Author and commentator Ben Shapiro dedicated his book Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism is Corrupting Our Future to “all members of my generation striving to maintain their dignity, honor, virtue, and innocence in a chaotic culture.”Unfortunately, those members of his generation – which he calls the porn generation – are few and far between. Disgusting new data suggests that an incomprehensible 86% of Americans consumed Pornhub videos on their phones this year. It also revealed that the United States has by far the highest daily traffic to the infamous X-rated site! Even though I do not completely buy the 86% statistic (especially because it comes directly from Pornhub), it is nevertheless one of the most disturbing numbers I have seen in a long time.No wonder our country is falling apart! Pornography is single-handedly capable of killing love, marriage, family, spirituality, and self-governance. And these bedrocks of our Republic are the first to go when porn runs rampant in our culture.The supposedly “right-leaning” New York Post seems to find it funny that so many Americans are “sneaking away to enjoy some alone time on their mobile device,” but they fail to grasp just how toxic this dirty habit really is. And it is not just the New York Post that has made this miscalculation. If 86% of Americans have really watched Pornhub videos, that would obviously include many conservatives and even church-goers as well. We can not blame any one group of people; America as a whole has a serious porn problem. SEE ALSO: The Liberty and License of the American Family To those who say that this is not a big deal – that it is just a little bit of “adult entertainment” – I would point out, first of all, that porn is addictive. Just as addictive as a drug. And while the statistic does not say that 86% of Americans have a porn addiction, if 86% of Americans tried a drug even just once in a given year, we would be deeply concerned. Why? Because it could turn into an addiction. For this reason alone, setting aside any other distinctly moral qualms, the number of Americans who have viewed porn in the past year should unsettle us.More than this, porn is morally degrading and has a nasty habit of tearing families and marriages apart. Watching porn is a violation of something sacred; it is an exploitation of human worth and the dignity of marriage.The great irony is that it was normalized by second-wave feminists who argued that it would somehow liberate and empower women even though it actually objectifies women.No matter how hard they try, secularists can not escape the damning fact that pornography makes women into objects of pleasure for men – which is the antithesis of feminist “empowerment”Porn, by definition, stimulates an erotic feeling in the absence of an emotional or romantic one. A man does not watch porn because he loves or respects the woman he is watching. He watches her degrade herself because it makes him feel good. She becomes the nameless source, or object, of his selfish pleasure, which is the epitome of objectification. SEE ALSO: Our Brave New World It is astonishing that feminists lose their ever-loving minds every time one of their own is cast in a “bombshell” role (in the words of actress Scarlett Johansson, she was “groomed” for these “sexualized” roles), saying that they are being “used” for men’s entertainment, yet defend porn as the peak achievement of liberated society.Porn takes the sacredness of human dignity and tarnishes it with its smutty hands. One can not truly be both a feminist – if feminism is merely the idea that women have intrinsic worth and importance equal that of men – and a defender of porn. As it turns out, however, feminism is simply a nobler codename for lasciviousness.Indeed, feminism’s main contribution to society was working hand in hand with the sexual revolution to destroy traditional, biblical ethics regarding sexuality and normalize licentiousness. Since then, we have become more unchaste than ever before and arguably less liberated. We have become hedonistic to an extreme even as our marriages and families fall to ruin.The reason married sex is not inherently objectifying is that it takes place between two people who are in a committed, covenant relationship. Bound together for life, they have vested interest in each other. They are so much more than “just bodies” to each other; they are one flesh. Porn stars, on the other hand, in the minds of their beholders, are nothing more than just bodies. SEE ALSO: Make Men Responsible Again Once again, we see that Judeo-Christian practices are more than just a bunch of rules haphazardly thrown together by some prudish celibate who wanted to keep people from having fun. There is a sacred order to all of it. It is deeply rooted in helping us maintain a healthy respect for human identity.Eighty-six percent of Americans watching Pornhub in a given year is anything but the height of liberated, civilized society; it is a disturbing depth of depravity. By that metric alone, an outsider who knew nothing else about America but that 86% of her citizens had watched pornography, could accurately speculate that our nation also struggles with high divorce rates, broken families, fatherless homes, sexual abuse, mistreatment of women, and other addictions and drugs.Even Americans who are not turning to Pornhub for perverted escapism are being exposed – willingly and unwillingly – to content that once would have been criminal in America. It is everywhere. And as Shapiro wrote, maintaining dignity, honor, virtue, and innocence in this culture does not happen passively. We must strive for it.For that purpose, may I propose a new year’s resolution for America? No porn in 2023!Jakob Fay is a staff writer for the Convention of States Project, a project of Citizens for Self-Governance.
