"Think about ladies of a certain age who go to Mass," said Coppola, who was elected in 2020 as part of a conservative coalition. "With a sex shop in the vicinity, they might have felt under-protected. Who do you think they'd blame for that?

Coppola insisted, that he hadn't acted under any pressure from the local church, led by Archbishop Francesco Alfano of Sorrento - Castellammare di Stabia.

"I just used my brain," Coppola said. "We Sorrentines live our sexuality in reality, as protagonists. We don't need phalluses exposed in a window."

However, the Amalfi Coast is one of Italy's most famous and luxurious tourist destinations, so the implementation of new measures may be driven by a desire to maintain its appeal to high-end visitors. Read more

A report by 'Let's Talk Consent' collected testimonies from 300 students. All had been victims of sexual assault at school.

Let's Talk Consent's founder and report author, Genna Hawkins-Boulton, says victims were confident about reporting their assaults.

However they often still found themselves in the same classes as the assault perpetrators.

Hawkins-Boulton is appalled that schools are not offering pathways to restorative justice.

This is particularly disappointing when victims who had received consent education recognised their experience as sexual assault and followed the advice to report "the person who had hurt them".

Schools are "really struggling" to uphold their duty of care in this regard, Hawkins-Boulton says.

Her report recommends more training so staff can better support victims, revising guidelines so there is a zero-tolerance approach to sexual violence and making consent-based education compulsory.

Hawkins-Boulton thinks schools aren't adequately prepared to handle sexual assault disclosures. A lack of support for those who came forward to report abuse is a result.

"... it's quite a tough environment for a survivor to be in" she says.

In one testimony, a sexual abuse survivor says they approached their school detailing the abuse and its mental health impacts. These included at least four panic attacks a week. They also resulted in a suicide attempt.

Despite speaking out about the attack and identifying the attacker, the sexual abuse survivor was timetabled to share two classes with the attacker the following year.

They were also offered a counselling session with the perpetrator.

Hawkins-Boulton says that is "just a big 'no' in terms of thinking about retraumatisation in survivors."

The survivor left "that school to go somewhere else and that was a massive disruption to learning."

Victim blaming

The report highlighted concerns about victim-blaming.

Sexual abuse survivors say they experienced this, not only from their peers, but also sometimes from staff.

"That's when the disclosure training would [be] really crucial, because you just never want to put the onus on the victim for coming forward," Hawkins-Boulton says.

Pornography

Young people's easy access to pornography is 'incredibly dangerous' Hawkins-Boulton says. It's an important reason for making consent-based education compulsory.

The Let's Talk Consent report referenced a Light Project in 2018. It found 75 percent of New Zealand 14-17-year-olds had seen pornography.

Seventy-three percent of those who watched it said they used it as a learning resource.

Seventy percent believed watching pornography influenced them to view women as sex objects.

Thirty-five percent of pornographic scenes showed coercion.

People are learning about consent through pornography - which often ignores consent, Hawkins-Boulton says.

It "... glamourises sexual assault - and so that is incredibly dangerous."

She thinks both schools and parents should be having tough conversations around pornography literacy. Doing so would provide students with guidance for the rest of their lives, she believes.

"We have to think about what kind of example we are setting for young people, and schools are an environment where tweens kind of grow into young adulthood" she says.

"We have to really create a culture where there is a zero tolerance of sexual violence."

• Counselling and support

Source

• 1 News

Coates is CEO of Mindful Money.

Analysis conducted by Mindful Money reveals that of the $98 billion of KiwiSaver investments, a substantial $8.6 billion (8.9%) is now allocated to unethical stocks.

This figure has increased from 7.2% in 2019, marking a concerning uptick.

Coates pointed out that while the recent surge in fossil fuel prices has prompted significant investments in this sector, passive investment strategies and the greater use of external index funds share the blame.

Many passive funds are channelling money into oil and gas companies that are expanding fossil fuel exploration and production.

Mindful Money has categorised fossil fuel companies into those transitioning to renewables, those expanding their fossil fuel operations and those taking no action. Investments in companies transitioning to renewable energy have remained stagnant as a percentage of KiwiSaver.

"One of the biggest investments in this area is Contact Energy, but for other companies on a renewable pathway, it is not significant.

"Meanwhile, investments in expanding companies like Exxon, Chevron, BP and Shell have more than doubled to reach $3.2 billion over the past eighteen months," says Coates.

Greater transparency needed

Despite claims that stewardship and shareholder voting can drive positive change, Coates argues that this approach often lacks credibility.

He acknowledges that increasing efforts in screening and engagement may result in higher fees.

The issue, however, isn't solely about active versus passive management.

Coates emphasises the importance of the type of passive investment, with some index providers offering stronger exclusions.

Beyond fossil fuels, KiwiSaver investments include

• $2 billion in companies that test products on animals for reasons other than human health,
• $1.4 billion in companies breaching human rights, and
• over $1 billion in companies causing social harm such as alcohol, pornography, gambling and tobacco.

It is now eight years since there was a public outcry over the amount of KiwiSaver funds in tobacco.

The latest data shows an annual growth of 50% in investments in tobacco companies such as Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands, to more than $21 million.

Coates is calling for greater transparency within KiwiSaver schemes.

He is urging providers to disclose the full list of invested companies, especially those that might concern the public.

While other consumer product industries are aware of their customers' concerns, he says the investment sector appears to be an outlier.

A recent survey found that 74% of New Zealanders expect their money to be managed ethically and responsibly.

"The issue for financial advisers and fund managers is who's going to listen to the clients?

"There is evidence that clients don't always raise it proactively in meetings with their advisers but if and when it is raised they have very strong views.

"It's an age of climate change, and investment has a huge role to play, but somehow advisers and fund managers are carrying on as if there is no link," Coates suggests.

Sources

Good Returns

Interest

CathNews New Zealand

Elaborating, he said life was about finding good things that take people forward, and discovering things that unbalance us.

Asked how to find a balance between the two, Francis suggested it is best to leave finding balance in life to tightrope walkers in the circus.

"The Christian life is a continuous walking, falling down and getting up," he said.

At the beginning of the audience, Pope Francis said the students had submitted 205 questions and that he would try to get to ten of them.

Topics included the choice of spiritual director, keeping the "smell of the sheep" while studying in Rome and so far away from home, negotiating peace, praying for enemies.

"Spiritual direction is not a clerical charism, it's a baptismal charism. Priests who do spiritual direction do not have the charism because they are priests, but because they are baptised," he said.

He urged the seminarians to pray for the Ukrainian attackers.

"Pray for the attackers, because they are victims like you.

"You can't see the wounds in their souls, but pray, pray that the Lord will convert them and give them the desire for peace to come. This is important."

Francis also encouraged the young priests and seminarians to use technology and social media.

However, he sounded a warning and urged them to avoid pornography at all costs; technology has put digital pornography within everyone's reach, he said.

"I am not going to say, ‘Raise your hand if you have had at least one experience of this,'" the pope said. But "it is a vice that so many people have, so many laymen, so many laywomen, and even priests and nuns.

Pope Francis said he was not talking only about "criminal" forms of porn like child pornography, but of "the somewhat ‘normal' pornography. Dear brothers, be careful of this. The pure heart, the heart that receives Jesus every day, cannot receive this pornographic information."

Francis said he wanted to raise to matter of pornography because it is a modern problem that many people have; "so many lay men, so many lay women, and even priests and religious sisters."

"And if from your cell phone you can delete this, delete it, so you won't have temptation at hand. And if you can't delete it, protect yourself properly so you don't have access to this. I tell you, it weakens the soul."

Sources

• CNA
• Crux

Mr. Fradd was interviewed by telephone about his new book and the potential of Marian consecration to help fight pornography addiction. The following transcript of our conversation has been edited for style and clarity.

Your new nine-day Marian consecration doesn't address pornography explicitly, but you've spoken in the past about Our Lady's role fighting porn addiction in a digital age.

How can Marian devotion assist young men and women overcome enslavement to pornography?

Well, that wouldn't be my first line of attack!

If someone struggling with pornography approached me for prayer advice, I'd want to know some other things first: Are they accountable, are they using appropriate software, are they doing therapy? Sort of human formation things.

Too often we skip human formation and jump straight to the spiritual. But I've heard people talk about how their devotion to the Blessed Mother has helped them regain a proper, holistic, beautiful image of women that pornography had eroded.

What does "Marian consecration" mean as you use it in this book?

Thomas Aquinas never spoke of "Marian consecration" per se, though he did speak about religious consecration.

On the ninth day, we present a prayer that Aquinas wrote in the language of "entrustment."

So when we talk about "consecration," we really mean entrustment, entrusting oneself to the Blessed Mother.

Thomas says in his prayer: I give to you my past, my present, my future, my body, my mind—you know, everything.

It sounds a bit like St. Louis de Montfort, but it's not.

The reason I wanted to present this book is that while I appreciate Louis de Montfort, his way of writing never resonated with me like Aquinas.

Since there are many paths to the Blessed Mother, I wanted to put this book together for others who find Aquinas helpful.

What about this Marian consecration might challenge a young person struggling with addiction?

In the work I've done on pornography, speaking to hundreds of thousands of teenagers, young adults and parents, I've found that the topic is overly spiritualized in a way that other sins and vices aren't.

People struggling with alcoholism and anger issues might pray, for example, but they also seek natural helps such as A.A. meetings or counseling.

But when I'd ask Catholics what they're doing about pornography, they would give me spiritual solutions for a problem that isn't solely spiritual. Continue reading

"The footages were sick and sickening - portraying adults engaging in sex acts with each other and performing sex acts on infants and children, in addition to physically abusing them," according to the complaint filed Wednesday in federal court.

Immediately after shutting down the virtual class, whose participants were mostly senior citizens, the administrator of Saint Paulus Lutheran Church reached out to Zoom Video Communications Inc. for help, "but Zoom did nothing," according to the complaint, which was filed as a proposed class action. Read more

The 207,000-signature petition says: "We already have evidence, and it is just the tip of the iceberg. It's time to shut down [this] super-predator site ... and hold the executives behind it accountable."

The organisers of the petition plan to send it to the US Department of Justice, the FBI, US President Donald Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and several US Congressmen.

Dr Melissa Farley, executive director of Prostitution Research & Education, said the petition is proposing a fair and moderate position.

She said the website's actions are already illegal.

In her view, the "organisation [that prepared the petition] are taking a very reasonable stance."

"They're only talking about children and they're only talking about children that are being advertised for sale. Any prostitution of a child according to U.S. federal law is trafficking," she said.

"This is pictures of the trafficking of kids, in other words, pictures of the prostitution of children."

The initiative to set up a petition came about following feedback from people who were angry at the news regarding the website's negligence regarding illegal material on its site.

It is leading to illegal people trafficking, Laila Mickelwait, Exodus Cry's Director of Abolition and the author of the petition, said.

"Everybody's in agreement that children should not be trafficked and raped.

"Women should not be trafficked and raped for profit, for the sexual pleasure of billions of people who visit that website."

"There's just no arguing with that."

Mickelwait said that because of the massive amount of content on the website, it is possible that there are more instances of sexual exploitation and child pornography than she knows of.

"If we know that there's 10, 12, 15, 20[cases], [then] there's probably hundreds, thousands [of cases of sexual exploitation]... We have no idea how huge this could be based on the amount of content they have on their site."

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: ScoopWhoop

"I would say it's the biggest addiction society has seen and no one is really doing anything about it.

The statistics are eye-opening, people are watching pornography from very young," she says. Read more

The advent of online dating and aggressive porn increasingly appear to be a contributing factor to stubbornly high rates of sexual violence, according to new research.

A series of studies out of Victoria University of Wellington show the changing online landscape may be contributing to, and exacerbating, sexual violence, rape and intimate partner violence.

This is taking place in a world where women are increasingly empowered by feminist movements and economic independence but are still overwhelmingly the victims of sexual abuse.

Online dating and blurred lines around consent, coupled with New Zealand's current consent regulations, make it difficult to hold perpetrators to account.

The continued objectification and self-objectification of women in media, along with the perpetuation of rape myths in news media, exacerbate the issue.

And increasingly aggressive pornography and a lack of education and conversation about porn is a potentially dangerous mix in a country where about 20 percent of adult women are subjected to sexual assault in their lives.

The research was presented at a day-long symposium, which explored 21st century barriers to rape reform.

Criminology professor and lead researcher Jan Jordan spoke of the long legacy of silencing and objectifying women.

Women were taught to be "beautiful and quiet if you want to be safe", she said.

The feminist movement and the second-wave feminism did a lot to advance women's rights and moves towards gender equality and pay equity.

However, the objectification and self-objectification of women has not ceased, rather taken on different forms over the past 40 years.

Research comparing sexual violence cases in 1997 and 2015 found there was little change in the amount of cases that met the evidentiary threshold to proceed to prosecution (1997: 30 percent; 2015: 28 percent), and the number of cases where there was a conviction also remained startlingly low (1997: 13 percent; 2015: 15 percent).

Jordan said this lack of progress was an argument for doing away with New Zealand's adversarial justice system in relation to sexual violence cases, reviewing the evidentiary threshold, and consent laws.

However, policing did not happen in a vacuum, so the other three pieces of research were commissioned in order to give the wider societal context in which sexual violence occurs.

The part porn plays

The porn industry continues to grow, with 33.5 billion visits to PornHub in 2018, and an average of 92 million daily visits.

As porn has moved online it has become increasingly accessible and industry value has continued to climb.

Rental and ad revenue from adult videos in the 1990s grew into the billions. In 2014, the porn industry was worth $US97b ($145b).

Doctoral candidate Samantha Keene found a troubling increase in the rise of aggressive and degrading sex acts found online.

"Mainstream heterosexual porn is still made by men for men, and tells men that women like to receive aggression and tells women that we should like to receive that."

Keene analysed 40 years of porn, from magazines in the 1970s, through to adult videos, and online porn.

While research on porn was scarce and academics disagreed whether there was a causal link between aggressive porn and sexual violence, there were worrying trends such as choking - something that was prevalent in sexual violence and intimate partner violence cases.

Multiple experts said this type of porn normalised sexual aggression.

Some believed the depiction of male dominance and aggression in pornography was a backlash against feminism, Keene said.

However, aggressive pornography increasingly included women who were willing participants. And more women were searching for, and watching, porn categorised as ‘rough sex'.

Keene said it was not clear whether it was a form of research, or a way to engage in a fantasy in a safe space. Continue reading

• Image: Dutchreporter

Becroft has welcomed a new report which looks into how and why children in New Zealand view online porn and does so by asking them directly. Continue reading

The 43 percent proportion has increased more over the past year than in all other years this decade combined, according to Gallup Poll figures released last week. Read more

There is an increasing demand for exorcisms throughout the world.

Topics the course covers include how to identify demonic possession, witchcraft in Africa, how to tell the difference between demonic possession and mental illness, and the rituals behind expelling demons.

The theological, psychological and anthropological background to exorcisms is also covered and the experiences of priests who have been involved in exorcisms is shared.

Other topics the course covers include looking at how the devil can influence the use of pornography.

Father Pedro Barrajon said the course wanted to discuss 'this modern cultural phenomenon of [pornography] - an evil that harms people'.

The course aims to 'open a space to see if there is a possibility to show influence from the devil,' Father Barrajon explained.

The week-long course is described as the only international series of lectures of its kind.

Entitled "Exorcism and the Prayer of Liberation", it first opened its doors in 2005 and the number of priests attending has more than doubled since then.

Several countries have observed an increase in the numbers of people reporting signs of demonic possession.

Half a million people reportedly seek exorcisms every year in Italy.

A report in 2017 by Christian think-tank Theos said the practice was on the rise in the UK, in part due to the spread of Pentecostal churches.

Cardinal Ernest Simoni of Albania drew strong interest in the first session by citing the use of cellphones in exorcisms.

"They call me and we speak and that's how I do it," Simoni said.

He said he uses the same words for the rite over the phone as he does if he is with the possessed person.

Last year Pope Francis told priests they "must not hesitate" to refer parishioners to exorcists if they suffer from "genuine spiritual disturbances".

Source

• BBC
• Daily Mail
• Reuters
• Image:Huffington Post

Family First national director Bob McCoskrie is calling for an expert panel to better understand the breadth and nature of the health and social issues created by pornography, and how to tackle it. Continue reading

The ministry was responding to a request from the Government and Administration Select Committee for a written submission on a petition it is considering which was presented in June 2017 by Family First's Bob McCoskrie.

The petition containing 22,334 signatures requests "that an expert panel be appointed to investigate the public health effects and societal harms of pornography to both children and adults, and to make policy recommendations to Parliament."

The Ministry has now submitted a research proposal for the consideration of the cross-government Sexual Violence Prevention Advisory Board.

The Ministry's Service Commission acting director, Keriana Brooking, says it wants to understand the scope and amount of pornography usage by New Zealanders, as well as the issues encountered by schools, young people and health providers.

In its submission, the Ministry states that violence towards women and girls is depicted in 80% of online content.

"This has a variety of harmful impacts on children and young people's sexual expectations, attitudes and behaviour.

"European research showed an association between regular viewing of pornography and initiation of sexual violence."

Australian gender and violence research Associate Professor, Michael Flood, has been recently been quoted as saying "If we're genuinely concerned about sexual harassment and abuse, whether at work or on campus or in school, then we have to address pornography."

The ministry in its submission, however, pointed out that Flood has also said that simplistic deterministic claims about the effects of viewing pornography were unhelpful.

He said the effect varies depending on the amount and nature of pornography used, and characteristics of the viewer.

Flood said a broader focus on social and public health effects of pornography would be more useful.

Source

• tvnz.co.nz
• echildhood.org
• familyfirst.org.nz
• radionz.co.nz
• familyfirst.org.nz
• Image: familyfirst

On this issue the world has changed a lot in less than ten years: the use of pornography has escalated and the effects are alarming.

The most telling effect, I think, is the epidemic of erectile dysfunction (ED) among men.

For all of human history this was mainly an older man's problem.

As recently as 2002 the rate of ED for men aged 40-80 was about 13% in Europe. By 2011 rates reached 28% for men aged 18-40.

As reported above, a 2014 cross-sectional study of active duty, relatively healthy, 21-40 old males in the US military, found that one third (33.2%) suffered from ED.

Unaware of these changes, for the last year or so I had thought that the drop in high school students' rate of sexual intercourse was good news and that, since 2007, abstinence ideas were winning, but given the above data, all of the causes may not be good news.

Increased pornography use among teenage boys, resulting in decreased interest in girls, may be the cause.

This also serves to put in context a disturbing experience I had a few weeks ago while driving through a wealthy Washington D.C. suburb during rush hour: I noticed (as must several other drivers waiting for the traffic lights to change) a 12-year-old moving along the sidewalk, intently looking at his smartphone in one hand while his other hand was engaged in self-abuse.

I had not yet reviewed the new research on the prevalence of pornography viewing and was quite taken aback.

No longer.

At age 12 he was already so addicted to porn and had no shame.

The average age of a boy's first viewing of pornography has dropped to 10 years of age. Fathers be aware.

• 75 percent of porn-watching is done on smart phones.
• 25 percent of all internet searches are for pornography.
• Tablets and computers make up the rest, computers being the smallest percentage.
• The average length of stay on a porn site is about 10 minutes.
• 70 percent of US college students watch porn — alone, with others, or in couples.
• 45 percent of women now accept it in their relationships.
• 10 percent of women refuse to view it themselves but accept it in their husbands or partners.

A decade ago women viewed pornography at about one sixth the rate of men.

Today, depending on the country, it varies from only one third the rate of men (US) to one half (the Philippines and Brazil).

Estimates of production range up to 4.2 million websites (12 percent of the total sites worldwide) with 420 million web pages.

Every single day, worldwide, there are more than 68 million search engine requests for pornography (which is 25 percent of all search requests).

What are the negative effects for those who become habituated and especially for those who become addicted?

Changes in brain size (diminished); the younger boys start the greater the effects on their brain, and the more difficult to overcome the addiction; men see women as sex objects not as persons, have greater interest in pornography than in the company of women or girlfriends.

They suffer increasingly from erectile dysfunction, become more aggressive in their relationships with spouses or partners, are more likely to believe the "rape myth" (that women enjoy being sexually abused), and progress to more and more deviant pornography to attain sexual arousal, leading in turn to greater sexual deviancy.

Teenagers will be more likely to engage in same-sex sexual activities. Continue reading

He believes what drives constructive social behaviour "is our families, our iwi, our churches, our communities."

English was the guest at Family First's 10th annual "Forum on the Family" in Auckland on Friday.

A number of speakers addressed the forum and Family First National Director Bob McCoskrie interviewed English.

The Labour leader Andrew Little declined numerous invitations to attend.

Newshub summarised the opinions English expressed in the course of the interview:

Abortion - against the practice but not seeking a change in the law. English said he accepts the majority of New Zealanders aren't on side with his views on abortion.

Euthanasia - opposes any form of euthanasia. He said there are no safeguards that could be proposed that would change his views on euthanasia, "I don't think you could make them adequate".

Gay marriage - doesn't oppose it but when asked if his own personal definition for the word marriage was between "one man and one woman", he said, "Well that's my definition of it".

He went on to explain that he was married in the Catholic Church, and his views reflected those Catholic beliefs.

Pornography - has no interest or tolerance in porn whatsoever
English said it's a challenging issue for police, "You couldn't just 'ban it'".

He told the audience it's not necessarily an issue for the Government to sort out.

Source

• Newshub
• Family First
• Image: Stuff Family First

Once confined to the pages of a smuggled Playboy magazine, pornography can now be in the hands of anyone with a smartphone, and is more prolific and anonymous than ever.

PornHub, one of the world's largest sites with porn video streaming, reports that it averages 75 million viewers per day, or about 2.4 million visitors per hour.

In 2015 alone, the number of hours streamed from the site was double the amount of time human beings have populated the Earth, according to TIME Magazine.

And while pornography used to be a simpler problem for priests to address in the confessional - consecrate yourself to Mary, go to weekly adoration - the growing level of addiction makes it a much more complex problem for the Church to address.

That's why Fr. Sean Kilcawley, the program directory and theological advisor for pornography ministry Integrity Restored, has started to put on intensive trainings for clergy, providing them resources and practical tips for how to address the growing crisis of pornography addiction.

How the trainings work

For an intensive training, Fr. Kilcawley takes a dozen or so priests for 3-4 days and immerses them in resources and training for the porn-addicted in their fold.

He also facilitates shorter, one-day conferences.

"We try to equip the priest to get that person to come talk to them outside of confession, just to bring that into the light, so that the priest can then become the first responder in the field hospital of the church," Fr. Kilcawley told CNA.

Smaller groups work best, he added, because it allows the priests space to process the information and to be more vulnerable with one another. Continue reading

• Mary Rezac is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency/EWTN News

That same year, the "definitive men's magazine" that promises "sexy women" along with style advice, entertainment news and more ran a shorter listicle: "10 Reasons Why You Should Quit Watching Porn."

The list included reasons such as increased sexual impotence in men that regularly viewed pornography, and a reported lack of control of sexual desires.

It was inspired by an interview with NoFap, an online community of people dedicated to holding each other accountable in abstaining from pornography and masturbation. The site clearly states that it is decidedly non-religious.

Matt Fradd, on the other hand, is a Catholic. Fradd has spent much of his adult life urging people to quit pornography, and developing websites and resources to help pornography addicts.

But even though he's Catholic, Fradd's new anti-porn book, "The Porn Myth," won't quote the saints or the Bible or recommend a regimen of rosaries."I wanted to write a non-religious response to pro-pornography arguments," Fradd said.

That's not because he's abandoned his beliefs, or thinks that faith has nothing to say about pornography.

"Whenever I get up to speak, people expect that I'm just going to use a bunch of moral arguments (against porn). And I have them, and I'm happy to use them, and I think ultimately that's what we need to get to. But I think using science...is always the best way to introduce this issue to people."

"In an increasingly secular culture, we need arguments based on scientific research, of which there's been much," he said. It's why he cites numerous studies on each page of his book, and why he's included 50 pages of additional appendixes citing additional research.

Fradd is careful to clarify in his book that it is not a book against sex or sexuality. What he does want to do is challenge the way many people have come to think about pornography, and question whether it leads to human flourishing. Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: The Youth Culture Report

The Left-wing bookshop where I worked bought boxes of them, mostly lurid black and yellow-covered paperbacks of Robert Burns' jaunty poems about fornication, The Kama Sutra, and The Perfumed Garden.

We possibly made a profit for the first time ever, though these were mostly rather dull clinical descriptions of the contortions you can get into having sex, just to prove it can be done.

They were innocent times. The Joy of Sex appeared, with illustrations of people performing and encouraging - from memory - the wearing of a kind of absurd loincloth arrangement to spice things up.

People huddled over copies of this in their lunch hour, too timid to be seen buying them, too nervous to take them home. I think they thought this was pornography. How quaint we were.

I'd seen the real thing by then, shown to me by older men who little cared how disgusted I was, and what the images showed so explicitly. It wasn't pleasant, it never is, and it didn't have a pleasant effect on me, but the thrill of potentially corrupting young people is irresistible to corrupt adults.

Nothing has changed since, as far as I can see, except that much more degrading images are now freely available everywhere, with the result that some young men's brains get hard-wired with images that degrade women, and none that celebrate affection.

We thought feminism had won the battle for equality only to find young women, who now excel academically, are targets of misogyny that reduces them to sex dolls for male amusement.

The pity of it is that many young women think this is OK. Some boast of being prostitutes to support themselves through degree courses, and somehow we've come to think this is OK.

It's OK, in other words, to be a high achiever so long as you demean yourself at the same time. No harm done. I don't believe it. Continue reading

• Rosemary McLeod is a New Zealand writer, journalist, cartoonist and columnist.

An outgoing, enthusiastic guy begins slowly but surely to change. At first it's almost imperceptible — a shift in mood or a vacancy in the eyes only those closest to him can see.

It's not drastic or alarming, but it's real. Maybe his friends start to notice when he doesn't talk about those hobbies he used to love. Perhaps his coworkers make more and more passing remarks like, "Is everything okay?"

There's a thin but undeniable air of apathy in all he says and does. Friendships get put on hold, and events are skipped for no particular reason. It's nothing earth-shattering; he just seems not really there.

In my own life, and in the lives of friends I've known, this is one of the most reliable signs someone — male or female — is losing the battle against pornography.

The dangers of pornography are well-documented. For many years, Christian pastors, teachers and writers have warned that porn is a serious spiritual and emotional threat to individuals and families.

The effects of porn addiction have become so commonly seen in our culture that non-Christian observers are beginning to talk about it. Time magazine, for example, recently devoted an entire cover story to the testimonies of several young men who felt their pornography usage greatly wounded them later in life.

When we list the dangers of pornography, we often address the typical things: We talk about how porn degrades and objectifies men and women.

We argue that porn puts spiritual and physical walls between husbands and wives and how it can "re-wire" our brains to cripple our capacity for real intimacy and enjoyment. All of these warnings are absolutely true and need to be repeated.

But there's another consequence of porn, one that might seem insignificant but may actually be one of the deadliest effects of all. Porn doesn't just dirty the imagination or wound the spirit — it also kills ambition. Continue reading

• Samuel D. James serves in the President's Office at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.