By Jaime Nava –

After reading Caleb Keith’s most recent post, I got to remembering an article I read not too long ago about the effects that porn has physiologically. I couldn’t find the article, but a quick search brought me to this website and a plethora of other sites that single out porn, not as a compulsion but instead, as an addiction. What’s the difference? For one, the addiction builds a tolerance. As time goes on, an addiction requires more of the same to appease the pleasure centers of the mind. It’s why pot is a gateway drug. People move on to something more potent if they want that original high they had when they first started. Porn creates the same “happy” chemicals in the brain that drugs do. As time goes on, the pleasure centers of the mind begin to expand in search of more of the same pleasure chemical. Physiologically it is identical to drugs. Long story short, porn will drive (generally speaking) boys to twist sex into something beyond what it was created for. Porn has destructive potential.

Consider, then, how common porn really is in the media. Where it used to be late nights on cable, it’s now in popular cable shows (Tudors, Rome, or Game of Thrones, anyone?). It’s in movies by the plenty. There are even some school districts that provide graphic material to children in high school (yes, if you are in high school you are definitely a child) and they call it learning material. Where can kids go to find respite? Where can they look from a culture that wants them to fall into the trap that sex isn’t designed for marriage, but rather more as recreation? Not even video games.

Granted, not all video games contain overtly pornographic scenes, but some of the most popular ones do. Grand Theft Auto includes prostitutes that a player can find on the street, invite into the car, and proceed to “fade to black” while the audio is pretty clear. Even the game Fable contains something similar. It might seem laughable and kinda silly in the short run, but it is providing a model for kids whose parents aren’t discerning; “Sex is silly and fun”.

So this article is a call for parents and others to be discerning. I don’t mean to be alarmist or paint a caricature of what could be. I am saying that porn is bad and that it can even be found, however mild, in video games. These things are teaching our children and even older generations to poke some fun at sex while removing it from the loving relationship between a husband and wife with the result of offspring. While we and our children are inundated with sex everywhere we look, we can’t even catch a break in the video game world; and graphics get better every year. By golly, in time, you might not even need an entire robot to help us break the 6th commandment. Maybe it’ll be like something from Demolition Man.

Let’s teach our kids what sex is for. It’s for marriage between husband and wife, not before. It might sound outlandish but sex is even there to make babies. Let’s ensure that we don’t raise a generation of addicts that look for a cheap fix in college or, shoot, even in middle school. Sex is a holy thing despite how the culture treats it. Let us help our children not to regret or ruin future relationships. Know what game you are buying when you buy one. Know what your kids are playing. You wouldn’t hand them a joint, would you?