The ConWeb is seeking to absolve Josh Duggar of responsibility for his actions — which include molesting his sisters and having an account at the affair-facilitating Ashley Madison website — by promoting the right-wing idea that pornography is addictive, which is what Duggar himself blamed his behavior on (until he didn’t).
In an Aug. 29 WorldNetDaily article, Greg Corombos interviews professional gay-basher Matt Barber, who gets space to blame Duggar’s woes on porn, declaring it “a gateway drug that leads people to act on their fantasies.” and insisting that the mere act of viewing pornography is adultery.
Because Barber is also an Obama-basher, he drags politics into the issue, lamenting that “The problem in this Obama administration is there is no one at the Department of Justice who has any interest in going after obscene material and going after these pornographers and so forth.”
Meanwhile, an Aug. 27 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr claimed that “Addiction to pornography affects millions of men and women in the United States, and many of those people identify themselves as Christians, according to a 2014 survey produced by a Christian organization dedicated to fighting pornography and sexual addiction.” But the survey never defines, medical-wise or otherwise, what it means by “addiction” (other than a question to respondents if they thought they were addicted to pornography “based on your understanding of an ‘addiction'”) and seems to suggest that its definition of an “addict” is someone who views pornography as infrequently as once a month.
Starr’s article doesn’t mention Duggar, but it’s clear that the article was written in response to Duggar’s situation, to which CNS has devoted no original coverage.
Meanwhile, actual experts in the field generally dismiss the idea that pornography can be an “addiction,” at least as we understand how addictions work. The Huffington Post reports:
A large study from neuroscientists at UCLA found that when people are shown erotic images, the brain’s normal addiction reactions are reversed.
[…]
In the brain, porn “addiction” looks the opposite of addictions like cocaine, smoking cigarettes and gambling — and therefore should be treated with different therapies.
Typically, addicts show increased brain reactions to the object of addiction. However, the new findings, which were published this week in the journal Biological Psychology, showed that people who struggled with excessive pornography consumption had decreased brain reactions when viewing porn.So if porn functions differently from other addictions, as the findings suggest, it would be logical for them to be treated differently.
“Some people clearly struggle to regulate their porn viewing habits, but it is important to know why,” Dr. Nicole Prause, a neuroscientist at the university and the study’s lead author, told The Huffington Post in an email. “Calling it an ‘addiction’ may be harming patients, so we should require healthcare workers to provide treatments supported by research.”
What, actual research on the subject? The ConWeb won’t cotton to that.
But articles avoid the idea that Duggar may not actually be “addicted” to porn after all, despite what he sorta claims. As Bill Maher suggested, maybe he’s “just horny” and isn’t “cut out to be married.”
The ConWeb won’t buy that either — not as long as it needs to get prominent Christians off the hook for their sex-fueled behavior by blaming it on a mythical “addiction.”