material dissatisfaction, separation.”

In just the past seven years, subscription sites have been developed “that enables content creators to monetize their influence," according to one site itself. “It is a platform that allows creators to upload their content behind a paywall, which can be accessed by their fans for a monthly fee and one-off tips.” 

This means sex workers, entrepreneurial girls and women, actresses and models, who want to make money from their pictures and videos, can now create their own homepages, charge what the traffic will bear, interact with their fans via direct messages if they wish, and profit directly from their posts.

Typically, the content posted on these subscription porn sites goes far beyond what is currently permissible on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. These social media sites are often used as places to post teasers to entice viewers to access the subscription sites.

One the world’s most popular subscription pornography sites (a name I’ve chosen not to use on this podcast) “claims 28.5 billion total visits. That’s 81 million a day, almost 4 million an hour, 56,000 a minute.”

America has become not just a sex-saturated but a porn-saturated society. And this rapid embrace of the dark side has had its effect.

“Young Americans do not think pornography is a negative thing. When they speak about pornography with friends, 90 percent of teens (ages 13 to 17) and 96 percent of young adults (ages 18 to 24) say they do so in a neutral, accepting, or encouraging way. Only one in 20 young adults and one in 10 teens say their friends think viewing pornography is a bad thing…Teens and young adults say, ‘not recycling’ is more immoral than viewing pornography.”

“Most teens are ‘sexting.’ While you probably think your Jesus-loving child is keeping things kosher when you aren’t looking, you’re likely wrong. Sixty-six percent of teens and young adults have received a sexually explicit image via text and 41 percent have sent one. More girls than boys have sent explicit images.”

“Porn is not just a ‘male matter’ anymore. While men have traditionally consumed pornography at a much higher rate than women, it appears that females (particularly younger ones) are starting to catch up. Thirty-three percent of women ages 13 to 24 seek out porn at least once per month.”

“Efforts to decrease the use of porn have gone nowhere in recent years, and instead its use has skyrocketed due to the internet… It’s estimated that 91.5% of men and 60.2% of women consume porn. In 2019, for the first time a majority of Democrats said they found it ‘morally acceptable,’ 53%. Only 27% of Republicans do.”

In his ebook, Your Brain on Porn, Luke Gilkerson concludes, “Pornography is essentially wrong because of its message: it rips sexuality from its relational context and presents human beings not as creatures made in God’s image, but as sexual commodities—something to be bought and sold.”

Pornography has also become even raunchier. Sexual intercourse was once considered “hardcore pornography.” Now, graphic sexual intercourse is mundane and the term “hardcore” is applied to sadomasochistic activities, violence fetishes, and other perversions and books and movies like “Fifty Shades of Grey” normalize degeneracy.

Since pornography is insidious and ubiquitous, it can overwhelm us. But we should remember, porn is also iniquitous. 

It is sinful because it twists the human sexuality God designed for enjoyment and procreation in lifelong monogamous marriage into something rude, crude, and lewd.

Porn debases both the producers and the consumers. It inevitably, it leads to other sin, and it destroys what it touches, hearts and minds, relationships, marriages, careers, reputations, self-respect.

 

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.  

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2023    

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.  

Expired
Details

Child pornography has got to be one of the more despicable crimes an individual can commit. Frankly, it makes me sick to write about it. But it’s real.

In an article in the February 19, 2006 issue of Parade magazine, attorney Andrew Vachss, notes that child pornography is one of the fastest growing “businesses” on the Internet. He observes that the production of child pornography is incredibly inexpensive and easy, requiring only the equipment on can purchase in any discount store. Once a picture is taken and posted in cyberspace that picture lives forever. As Vachss says, “Images on the Internet can never be destroyed. The only things ‘used up’ in the child pornography business are its victims.”

Pornography of all kinds is more available, accessible, and affordable than ever before. Literally, anytime you get on the Internet you are just two clicks away from some of the most morally reprehensible material ever produced. Pornography of any kind is about presumed pleasure and profit. But for the victim it’s about exploitation, abuse, enslavement, violation, emotional destruction, and sometimes physical death. Child pornography simply takes all these tragic outcomes to an even deeper level of debasement.

As Vachss puts it, “No child is capable, emotionally or legally, of consenting to being photographed for sexual purposes. Thus, every image of a sexually displayed child—be it a photograph, a tape or a DVD—records both the rape of the child and an act against humanity.” So called Kiddie porn is egregiously named. There’s nothing cute about it.

As gambling is driven by compulsive gamblers, yet it sucks money from many casual gamblers as well, so child pornography is driven by pedophiles, yet it entices the curious and the emotionally crippled too. Certainly it attracts the corrupt—those who demand the product and those who profit from it. Men are primarily responsible, of course, but women are also participating as purchasers and purveyors, sometimes using their feminine personas to attract and reassure the victims.

Other than pedophiles, probably no one but the most extreme libertarian or maybe no more than a very few members of the American Civil Liberties Union would defend child pornography. It is a heinous crime.

Resources are available for those wanting to help. The National Association to PROTECT Children is one such nonprofit agency.  This organization offers assistance to victims of childhood sexual abuse as well as knowledge and contacts for those wishing to work the political process on behalf of children.

This is admittedly a very ugly subject, but it seems to me that Christians ought to be talking more about it, perhaps even leading the charge for appropriate legal, social, and ministerial response. Obviously we care about child victims. We can also demonstrate care for pedophiles as human beings tragically in the grip of horrendous sin.

I don’t think it is self-contradictory to push for more stringent laws and consistently applied criminal justice for child porn perpetrators even as we work spiritually to reach their hearts. Accountability and forgiveness are twin themes in Scripture from which I and every other believer have benefited. So it can be for those who seem the worst among us.

 

© Rex M. Rogers - All Rights Reserved, 2006

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/rexmrogers.

 

Expired
Details

First Sirius pays Howard Stern $500 million to take his vulgar, obscene, profane, and pornographic version of entertainment to satellite radio and now cell phone companies are getting into the pornography act. Cingular Wireless, the nation’s largest cell phone provider, is taking steps to match its access devices to Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association content ratings standards, opening the door for mobile porn.

Communications companies are eyeing the $10 billion per year pornography business in the United States, and they want a part of the action. With a move to cell phone video sex the country is taking another step toward a virtual culture of pornography. More than 800 million pornographic videos and DVDs are rented by American consumers each year. Pay-per-view movies in hotel rooms now account for the largest portion of in-room entertainment revenue at major American hotel chains. Pornographic videos on automobile DVD players are becoming more common. Of course Internet pornography is the second largest business in cyberspace, running behind only gambling.

Pornography is one of those things that is difficult to describe, but everyone knows it when we see it. Pornography flourishes under the umbrella of free speech protection. It’s been difficult for some time and becoming increasingly so to make a case for legally restricting another adult’s entertainment choices or “freedom of expression.”

But a society does have a compelling interest in the impact of pornography upon the individuals caught in its web and upon the moral climate of any given community. Insofar as pornographic activities destroy lives and degrade communities, legal restriction seems warranted. The question is, where do we draw the line?

In the end, it’s a matter more of the individual heart than government regulation. Howard Stern may hold forth on satellite radio, but I don’t have to subscribe. Internet pornography exists, but I don’t have to access it. Pornographic DVDs may be available, but I don’t have to rent them. Cell phone pornography may soon be marketed, but I don’t have to buy or view it.

When I was a kid, pornography was only available in a magazine or book you had to purchase in a store in full view of the public. Then, you had to get rid of the evidence before a sister, mother, or some other village adult gave you a comeuppance. Now, pornography is virtually universally available, accessible, affordable (much of it is free) at anytime anywhere in as much privacy as you choose. Now, you’re only two clicks away at any given time.

So pornography is increasingly pervasive, but it’s still personal.

 

© Rex M. Rogers - All Rights Reserved, 2005

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/rexmrogers.