Fighting Pornography- Start with the Family

As a member of the LDS church, I've been hearing people speak against the evils of pornography for as long as I can remember. So I found it interesting to read about someone outside the Church talking about it. In an article that I read recently, Patrick A. Trueman, the former chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the United States Department of Justice said that the answer to combat the scourge of pornography is to "Start with the family." He said there are three major things that average people can do to fight pornography.

1. Strengthen their families- Know what your kids are doing and get Internet blocking software
2. Survey communities- Boycott stores that display pornography, and let the store owners know (He says he has seen this work over and over again.)
3. Lobby public officials- There are laws against hard-core pornography. Make sure that they are enforced.

I feel like pornography is one large massive lurking evil that I don't want to look at too closely, but I can't pretend that it's not there.  If you think that pornography doesn't effect you, you're wrong. It effects the ways people are portrayed in the media. It effects the ways children view themselves, it effects the way that adults view themselves. The article states that "Children are harmed by looking at pornography. It effects them for the rest of their lives." But that's only one of many ways that pornography assaults the family. Pornography is a seed that can grow into rape, abuse and child molestation. (Recently I read parts of a series of articles about a columnist who spent some time following investigators for the Utah's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. I warn you, what she discovered was disturbing, but it's important to be aware of the lurking evil. But one interesting thing that she said that most of the time the child abusers started with adult pornography, which led to child pornography which eventually led to victimizing real children.) Even if it doesn't lead to that, it still destroys marriages, families and lives. For the love of all that is good, take a stand and purge it from your sphere of influence.