A social media-savvy group of Millennials who also appear to be, at least partly, Mormon, have launched a website under the URL pornkillslove.com, and apparently a billboard campaign to go with it.
The campaign comes from a group that’s been around for a few months called Fight the New Drug who claim to have zero religious or political agenda. Rather, they say, they’re a licensed non-profit who “are here to speak out on the harmful effects of pornography using only science, facts, and personal accounts.”
Among those personal accounts is an interview that one member of the group tricked retired straight porn star Randy Spears into doing, and which he says was edited to make him sound anti-porn and depressed when in fact neither is true. Spears told AVN in July that he was going to “sue the piss out of them, scare the hell out of them” after this guy, John Burroughs, who’s a member of the non-denominational church Randy attends, basically lied to him to get him to do the interview. (See all melodramatic six minutes of it, titled “Most Successful Male Porn Star Of All Time Speaks Out On Porn,” below. Randy is called simply “Greg.”) Adult performer Amber Lynn has also had to send the site a cease-and-desist after a quote from her was taken out of context and used without her consent.
The site says they are “pro sex” but they seem to take a pretty conservative view of pornography, believing that “pornography can harm the sex life of individuals,” citing a bunch of pseudo-scientific studies that support that idea.
The group promises they aren’t trying to legislate the porn industry out of existence. They say, “We are not trying to take away the rights of adults who choose to view pornography. You will never see us lobbying, protesting, getting petitions signed, etc. That’s not how we do things. We simply want to educate people on the harm that pornography can cause, and then allow them to make an educated choice for themselves.”
But, they’re apparently launching their own porn “recovery program,” called Fortify, though the website for it is still under construction.
They’ve published what they say was an unsolicited essay by a 25-year-old gay man (who sounds like he has a lot of problems outside of supposed “porn addiction”), who writes, “I had a favorite porn site before I had a favorite band. I had a fetish before I had a real crush. I let porn get into my head and turn off my heart.”
A lot of the site seems to focus on the idea of intimacy, and it’s not not the case that some of us end up having body issues and higher standards as a result of porn viewing. But it’s also the case that a lot of people who would otherwise have no sex life, or a dangerous one in a gay un-friendly place, at least have a safe and healthy outlet for their desires now that the internet has brought porn to everyone, no matter where they are. It is DEFINITELY also the case that porn has served to improve the sex lives of many, and educate people about the glorious variety of sexual practices out there to enrich their own sex lives — though, for sure, you’d better be sure you know your sex partner well enough before suggesting that you try sounding.
Below is the terrible video with the dramatic music of Randy Spears talking about his addiction issues in the 80s and 90s, and how porn changed the way hew viewed women. But, as he’s said after, he was pushed to say a lot of this and much of it was heavily edited with an agenda.
Says Spears, after he saw it, “This is not what I intended at all. This looks like I’m a cancer patient on my last leg. It was sad and gloomy and the way they edited it really made it look like I was down on porn, and it freaked me out.”
[Photo above taken in San Francisco by former porn model Derrick Hanson via Steve Cruz]
Sad, but true.
I think this group isn’t wrong at all in its ‘ ideology’. Porn isn’t free of bad things. It can be harmful.