Data from the General Social Survey, a widely respected sociological survey carried out by the University of Chicago, that has regularly measured people’s attitudes and demographics since 1972, found that in 1990, about 8% of the U.S. population had no religious preference. By 2010, this percentage had more than doubled to 18%. That’s a difference of about 25 million people, all of whom have somehow lost their religion. What does any of this have to do with pornography?
According to one porn industry watcher: “In the 1980s, its [porn] customers led the adoption of the videotape. Home video, in turn, revolutionized pornography by moving it from dingy theaters to the privacy of suburban living rooms. With the introduction of the DVD, in the late 1990s, the industry may have entered its golden era. Ardent fans not only bought new releases on DVD but also updated their VHS libraries to the new format.” Unfortunately for me, I came of age and went into porn during the late-1980s and early-90s, during the heyday of pornography. But, one doesn’t get into porn with any sort of realistic Christian religious sensibility; by that time, it’s already long gone. The stripping of my religious mind began when I first opened up a “Playboy” magazine. At that moment, the false materiality of porn replaced any need I had to feel the transcendent or the spiritual. I had my god in my hand. The mystery of the Mass or the Life of Jesus was just that – a mystery. What I had was physical and tangible. I could see it. It gave me immediate pleasure and immediate companionship. Later on, I realized that I could make the flat surfaces of the glossy page come to life in the strip clubs, bathhouses, and porn sets of San Francisco. Those places became my new temples.
Over the decade I spent in the pits, I met and befriended countless men and women who joined the new religion of porn. Some, like me, had grown up looking at naked girls and couples having sex in magazines and porn videos, others had maldeveloped in liberal single-parent homes or homes in which both parents worked – leaving them home alone to watch and do whatever they wanted. Many more, again, like myself, felt the full impact of the post 60s-Vatican II penchant for feel-good Jesus-ism and abandonment of moral orthodoxy. Regardless, we were all just completely lost and aimless. We were looking, and, we found something in porn. For the most part, it confirmed our woundedness and it made us feel like we were not alone or that we were not damaged individuals. There was a certain solace in communal sexual perversity, and a hypnotic, almost narcotic, effect associated with watching others act out our sexual hang-ups and secret proclivities. It was a ritualistic display. A throw-back to pagan orgies and bizarre fertility rites. It was sad, but it was all we had.