“But liberating sexual desire has had awkward side effects-among them, normalized pornography. Porn is one of those topics nobody likes to talk about. Doing so can seem slightly obsessive. After all, the taste for pornography isn't new. The walls of ancient Rome were alive with its graffiti. No society has ever been free of it. And really, isn't porn just a cheesy sideshow for sexual losers? Hardly the shaper of a nation's soul.
Maybe. But the profits involved say otherwise. Today is not like the past. Today the porn business has massive scope and influence, easy access from anywhere, and the shield of domestic privacy. Americans will never return to a world without widespread, easily available porn. That kind of innocence is as lost as aspirin bottles without seals.
How did the sea change happen? Technology made the difference. Technology reimagined the industry's dinosaur marketing and distribution systems. New technologies helped the porn business to grow rapidly and reach globally while remaining a private addiction. And private addictions shared by enough people eventually become accepted public behavior.
Americans have a deep libertarian streak. Too many people see pornography as a matter of personal choice. Too many resist seeing its wider impact. And as an industry, it exerts influence because too many people also make money from it. Globally, annual porn revenues now approach $100 billion, with more than $13 billion of that in the United States.(3)
Those profiting include major corporations that donate to candidates and have lobbyists in Washington. Most major U.S. hotel chains make "adult" programming available to guests as part of their entertainment systems. In a different era, that might make them vulnerable to public pressure. Corporate boards are alert to boycotts and bad publicity (remember Indiana)—but shareholders tend to focus on profits, not what they see as moral fine print. And the fact is, no mass movement has yet managed to inflict the financial punishment against porn that would force big companies to listen.”
-Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World
(3) For a more extensive analysis of pornography and its effects, see James Stoner and Donna Hughes, editors, The Social Costs of Pornography: A Collection of Papers (Princeton, NJ: Witherspoon Institute, 2010).
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