Charity Thinketh No Evil: Pornography vs. Nudity

[Anonymous]

Old-Timer wrote:

Thanks for the scripture reference and the quote, Sam. I’m going to post them on my blog for the discussion going on there.

Don’t thank me Ray, I cut and pasted them from the Mormon nudist site.

Quote:

This reminds me of a story I heard about Pres. McKay. In the late 40s or early 50s he was the grand marshall at a 4th of July parade in Provo. Someone complained to him about some girls in swimsuits on the floats and his response was something to the effect that he didn’t see anything that wasn’t beautiful. Evidently that ended the discussion.

McKay seemed to be good at handling that kind of thing.

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Sorry, this is a strange subject, but there is another bizarre angle to all of this. I know some couples make videos of themselves for private consumption. That being the case, and they being married, does that make it pornography, or is it just part of the marriage? If anyone else watches it, then it is purely pornography…

[Anonymous]

Cadence wrote:

Pornography is bad, nudity is not. I think it is as simple as that. If you have trouble separating the two I would argue it is from some indoctrination you have received to combine the two.

SamBee wrote:

…there is another bizarre angle to all of this. I know some couples make videos of themselves for private consumption. That being the case, and they being married, does that make it pornography, or is it just part of the marriage?

Personally, I think one of the most common forms of uncharitable “evil” thinking among Church members is basically a judgmental self-righteous holier-than-thou attitude where sometimes we take something relatively innocent and harmless (seeing nudity) and assume that it is automatically sinful or even if it really isn’t entirely innocent (deliberate porn) we exaggerate the seriousness of it and try to make it into more of a sin than it really is. One side-effect related to this general attitude that can be very hurtful is gossip but even if we keep these thoughts to ourselves I think they still end up corrupting people that are overly obsessed with these ideas.

As far as I’m concerned, anyone that doesn’t like porn doesn’t need to look at it (problem solved) but I don’t see why it should really be any of their business what other people are doing in the privacy of their own homes if they aren’t hurting anyone (including themselves). Personally, I don’t really want to know that much about other people’s private concerns. Maybe my first impression of someone posing nude for Playboy is that this is a rather sleazy transaction but if she doesn’t feel like she is being exploited or abused then who am I to insist that she should feel that way or that she should really be ashamed of herself? In my opinion it would be better to just live and let live (Kumbaya). It’s not really my problem if they want to do this; if one person doesn’t then someone else will.

[Anonymous]

AUTHOR NOTE: :geek:

We’ve had the general discussion of pornography extensively on another thread. I really do want this thread to focus on the idea of “thinking no evil” as it relates to harming others or thinking thoughts that would harm them (or ourselves) if actualized.

[Anonymous]

I think it all comes down to the purpose and depiction of nudity. I am not and probably would not become a nudist. However I think nudist’s get a bad wrap. It is not about sex nor do most if any nudist’s participate for sexual reasons. In many countries and cultures nudity is commonplace and the sexual aspect is relatively non-existent. The industry of pornography is inherently evil in my opinion and serves no good purpose whatsoever. It is destructive in many cases to all involved. Even in Europe communal nude bathing is frequently practiced and frankly I see no problem with it as it is natural and comfortable. The ancient Olympics were done in the nude. I think it is all about intent, purpose, and action. Unfortunately many especially in the Western cultures turn it into something taboo and therefore sexual as opposed to natural and it’s a shame.

[Anonymous]

Old-Timer wrote:

AUTHOR NOTE:…We’ve had the general discussion of pornography extensively on another thread. I really do want this thread to focus on the idea of “thinking no evil” as it relates to harming others or thinking thoughts that would harm them (or ourselves) if actualized.

I thought that’s what I was doing in my last post Ray: focusing on the connection between uncharitable evil thinking and pornography in the form of self-righteous indignation and hatred toward porn consumers and producers. My guess is that excessive guilt and overreactions to this due to judgmental prudish attitudes actually results in far more actual harm to Church members on average than just letting people look at porn all they want ever would. Seriously there have been divorces and even suicides over this, all for what? Basically some of this real suffering is happening over what amounts to a massive exaggeration of the supposed evil of looking at artificial images of complete strangers. Where is the charity in that?

Even if someone looks at porn and later cheats on their wife I don’t think you can realistically claim that it was mostly because of porn and that if there was no porn the same thing wouldn’t have happened anyway. Soap operas and romance novels could easily give women the same idea too but for some reason we never seem to hear about these nearly as much as porn these days. Based on the same logic you could also argue that PG-rated movies, TV shows, and video games encourage people to physically attack and even murder others that they don’t like.

What percentage of everyone exposed to all this “evil” will seriously think that it’s a good idea to deliberately hurt others and then follow through and act on it? And how can we be so sure that most of the ones that do cause real harm couldn’t have just as easily thought of this on their own without needing any external influence? People should realize that most of this is not real it is just entertainment and fantasy. Trying to make it into more than it really is will backfire and hurt the Church’s credibility over the long run. Either way, boys will be boys and acting like this is the worst thing in the world is just not going to stop them in most cases.

[Anonymous]

DA, sorry – my note wasn’t about your comment. I also was tending to drift to “just” discussing porn – so it hit me I should add the note. Probably should have made it clear that it wasn’t a comment inspired by the previous one.

Sometimes internet communication really sucks.

[Anonymous]

Well, I think the two big elephants in the room for many people are sex and whether or not the church is a cult, or at least cultish. They’re the biggest things, much of the other stuff comes out of them, especially the latter.

[Anonymous]

SamBee wrote:

Well, I think the two big elephants in the room for many people are sex and whether or not the church is a cult, or at least cultish. They’re the biggest things, much of the other stuff comes out of them, especially the latter.

I don’t know if they are the biggest things people typically worry about but certainly they are some of the most interesting and I think they are directly related in this case. Excessive control over people’s private lives is one of the most common characteristics people expect to find in cults. Well in our case it looks like it’s not enough for Church leaders to tell people how to spend much of their time and money, what they should wear (garments, white shirts, one pair of earrings), and what they should not drink (coffee, beer, wine) but now they need to stick their noses into other people’s bedrooms and worry about things like oral sex, masturbation, and porn. Is nothing private anymore? What does charity really have to do with any of these things? Not that much in my opinion and most of this looks more like the height of arrogant Pharisee-style self-righteousness and old-school authoritarianism to me.

For example, consider the following explanation of charity in 1 Corinthians 13:4:

Quote:

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up

I’m sorry but I have known many so-called “porn addicts” that don’t really mean any harm to anyone and that actually fit this description of charity a lot more than some of the most vocal opponents of porn I have known that often seem downright mean and hateful in many cases and not just toward people that they know are guilty of looking at porn but in general. I guess it makes them feel better about themselves to think that others are inferior in one way or another but it certainly doesn’t seem like a very charitable point-of-view to me. This is why I think the Church should back off a little bit in this case. I don’t care if they want to continue insisting that it’s wrong but to act like it’s almost the end of the world if someone looks at porn seems a bit over-dramatic to me.

[Author]

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