Real Evil

This is an uncomfortable post to write. It will be even more difficult to illustrate. But some things are simply evil, and we need to be clear about that.

I try not to put images in my mind that are too ugly for replay. I didn’t watch Passion of the Christ, because I anticipated that the violence would be too much for me. In that case, I was glad the movie was made, for other people to visualize the suffering of our Lord and Savior; but, for me, seeing it depicted was more than I wanted to watch happen, even knowing it was just a portrayal.

I generally avoid violent movies. I manage the blockbusters, the Avengers and so forth, but it’s stylized and pretend and therefore not too upsetting. But I really prefer something quieter, with more storytelling. It’s a taste thing.

But the thing with violence is, no one is really killed or stabbed in the making of the movie. Real bullets don’t hit the actors. Real knives don’t stab real people. It’s all a simulation. It’s by counting on that safety for all involved that allows us to watch it at all.

Some studies show it’s nevertheless harmful—particularly to young people—because our subconscious doesn’t actually separate out simulation from real when we view it. And getting used to the simulation can inure you to the real thing. You can start thinking gunplay is normal. That’s a risk you take when you watch it.

Still, it’s not real; no one is being harmed, and we know that.

In the sheltered world I grew up in, I thought the same safe assumption should apply to nudity; if something was shown that implied nudity, I had the expectation that the person really was covered during the filming, and it was a trick of camera angles or something that implied nudity. And then, once I saw a showing of the movie The Bible, and the backsides of Adam and Eve were shown, and I was stunned. How could that be? That was real. Right in front of us children.

It wasn’t, I recognize now with my adult mind, a depiction intended for prurient purposes. Nevertheless, to a little girl who was taught the importance of modesty, it was incomprehensible.

The thing about nudity in media is—it’s real. A real person uncovered their body and allowed a camera to photograph them, usually for money.

Purpose and intent may make some difference. Private photos of childbirth, for example. But that does tell us something about the times when uncovering our body is appropriate: in intimate, personal, private circumstances.

Uncovering our body for the world to see is not empowering; it is degrading. We call it sin in my religion.

So, let that be a prelude to our discussion today.

There’s a French movie, being shown on Netflix (for the time being) that is about the sexualization of 11-year-olds. Just the “poster” advertising it caused such a stir that Netflix had to change it. But reports are, that was one of the least offensive images of the movie. (Here’s one of the reports, passed along from a family therapist, on Facebook.)

I’m purposely not mentioning the title. It’s not something a civilized person should seek out. But we can discuss what we know of it and apply principles.

Legally, if it is declared to be child porn, the laws against producing it don’t apply here in the US; it was made in France. But distribution laws would apply. And that would mean Netflix would be found guilty of distributing child porn. Everyone who watched it would be guilty as a consumer, but probably not prosecuted. However, those who passed along images on social media, or those who downloaded the movie to their computer would be prosecutable.

I listened to the Sunday livestream of the law guys Viva and Barnes. They discussed the law aspects. Neither was willing to watch the film. The images available in stories about it were disturbing enough. Reading descriptions, they are of the opinion that, probably if it were filmed in the US, and certainly in Canada, where Viva (David Frei) is located, it would be child porn and prosecutable as such. Child exploitation laws would also apply. But because it was made in France, and because it was already on Netflix, labeling it now as child porn is probably not going to happen. Barnes speculates that Netflix got clearance before putting it on their service. Still, pressure could very well cause them to take it down within a week, just to avoid a total boycott by a large portion of their customers.

The film skates close to a rather fuzzy line. There is nudity, but, according to descriptions, actual nudity is adult only, not of the children. But near nudity is certainly there. Sexting of a crotch is portrayed. Self-stimulation is portrayed. That qualifies as porn even if it is portrayal only, without the actual act being performed.

Ben Shapiro braved through it, to be able to comment, last Friday, based on what is actually in the film, rather than what is known about it. It was disgusting, as everyone says. However, he notes, as do a few others, that the portrayal isn’t in favor of sexualizing children; it shows it as horrifying and bad.

Does that redeem the film? Not in the least. As I’ve heard passed along from multiple commentaries, it’s like showing how bad animal cruelty is by actually beating animals on film for an hour and a half. Do people see that animal cruelty is bad? Yes, but you harmed actual animals to make the message—which means saying a message is more important to you than actually preventing cruelty to animals.

The Babylon Bee (parody news) illustrated for us in a story earlier today (and provides me a relatively safe illustration for this post):

from this Babylon Bee story

And in this case, actually hypersexualizing young girls is being done—there are, indeed, actual young girls in the film being hypersexualized. Are we supposed to be convinced that saying the message is worth sacrificing real lives?

Meanwhile, in California, the legislature just passed a law decriminalizing sex with children. Not entirely, yet. What they claim to be addressing is the problem you have when high school kids, with a possible upper limit of 19 and a lower limit around 14, date each other. And, of course, it’s not the dating that’s at issue, but the sexual act, but they’re making the assumption that it’s a “wholesome” love relationship between young people within a certain age range. However, they made it a ten-year age difference. That means they’re OK with a 25-year-old and a 15-year-old, or a 23-year-old with a 14-year-old. That’s the very type of relationship that can entrap a young person. The older person has adulthood credit, and seems to offer status—but at a cost of innocence, because adults are allowed to expect sex in a relationship that a child, by law up until now, has not been able to legally consent to.

The Babylon Bee had another accidentally true headline:

 

from this Babylon Bee story

California has been leading the nation in sexualizing children. Why? Not for the good of the children. Rather, it’s to accommodate the LGBT agenda. If you looked at what they’re doing in so-called comprehensive sex education and what predators do to groom children, you might not see any difference. Maybe that’s because the culture they’re supporting is grooming children, sexualizing them early, getting them used to things that would otherwise be repugnant to them.

Reread what Rebecca Friedrichs has revealed about sex ed in California (and other US) schools.

And reread what Kelly Litvak tells us, from experience with her daughter, about how the groomers patiently work to entrap.

In a brief moment of good news, last week we watched as the Texas State Board of Education met to discuss new health education standards. We were worried—because there had been heavy lobbying—that the board might weaken and give in to demands to sexualize our young school children. I’m happy to say they held strong, mostly on votes of 9-6. I’m uncertain how that affects local schools, such as in Austin, where they have already adopted those standards, however. Parents need to be ever vigilant.

As Betsy DeVos said, on Glenn Beck on August 28, 

[Parents] are paying property taxes. Grandparents are paying property taxes. Businesses are paying property taxes. And they should be able to say, “We want something different. We want something better for our kids.”

The odds appear to be against us parents and grandparents and taxpayers.

There’s this headline about what’s new at the UN, from September 4, 2020: 

Advocate for legalized teen prostitution takes influential UN post

'The idea of purchasing intimacy and paying for the services can be affirming for many people,' insisted Tlaleng Mofokeng, formerly an abortionist and now a U.N. special rapporteur.

 

Add this one, from August 25, 2020, with a paragraph from the story: 

Sexualized toys created for children: A disturbing trend, not a coincidence

Not mentioned on the packaging is a second button or sensor in the female doll’s genital area that, when pressed, causes the doll to gasp and make sounds like “Whee!” and “Oh!”

 

Hasbro has since pulled the doll from store shelves, but the placement of the button is disturbingly similar to grooming tactics used by child predators to normalize and desensitize kids to inappropriate touching.

 

The results of these cultural trends show up in stories of harm to children, some rescued, some not.

This is from The Blaze, September 1, 2020: 

Registered repeat sex offender allegedly chases down naked teen boy, executes him in the street

'He was pleading for his life'

 

Think about the grooming that victim probably went through before finding himself in the predicament that ended in his death. And we may not ever know what went into the luring of this girl who ended up in a tractor-trailer being shipped out of the country, rescued August 31, 2020: 

Border Patrol agents find missing Texas girl inside tractor-trailer at checkpoint

Sometimes a child is taken in a snatch-and-grab kidnapping, but more often it’s after grooming, frequently through social media like Tik-Tok. It’s shocking how often we see stories like this next one from August 27, 2020, and hard to stomach that the rescues are the rare ones: 

U.S. Marshalls recover 39 missing children in Georgia operation

If there were no market for sexualized children, there would be no slavery of them. That may be what shocks me the most. My life is sheltered enough that I have a difficult time imagining the depravity required for a person to choose to purchase sex, let alone with a child.And yet even I am subjected to images in media that are so sinful that I can hardly comprehend.

We can’t afford to tolerate these things. They do not represent open-mindedness, or tolerance of different viewpoints. They do not represent empowerment, or freedom. They represent, as they always have, depraved debauchery.

And enslavement. Every pornographic image represents a person enslaved in a way that coerces them to uncover their body and allow a camera to photograph them, sometimes doing things that should never be viewed by others, usually for money, possibly for drugs to feed an addiction, possibly just to be allowed to live another day—in a world where life is used up, literally, in about 5 to 7 years.

Porn is not innocent. It is not consented to as a real free person could consent. It is not harmless—not for the viewer, and certainly not for the victim in the portrayal.

If we are in a world where this evil is normalized for children—may God quickly come to our rescue!