Laurie Guy: Porn an issue for all of us

We seem to be lurching from one sex scandal to another.

The latest puts police in the public firing line for having pornography on their computers. We, the public, are outraged.

But why the outrage?

Yes, a lot of the material was explicit images of sex acts. But heaps of ordinary people are watching this stuff, too. Why pick on police on this one?

Is the outrage because police were wasting time when they should have been working? Maybe. But police, as a whole, still work hard. And the amount of wasted time may have been very minor.

Is the outrage because they were misusing police resources, taking 20 per cent of electronic storage space with their peep-show stuff? Perhaps. But this is hardly a hanging offence.

So why the outrage? Is it because it is police that are involved? They are the pillars, the protectors, of society. So they need to be squeaky clean. And watching hard pornography is not being squeaky clean.

Those who enforce the law are set a high standard to live by. Effectively, then, there is a double standard: one for police and another for society.

The problem with that, however, is that police themselves are the products of society. They are shaped by society and they are recruited out of society. If society accepts hard pornography, we should not be surprised if police do, too.

If we want police to change, society also needs to look at changing. We get police who are like us. We get the police (and politicians) we deserve. The problem is not them. It is us.

We live in a sexually charged society. Subtle sex, subliminal sex, in-your-face sex - it is pervasive.

Frank expression about sex has become the norm. That includes pornography. Especially in male environments, it is increasingly becoming acceptable to show videos portraying graphic depictions of sex acts. Some lap it up. Others feel uncomfortable. But no one dare speak out for fear of being labelled Mother Grundy.

We ought to speak out. Last century we brought sex out of the closet. Not only was it permissible to speak about sex but permissible to the nth degree. In the process we put sexual values into the closet.

It is as if sex is hardly connected with values at all, so long as it is sort of consensual.

This has led us to become desensitised to its effect on us, on society, and, in relation to pornography, to the actors involved.

A pornographic video involves people. The sex it portrays is not a loving act. If it were, the people involved would not do it in front of a camera.

Essentially, the video portrays people in an intimate act. That act ought to be a relating to another valued person, a person with dignity. Instead we have people relating to the other as an object, as an it, not as a he or a she. This is degrading and dehumanising.

We, the audience, are losing our sense of goodness in watching these videos. We are paying to be amused, to be aroused or whatever, while the actors are degraded in the process.

We males (for it is still males who are more hooked on pornography) need to be thinking: the woman here could be my sister, my daughter, my partner. How would I feel if this were my sister?

What we are seeing is dehumanising. It has already been dehumanising for the actors.

But it is desensitising for us, too.

Strong voices from Women Against Pornography have spoken out about the outrage of pornographic exploitation in the past.

It is time to speak out again. I say speak out, not legislate, because legislation will change very little.

Electronic globalisation is such that even if state censorship were an option (and that itself needs debating), the nature of the internet means that the material would still come through anyway. What is needed is a change of societal attitudes.

Instead of our current reluctance to debate sexual values, we need to be thinking about them again. Let's have a public debate, all sides arguing their case and listening to one another. For we need to get out of our present sexual jungle. As things stand, it leaves too many hurt people.

It is right for us to feel outrage over this pornography issue but it should be about all pornography, not just police pornography.

We need to start saying that this sort of pornography is unacceptable in the public arena, whether in work places or in clubs or in social gatherings.

It is time we stopped seeing sex as simply a private matter and as an issue of self-gratification. It is time we asked what is good and noble for society.

For ultimately society is shaped by the attitudes and decisions and actions of each of its citizens. Only if society changes will the police change.

Let's not simply blame police. Let's blame ourselves for what we also do and tolerate.

* Laurie Guy lectures in church history at Auckland University's school of theology, and also at Carey Baptist College.