A major psychology publication has slammed pornography’s critics and endorsed so-called “ethical porn” as able to “enhance people’s well-being.”
Labeling pornography a public health crisis, as more than a dozen U.S. states have done, “risks diverting attention from the real issue: improving comprehensive sex education, including porn literacy,” wrote London psychotherapist Silva Neves in an October Psychology Today article titled “Pornography Is Not a Public Health Crisis.”
‘Not all porn is bad’?
Denouncing porn “is not harmless rhetoric,” Neves wrote. “It can induce or amplify shame, which tends to entrench compulsive patterns rather than resolve them. It can lead people to self-diagnose an addiction they do not have and push them towards ‘recovery’ programmes that are not evidence-based, some with hidden religiosity.”
Neves continued, “There are multiple types of porn, from problematic” to “ethical porn which can enhance people’s well-being. The truth is that not all porn is bad, and sometimes there can even be benefits to watching some types of porn.”
‘Hard to believe’
Evan Lenow, Southern Baptists’ lead ethicist, said “it is hard to believe that a major psychology journal would make an attempt to defend pornography as good for society.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story written by David Roach and originally published by Baptist Press.
