This month in Sex in Review we cover the Top Ten Sex Scams, and while we focus on sex addiction there, porn addiction is very similar in the way that it has been presented and promoted. Web MD has just taken up the issue. WebMD includes both a popular Website and a magazine, and is a useful resource for getting the latest information on health related issues. In order to examine the so-called issue of porn addiction, they recently surveyed a number of psychologists.

In their report, their findings were inconclusive, but far more balanced than reports in the mainstream media. In science, when your study to determine if something is real or not is inconclusive, that is not a win for the proponents of it. It is much more difficult to prove that something does not exist than to prove that it does.

The reports author, Martin Downs, notes, “The difference between describing the behavior as a compulsion or an addiction is subtle, but important.” Actually it is extremely important, as there is a vast difference between the two. Addictions are much more difficult to treat than compulsions and typically have much more serious repercussions. Almost all addictions seriously affect people's lives in negative ways, while there are many compulsions that are relatively benign. Compulsions can be cured in some cases, addictions can not be. Once an addict, always an addict, as the saying goes. Downs does state that use of the term “addiction’ is often abused, most notably in recent Congressional hearings on porn addiction.

This is not just an academic discussion. Anti-porn forces want pornography to be classified as addictive. Part of their agenda is to reclassify it as a drug delivery system that needs to be controlled just like any other drug. They want to make the as yet unproved argument that it causes actual changes in the brain and needs to be regulated. As far-fetched as that seems, those pseudo-scientific arguments have been gaining some traction in Congress. They are ingenious arguments, as they allow censors to bypass the First Amendment. Free speech can not be controlled by government- drugs can. Only in the warped minds of the sexphobic could free speech become an addiction.

Mainstream science and the medical and psychological communities do not recognize either sex addiction or porn addiction as diseases or actual addictions. Yes, there are some people who have compulsive behavior that relates to sex and pornography, but there are also destructive compulsive behaviors that relate to many other activities, including religious expression. 

One could more easily argue that the ecstatic experiences found in some religious expressions could be addictive and act like a drug and have some very serious negative effects. At religious revivals, people appear to go into an almost drug induced state. In this state, they wind up giving away a lot of their money, which some of them can not afford. Some of them spend time obsessively reading the Bible over and over, time that could have been spent with their families.  Some born-again experiences cause people to turn away from family and friends, spending time instead with their new spiritual family just as many drug addicts turn to their fellow addicts. I doubt we will hear anyone calling for Congressional hearings on this topic, though. 

The bottom line is that the notion of porn addiction ties in to the agenda of the far Christian right to control any and all sexual images. This includes images that many of us would consider to be quite tame. When Judith Reisman testified to Congress about her imaginary erotoxins, and when one of the few so-called victims of pornography at the Victims of Pornography Conference talked about her victimhood by seeing Playboy in her youth, we realize that reason and reasonableness are not part of the equation. It is a part of an erotophobia, a form of sexual panic, that drives these extremists. They won't stop until they have control. Control over what we see, and control over what we do, and if they can figure out a way, control over what we think about. They are dangerous, they are disturbed, and right now, these extremists have the ears of Congress, the Justice Department, and even the FCC (who just hired an anti-porn leader). 

I doubt that we will see a day when sexually explicit material requires a prescription from a doctor. It is a day that the anti-porn forces look to longingly, where sexually expression is controlled and contained, and the placid population spends its time contemplating God and not thinking too hard about anything.

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