The New York Times published an opinion article entitled If You Ignore Porn, You Aren’t Teaching Sex Ed by Peggy Orenstein. Orenstein recounts the number of times recently that parents have been coming to school board meetings and berating boards for different sex curriculums. She cites one particular incident where a school was teaching junior in high school about pornography. It is interesting to note, as an aside, that she chooses to focus in on a case with older students.

Nonetheless, her overall thesis is that parents cannot stick their head in the sand. Teenagers are viewing pornography and someone has to help them understand it. She goes into the very high percentage of the pornography usage, “More than 90 percent of boys and close to two-thirds of girls had viewed online pornography before turning 18.” From Orenstein’s perspective, parents should not be ignoring the issue, or confronting school boards; rather, parents should join along school boards to help give student porn literacy.

She never outright makes the statement “porn is bad” or “porn is good.” Rather she attempts to help students think critically about what is going on in the content they are consuming. What is bad about the majority of pornography from her perspective? Violence, misogyny, and lack of diversity. So, while it would seem that pornography could be a good thing, these three things have gotten in the way.

 Orenstein is correct about one thing: parents should not ignore the problem. Teenagers and adolescence are viewing pornography at much higher rates than ever before. Parents cannot pretend like it is not a problem. However, can parents really trust the schools who could possibly teach that pornography could be good as long as it has the, “potential for sexual liberation of ethically produced porn, queer porn or feminist porn. . .”?

The call from the Bible is marital faithfulness. Jesus says, “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” This is the primary problem with pornography. Inclusivity is a smokescreen in the face of the true problem of pornography: adultery. But, the world that has redefined marriage cannot truly pinpoint the problem with pornography. Once the societal foundation of marriage is changed, secular moral reasoning can only be a house of cards ready to fall at the next cultural taboo.

Parents should instruct their children and teenagers in the dangers of pornography, not because it lacks in feminism, but because it twists God’s good gift into a self-gratifying lie. Parents should be concerned what schools are teaching their students on this topic because even if they discourage the use of pornography, it could be for all the wrong reasons.

Orenstein, Peggy “If You Ignore Porn, You Aren’t Teaching Sex Ed,” New York Times, June 14, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/opinion/sex-ed-curriculum-pornography.html.