What’s so wrong with pornography, anyway? In an enthusiastic address to audiences at the 2016 Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Summit, Matt Fradd boldly laid out why pornography is inherently wrong, and why we must all unite to fight against it. As an anti-pornography co-author, editor, and national public speaker, as well as a post-graduate student of analytic philosophy, Fradd had a great deal to say about the flaws in pro-porn logic.
Pornography is anti-love
“Why is pornography wrong in its object?” Fradd asked his audience. “This is what I think,” he said quoting Polish philosopher Karol Wojtyla, “The human person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love.”
From that premise, Fradd went on to explain that pornography is anti-love and is a monumental threat to healthy attitudes of love among people. And, as he puts it, “If we get love wrong, we get life wrong.” According to Fradd, the ills of pornography cannot be remedied by moderate use or more sensitive scripting because it is inherently bad for human love and dignity.
Again turning philosophy, Fradd cited Thomas Aquinas by saying, “To love is to will the good of the other.” Pornography never wills the good of others; rather, it objectifies and consumes people as any other disposable object. Pornography therefore cannot be love nor encourage it because it never wills the good between people.
Instead, it lies to people with false promises of love, intimacy, and excitement and leaves them hollow. As Fradd phrased it, “We go for excitement, we get bored; we go for freedom we become enslaved; we go for intimacy we become isolated; we go for adult entertainment and we become increasingly juvenile.” Pornography is a baseless lie and an inherent threat to human love.
Pornography is anti-health
Pornography is also inherently bad because, at its core, it is unhealthy. Sexuality is a natural and wonderful part of healthy living. However, to paraphrase Fradd, anything good can be perverted. The intrinsic wrong of pornography is that it is even at its very best, it is still an extreme perversion of sex. Fradd compares it to distortion of healthy eating. While anorexia is not healthy, we cannot treat it by making people as “fat as physically possible,” for that in and of itself is also unnatural and unhealthy. Just as overeating will never have a healthy place among diets, so too can porn never belong to a healthy lifestyle.
Pornography is the fight that involves everyone
With pornography being the threat that it is, Fradd suggests that pornography is the fight that involves everyone and should also unite everyone.
He said, “We’re not really battling an industry; rather all of our efforts are for individual persons. For the woman trapped in the industry, for the families of the porn producers, for the porn producers, for the children who will be exposed as I speak wherever they are, for the spouses of those who are addicted.”
It is for this cause, the worldwide cause for individuals suffering from exploitation, for which Fradd called for more unity and cooperation in the fight. In his words, “We have many different views, but the one thing that unites us is that we think that people would be better off, and that the world would be better off, without sexual exploitation.”
For more insight into the harms of pornography and what we can do to stop it, check out and register for the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation’s 2018 Summit. The summit will be held in Washington, DC, April 4-7, and will once again bring together leading experts from across the country to teach and share the best ways to fight against pornography. Be sure to register early for a guaranteed spot at this year’s summit!
