The God squad: Take me off your porn e-mail list
A certain man I know has begun forwarding me articles, cartoons and jokes he finds amusing and insightful, and thinks I will enjoy as well. Oh, and he also sends me porn.
I tried to remove this reader from my e-view, but it didn't work. Therefore, I decided to send him an e-mail which I've decided to share with my readers - devoid, of course, of all identifying personal details.
I do this because over the years I've written this column, I've received many letters from readers about husbands, brothers, sons and grandsons who've become addicted to pornography Web sites, leading to a variety of heartbreaking, morally corrosive consequences. For some time, I've wanted to address this issue. My thoughts came together in the following letter:
Dear X:
I hope the New Year brings you joy. I'm writing to ask you to take my name off your porn mailing list. If it is not possible or convenient for you to take me off your porn list, then please remove my name from your mailing list all together.
It may seem defensive to begin this way, and I am not a prude. I don't care what your private sexual proclivities happen to be - as long as they're legal and harmless. However, I'm deeply opposed to pornography for the following ethical and spiritual reasons:
Pornography separates love and sex. This is the essential moral and spiritual offense of pornography. Sex is not just a physical urge; it's the most intimate and profound way of expressing love. Pornography is immoral because it destroys the link between sex and love. I'm not referring to naked women as subjects in true art, but to the stuff you send me. I'm also not taking up the question of censorship of pornography. My life is spent trying to figure out not just what is legal but what is right.
Sex is not like any other physical urge; it's not just like scratching an itch. Sex is the deepest and most intimate way to bond and to show love for another person. Sex is a total physical giving of yourself. That is why we read in Genesis 2:18-24 "For it is not good that a person be alone . . . and therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife so that they become one flesh."
In pornography, sex is more like taking than giving, more like one exposed flesh and a million clinging eyes - more like something that makes our loneliness more desperate.
Pornography fosters casual sex, or "hooking up," as people now refer to it. Casual sex is dangerous to your health and catastrophic to your ability to figure out what love means. Hooking up is what you do to connect two things, not two people.
Pornography exploits women. The women in the photos you send me are, I feel safe to assume, offered money to pose. This fact makes a lie out of the thin defense of porn that such women do this freely. In any case, this is not a good thing for you or them or our culture. Perhaps our modesty is one of the many things we ought not be able to sell and our decision to allow it is a moral, cultural and spiritual tragedy. The Bible teaches that we should not place a stumbling block in front of a blind person. Offering porn as a profession to poor and desperate women, and offering it all up to sexually obsessed men is an immense stumbling block that God must condemn. It's like offering a drink to an alcoholic.
Pornography has produced an overabundance of predatory men and exploited women. Tiger, are you listening? It is bad karma for everyone associated with it.
Pornography also transforms women into sexual objects. Seeing women or men as simply collections of physical attributes distorts and diminishes their sacredness as thinking, feeling human beings. I know from teaching children and teenagers that it can be difficult for pretty girls to be taken seriously for their ideas. They get so used to being stared at that they eventually forget what it's like to be listened to.
The ancient rabbinic commentaries to the Book of Genesis were not referring to your porn e-mails when they taught the following - but I am: "Be very careful if you make a woman cry, because God counts her tears. The woman came out of a man's rib: Not from his feet to be walked on. Not from his head to be superior, but from the side to be equal. Under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved."
I hope you can fall in love with a woman that way. Let me close by apologizing if the tone of this letter seems harsh. Please take it in the spirit in which it was intended. I'm just trying to live a minimally decent life, and pornography doesn't help me do that. I don't know why you thought it would.
God bless you,
Rabbi Gellman
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Updated 39 minutes ago Concern over Nassau-ICE partnership ... West Babylon closing school ... Slick commute ... SALT negotiations