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Good Morning, Maybe we need to talk more about pornography. Not so much about people being caught looking at it when they shouldn’t be; but about the thing itself. The reaction to an MP looking at pornography on his phone in the House of the Commons focused on the fact he was at work; but little has been asked about the pornography – except in a nudge-nudge, wink-wink sort of way. Was his misdemeanour an individual indiscretion, or born of a deeper cultural problem? A snapshot survey by Offcom suggests we’re virtually living in ‘a pornocracy.’ Pornography is big business because so many people use it. Half of UK adults admit to watching pornography online. The demand is there because the desire is there. But is the product that meets this demand selling us short? Is it a bit of fun or is it destructive? In her book, ‘The Right To Sex,’ Philosopher Amia Srinivasan suggests we need to think more critically about our consumption of porn. For example, can it ever be made ethically? We ask this of our food or our holidays, why not pornography? In the chapter ‘Talking to my students about porn’ she uncovers a startling truth, namely that pornography is how most of her students learn about sex. It gives them the scripts – in powerful visual images – of how to do things. Instead of using their imaginations, their ideas of sex and what it could be – are shaped by distorted and sometimes debased versions with which they can’t compete or easily put out of their minds. Pornography as sex education might be acceptable were it not for the fact that since moving from the top shelf to lap top it has become more extreme, with violence against women and torture being normalised. When my friend’s son was sent home from school for watching pornography on his school device, the boy was so traumatised by the shame, as well as the content he’d accessed, that his father dedicated himself to seeing that age verification on the internet be made law. The Online Safety Bill is still in process. It references a study by the British Board of Film Classification revealing that 60% of 11–13-year-olds viewed porn accidentally on their devices. Some argue that censorship of pornography would undermine our freedom to do what we want to, within the law. And yet the evidence suggests that our humanity, our very image, gets blurred in a transaction where the watcher and watched are exploited. The irony for me is that pornography censors a God-given freedom both to desire and experience the desired as something intimate and fulfilling rather than remote and shameful. How do we seek and fulfil our own desires without harming others? On this the Bible offers a helpful image to keep in mind: ‘Love desires not its own, it does not harm, it always trusts, it always protects.’