Mark D. Chamberlain - Confronting Pornography

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chamberlain, Mark D., 1964
Confronting pornography : a guide to prevention and recovery for
individuals, loved ones, and leaders / [edited by] Mark D. Chamberlain,
Dan Gray, Rory C. Reid.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-10 1-59038-235-8 (pbk.)
ISBN-13 978-1-59038-235-6 (pbk.)
1. Pornography. 2. MenSexual behavior. 3. Sex addictionReligious
aspects. 4. Sex addictsRehabilitation. I. Gray, Dan. II. Reid, Rory C. III. Title.
HQ471.C44 2005
241.667dc22 2004030156

Printed in the United States of America

R. R. Donnelley

10 9 8 7 6 5

Acknowledgments

This book has been a collaborative effort. We want to specifically acknowledge the efforts of Becky Harding, Warren Tenney, and Katherine Gille, who have been invaluable in helping us edit and condense chapters.

Introduction

PornographyA Consuming Fire

Mark D. Chamberlain

Leonard Gregg had been fascinated by fires since he was a child. As he watched firefighting planes drop slurry on wildfires, he dreamed of becoming a firefighter himself someday. In fact, his older brother, Wilson, remembers watching Leonard play make-believe: He put boxes in a line and would pretend he was dropping slurry on those boxes like the big firefighting planes did.

Leonard eventually achieved his goal and became a firefighter, but at age twenty-nine his dream became a nightmare. He was out of work and trying somehow to support his girlfriend and her six children. He knew that he could make some money, if only there was a fire to fightso he decided to try to start one himself. On June 18, 2002, near the Fort Apache Indian Reservation town of Cibecue, Arizona, he used matches to light some dry grass on fire in two different areas. One of the fires was put out that day, but the other spread quickly up steep terrain and into the surrounding White Mountains.

Crews fought the blaze, but it continued to grow in the hot, dry, and sometimes breezy weather. On June 23, the fire merged with another that had been started by a lost hiker to signal a helicopter, and the wildfire became the largest in Arizona history. At its worst point, 4,400 firefighters were battling a fifty-mile-wide wall of flames. Thirty thousand people from nine communities had to be evacuated.

By July 9, the fire was finally contained as crews doused the final smoldering embers. In the intervening twenty-six days, 467 homes had been destroyed and over 732 square miles of ponderosa pine and juniper forest were blackened. The blaze itself caused at least $28 million in damage, and the cost of fighting it was estimated at $43 million. The regions economy, largely dependent on the forest, was devastated and will likely take years to recover. To a judge in a Flagstaff courtroom, all Leonard could say was, Im sorry for what I did.

When I consider Leonards remorse, and his astonishment about how quickly the problem he created spread beyond the limits he initially intended, I cant help but think of some of the people I have talked with about the consequences of their involvement in pornography:

I think of Seth, a 57-year-old business owner and former bishop, who described how his on-and-off involvement with pornography fueled his sexual appetite in ways that left him ever less satisfied with his wife, with her body, and with the frequency and intensity of their sexual encounters. At first I justified entertaining my lust because my focus was only racy stuff on TV and provocative ads in mainstream magazines. When I started to masturbate to those images, I rationalized, If my wife even had an average level of sexual interest, I wouldnt need to resort to this, but every normal man needs a healthy sexual release now and then. Im ashamed to say that I even used certain scriptures to convince myself that I was being wronged when she wasnt interested in sex and that this whole problem was really her fault. Over time, Seth sought out material that was more and more explicit, always feeling guilty and vowing to abstain in between his lapses into pornography. When I asked him what led him to finally seek treatment, he said, I knew how drastically pornography had changed me one day when I found myself feeling badlike I had missed out on some great thingbecause I had never had sex with a prostitute.

I think of Brad, a forty-eight-year-old father of five who tearfully described the day he loaded all of his personal belongings into his truck and drove away from the family home he and his wife had purchased some twenty years earlier. As I turned off our street, I looked in the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of the treehouse in the giant maple to the side of our house. At that moment, my heart broke. I knew I was leaving behind everything I had tried to build for her, for the kids, and for myself. Later I thought, I planted that tree and nurtured it well. Too bad I couldnt have done the same for my marriage. For fifteen years his wife worked patiently at his side as he battled an addiction to pornography and masturbation. She had finally decided to end their marriage when he got involved with a woman he met on a business trip.

I think of Kevin, an eighteen-year-old young man who was first appalled when he looked at pornography that featured young children. My reaction was, How could anybody look at that stuff?! and I immediately got off of that website. But then some curiosity lingered, and I went back to check out the material. My fascination for it grew, at first out of disgust and disbelief, but then gradually it got to the point where I was entertaining those kind of fantasies myself. Then one day when he was tending his three-year-old cousin, he impulsively reached over and fondled her for a few seconds. As soon as he did, he was horrified and immediately called his parents and then his aunt and uncle to tell them about it. From there he went through a police investigation and a court hearing and was sentenced to a year of probation, which prevented him from leaving the state to attend the college of his choice as a freshman. He acknowledges, however, that the effects of his actions on his own life have not been the most difficult consequences to face. The hardest part was apologizing to this sweet little girl about something she shouldnt even have to worry about at her ageor ever in her life, for that matter. She looked up at me with big eyes and with a quivering voice said, Kevin, you did something you not supposed to. It tore me up inside to think about what I had done to her. I despise what I had become, to be able to do something like that. I damaged her innocence. Its tough even now when I see how low I sank, to the point where I cant even be trusted to play with my nieces and nephews without supervision.