I was disturbed by what Meygn Kelly said about porn on the O’Reilly Factor about two weeks ago. She essentially said that there was nothing wrong with human sexuality and that millions of people were watching porn. So, what could possibly be wrong with it?
I go into great detail about the dangers of pornography in our book, Slaying Life’s Dragons and Beasts, but for our purposes here, I want to mention just one. And that is pornography, much like the drug marijuana, is a gateway. It leads to other more dangerous sins, much like marijuana can lead to other more dangerous drugs.
The serial killer Ted Bundy’s life is a perfect example of this. Ted did a final interview with Dr. James Dobson on the day before he was executed. The following is a snippet of that interview:
JCD: For the record, you are guilty of killing many women and girls.
Ted: Yes, that’s true.
JCD: How did it happen? Take me back. What are the antecedents of the behavior that we’ve seen? You were raised in what you consider to be a healthy home. You were not physically, sexually or emotionally abused.
Ted: No. And that’s part of the tragedy of this whole situation. I grew up in a wonderful home with two dedicated and loving parents, as one of 5 brothers and sisters. We, as children, were the focus of my parent’s lives. We regularly attended church. My parents did not drink or smoke or gamble. There was no physical abuse or fighting in the home. I’m not saying it was “Leave it to Beaver”, but it was a fine, solid Christian home. I hope no one will try to take the easy way out of this and accuse my family of contributing to this. I know, and I’m trying to tell you as honestly as I know how, what happened.
As a young boy of 12 or 13, I encountered, outside the home, in the local grocery and drug stores, softcore pornography. Young boys explore the sideways and byways of their neighborhoods, and in our neighborhood, people would dump the garbage. From time to time, we would come across books of a harder nature – more graphic. This also included detective magazines, etc., and I want to emphasize this. The most damaging kind of pornography – and I’m talking from hard, real, personal experience – is that that involves violence and sexual violence. The wedding of those two forces – as I know only too well – brings about behavior that is too terrible to describe.
Ted did this final interview with Dr. James Dobson for one reason and one reason alone: “He felt he owed it to society to warn of the dangers of hard-core pornography and to explain how it had led him to murder so many innocent women and girls.”
Right now, you are probably saying, “Well, he was a worst case scenario, and that could never happen to me.” The truth is that this could happen to any one of us. We are all capable of the most horrific kinds of evil. Just look at many of the main characters in the Bible. David committed adultery and was responsible for having an innocent man killed. Moses killed a man. Paul oversaw the stoning of Stephen. I could go on.
The scripture says in Jeremiah 17:9-10:
“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.”
Of course, everyone who looks at pornography is not going to turn out to be a serial killer, just like everyone who smokes marijuana is not going to turn to cocaine or heroin. Nevertheless, the truth is that many who start out with softcore pornography will end up craving hardcore pornography, bestiality, or worse.
For many, the seemingly innocent play area of pornography will be a gateway that leads them to far worse sins than they had previously thought they were capable of committing.
His son,
Gary Lee Millner
