Bizarre as it seems, like Big Tobacco, Big Porn even uses philanthropy to burnish its image as a good corporate citizen. Earlier this month Pornhub pledged a one-cent donation to saving the whale through the Moclips Cetological Society, a non-profit organization, for every 2,000 videos streamed from its website in February. “This initiative allows us to demonstrate our sincerity and integrity when it comes to helping out one of the planet’s most sacred populations of creatures,” said Pornhub’s vice-president.

So if society turned its back on tobacco, why can’t it kick its addiction to an even more serious public health crisis, pornography?

The stakes are high. As many speakers at the conference pointed out, pornography is destroying the capacity of young people to relate to each other. In the words of Dr Joe Tucci, head of the Australian Childhood Foundation, “Are we willing to remove from relationships the values of love and intimacy which make life worthwhile?”

Another speaker described the corrosive effects of pornography on remote Aboriginal communities. So many communities in the Northern Territory had been rendered dysfunctional by alcohol abuse and pornography that in 2007 the Australian government was forced to send in the Army to protect children against sexual abuse and neglect. It was an unpopular, paternalistic and undemocratic move. But child abuse fuelled by grog and porn had become a real public health crisis. Conditions in the impoverished camps were hellish, with children as young as four sexually abusing each other and pornography a staple of entertainment for men both young and old.

These Aboriginal communities have been corrupted by Western vices. Their desperation and degradation could be what awaits us if we do not win the battle to contain the spread of pornography. A campaign to treat it everywhere as a public health crisis is a welcome step forward.

Curated by Erbe
Original Article