In what was generally a slow news week last week, the story with
legs on the Mac Web was the on-again, off-again, "did they or didn't
they?" saga of Apple appearing to have permitted a pornographic $1.99
iPhone application "Hottest Girls" to be posted on the App Store last
Wednesday.
The prospect of that seemed to excite some of the Apple
commentariat, who waxed gleeful at Apple's evident lowering of
standards.
One commentator called the unveiling of the first iPhone app with
nudity "an announcement rivaling the first transmissions from the moon
landing in importance." "iPhone grows boobs at last," enthused The
Register.
I was disappointed, seeing it more as a degeneration into the tawdry
banality of sexual titillation for cash. I have been a supporter of
Apple maintaining control of App Store content, which some folks
characterized as "censorship" - which I suppose it is in a certain
context, but certainly no abrogation of rights. Just because you have
the legal right to "express yourself" with smut and worse doesn't mean
that anyone has the obligation to complicity in helping you publish or
distribute it.
'Hottest Girls' Pulled
Anyway, by Thursday "Hottest Girls" had disappeared from the App
Store, which raised my spirits momentarily - until the app's developer
claimed he had requested a temporary hiatus on downloads because his
servers were being overwhelmed by demand, which was depressing on at
least two counts.
However, the roller-coaster story had a happy ending, at least so
far, when it was reported that Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr announced
that Apple had pulled the plug after they discovered that the developer
had snuck in the topless shots after the application had been approved
and further elucidated that Apple will not alter its policy of refusing
to carry inappropriate content, which includes (but is not limited to)
pornographic material.
I say, "Bravo, Apple!" There are few enough standards left in this
postmodern world, and it's an encouragement to see a company that,
given the evidently the insatiable public appetite for porn, could
presumably pad its profit margins substantially by distributing
prurient content, swimming against the sewer tide and refusing to stoop
that low.
Porn and the Internet
In my estimation, the worst aspect of computers and the Internet has
been their role in the propagation and distribution of pornography,
which is nothing short of a blight and a plague. As Fortune's Philip
Elmer-DeWitt writes, "There's something about the combination of sex
and computers, however, that seems to make otherwise worldly-wise
adults a little crazy."
Or a lot crazy.
I don't use porn, which I regard as malignant blight and stain on
our degenerating culture. I've never bought a copy of Playboy or
Penthouse or any other "adult" magazine (I'll cop to checking
out ones belonging to friends out of curiosity back in my feckless
youth). I've been spending my workdays on the Web since 1997 and can
look you in the eye and affirm that I've never deliberately downloaded
a porn image (the occasional spam one sneaks through) or visited a porn
website (although some ads on European commercial sites are soft- to
medium-core porn), and I've never watched a pornographic movie,
although a fair bit of content on network television - and even more so
in music videos - is pornographic by rational standards.
Unhealthy Content
It's not that I wouldn't find the images interesting, attractive in
a crude and coarsened way, or, uh . . . "stimulating", but
precisely because I would, having a fairly normal male libido. I have
to look at myself in the mirror and prefer to retain my self-respect. I
totally reject the rationalistic sophistry that viewing porn can be
"healthy" even in a faithful (?) marriage and would feel like I was
betraying the woman who has been my best friend and the love of my life
for 37 years come July 18.
As Philip Elmer-DeWitt observed in his commentary on the Apple porn
affair: "I'm not a woman and don't presume to speak for them, but I'm
pretty sure this is not what most women want."
Me neither.
Christianity and Porn
Beyond personal loyalty to my wife and respect for women in general,
including my daughters, I also try to be a serious Christian, and using
pornography is entirely and unequivocally incompatible with Christian
standards and ethics. As Paragraph 2354 of the Catholic Catechism puts
it,
"pornography consists in removing real or simulated
sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them
deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it
perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each
other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors,
vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure
and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the
illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense."
Addressing the issue of Internet and computer porn directly, in
an address to the Bishops of the United States at the National
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on April 16, 2008, Pope Benedict
XVI challenged:
"What does it mean to speak of child protection when
pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media
widely available today? . . . Children deserve to grow up
with a healthy understanding of sexuality and its proper place in human
relationships. They should be spared the degrading manifestations and
the crude manipulation of sexuality so prevalent today. They have a
right to be educated in authentic moral values rooted in the dignity of
the human person."
Or as Jesus states clearly in In Matthew 5:27-28: "You have heard
that it was said to them of old: Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I
say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her,
hath already committed adultery with her in his heart."
Porn Is Dangerous
Former President Jimmy Carter took a lot of flak and ridicule 30-odd
years ago for honestly admitting that is a difficult standard to live
up to, and it's certainly not that many Christians don't struggle with
porn addiction, which has the very
real capacity to wreck marriages, destroy families, and ruin lives, and
which seems to be banefully pandemic these days, most likely as a
result of computers and easy Internet access to the stuff - the
affliction affecting even clergy.
I've seen it happen to the marriage of close friends of my family
whose marriage blew to smithereens after the wife discovered her
husband has an online mistress and a secret cache of downloaded
Internet porn; she bailed with their two kids.
Reportedly, a Pastors.com
website survey found 54% of pastors surveyed had viewed Internet porn
within the last year, and 30% within the last 30 day, while 53% of
Promise Keepers had viewed
porn in the last week, and an Alabama Baptist survey found that 4 of
our 10 pastors and 7 out of 10 church leaders admitted to visiting
adult web sites at least once a week.
Statistics suggest that 50% of all Christian men and even 20% of all
Christian women are addicted to porn. But even if using porn is
mutually consensual within a marriage, LifeSiteNews editorialist
John-Henry Westen points out
that "clearly the husband/wife viewing pornography is looking at the
other women/men in the film and lusting after them. So rather than an
aid in healthy sexuality for the husband and wife it is mutual
adultery," and in blatant violation of Christ's instruction.
Former Buffalo pastor and recovering porn addict Jeff Fisher and his
wife Marsha have launched a new online ministry called Porn to Purity, where they share
their story and their continued battle through a blog and podcasts.
Jeff told LifeSiteNews that Marsha knew about his struggles with
pornography and had given him a second chance, but after officers of
his denomination discovered and revealed that he had been surfing porn
sites when in his office alone, she "was understandably very angry with
me." Hey, d'ya think? He's a lucky man that she is hanging in.
Pornography Is Harmful
Dr. Claudio Violato, a University of Calgary professor and Director
of Research at the National Foundation for Family Research and
Education (NFFRE) and a co-author of a 2002 study and meta-analysis of
porn use published in the scientific journal Mind, Medicine and
Adolescence commented that the researchers felt confident in their
findings that pornography is harmful, commenting: "I can think of no
beneficial effects of pornography whatsoever. As a society we need to
move towards eradicating it".
That's a mighty steep mountain to climb, given the magnitude of the
problem, but meanwhile a shout-out and congratulations to Apple for not
caving in to the porn onslaught.
