Does the civil government has the right or authority to prohibit the publication, production or distribution of pornography? That depends on who you ask. It depends on who you ask because different people will have different background worldviews, which will inform their opinions. As a Christian, I am firmly convinced that, apart from private use, distribution of pornography, as well as the presence of pornography on the internet, should be prohibited and aggressively censored.
So-called liberal feminists operate according to a "harm principle" central to the liberal ideology. According to the liberal ideology, everyone is entitled to maximal negative liberty provided their behavior does not directly harm or impinge upon the negative liberty of others. Of course, the professor of Christianity ought to condemn the viewing, publication and distribution of pornography regardless of whether or not scientific evidence is currently available to demonstrate its harmful effects. However, it has become increasingly clear that pornography clearly does directly and profoundly harm those who become addicted to it.
The Christian ought to reject the liberal criteria of the harm principle. It is sufficient for the professor of Christianity that something is prohibited in scripture that it ought not be done. This does not mean that all sin should be punished by the civil government, since not all sin is crime, horizontally, that is, socially speaking(all sin is crime vertically speaking, against God, but the civil government is not authorized to punish all sin).
Some feminists have actually come to side with traditionalists and religious conservatives on this issue, even advocating state restriction or regulation within the realm of pornography. Like liberals in general, these feminists are reasoning from the harm principle, according to which, it is argued, pornography does in fact directly harm people in such a way that its production and/or distribution ought not necessarily be a basic right.
What exactly constitutes pornography has become a controversial issue in the public sphere. Olivia Sprauer, for example, denies that she has been justifiably dismissed from her high school teaching position for posing as a bikini model. She does not, like Kim Kardashian or Farrah Abraham, have sex with people in front of a camera. But does one necessarily have to be a Kim Kardashian or a Farrah Abraham before one's behavior in front of a behavior constitutes legitimate pornography? From a Christian perspective, no. It is enough to pose in such a way with the intent to cite lust that makes one guilty of pornography. This standard therefore applies with no less diminished force for Olivia Sprauer(or, for that matter, Kate Upton) than it does for Farrah Abraham, Kim Kardashian or Lindsay Lohan.
If Jesus writes of men that looking at a woman with the intent to lust after her constitutes sexual immorality(literally, porneia, the root Greek word from which we get "pornography", which literally means "writing about prostitutes"), then it follows that women who set out to deliberately insight lust in men are guilty of the distribution of pornography. Of course, men are no less guilty when they attempt to incite illicit(read: non-marital) lust in women. It therefore does not matter to what extreme or lack of subtlety it is taken: Kate Upton, Olivia Sprauer, Farrah Abraham, Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian are all engaged in activities that are justifiably, from a Christian perspective, considered pornographic. It does not matter that these women are not literally having sex for money. The fact that they are deliberately enticing men to psychologically have sex with them makes them guilty of producing pornographic material. It does not matter that Kate Upton or Olivia Sprauer may not overtly engage in penetrative intercourse on screen or in magazines. The same is true of Lindsay Lohan, Kim Kardashian and Farrah Abraham(though clearly at least some of these women have done so).
This is a shame, because I am convinced that all of these women are more than capable of making a living in a manner that, from the perspective of Christianity, would be legitimate. Olivia Sprauer is on her way to grad school. So she is clearly no fool. While genetics aren't everything, it is not implausible to suggest that Kim Kardashian has inherited a decent amount of IQ points from her lawyer father.
One way of defining pornography is that it refers to any media material that is sexually explicit. This, of course, varies from culture to culture and individual to individual. However, there is a great deal of media material that ought to be regarded as obviously sexually explicit by the standards of virtually any cultural simply by virtue of our common biology. The display of penetrative intercourse or any sort of stimulation of the genitals, or any posturing which suggests preparation for, or invitation to, copulation, are obvious examples. Even if there are individuals who are not sexually aroused by certain media that are commonly regarded by virtually all cultures as sexually arousing(and the Bible does explicitly acknowledge the existence of such people; see Matt. 19:12; 1 Cor. 7), these are not the norm.
There are certain forms of media which produce sexual arouse which are probably regarded as sexually immoral by virtually all societies. These include but are not limited to, media of people being tortured, raped, killed, humiliated, etc. In any case, from the perspective of Christianity, pornography is primarily an issue of the heart. Any activity, even non-media, activity, produced or distributed, with the intent of producing sexual arousal in individuals that deviates from mutually consenting, heterosexual married couples, ought to be condemned and rejected as pornography. In the upcoming series of articles, we will explore in greater detail the nature, definition and effects of pornography on individuals.
