Secret Lives of the Red States/What Asian America Needs Part II

“What does is say that states that tend to be more conservative and religious actually consume more porn?”

–Kiran Chetry from CNN

(Apologies in advance to those who may be offended.  I’m condemning the super-fundamentalist religious people, not the moderates.)

The consumption of online porn in the Christian, conservative Red States tends to be higher than the consumption of porn in the liberal, blue coastal regions.

This doesn’t surprise me at all. I grew up in the Church, and I know that lots of folk in these institutions live with a burning desire to do something bold, loud, creative, sexual, and out of the ordinary. However, fundamentalist religion prevents this by condemning everything as a sin. Left without an outlet, victims of fundamentalism look for an outlet.  Since online porn is so accessible, it often becomes their first line of experimentation, and because porn is addictive for some, it also becomes their final line of experimentation.

I’m not going to condemn or condone porn. What I will condemn is bad faith and thinking that doesn’t make sense.

I remember meeting one Bible Thumper when I was growing up.  We were in Sunday school, and he was an adult with a big acoustic guitar.  One of the kids asked him to play a popular song.  He said, “I don’t play secular music,” and then he went on to explain how music was intended ONLY to glorify the Lord, how Lucifer the Angel of Beauty invented secular music in order to lead us away from our Lord and Savior, and how listening to secular music was a crime against God.  Secular music, according to the Bible Thumper, wasn’t outright devil worship, but it was definitely wrong.

More than a few of us young kids left that Sunday school session shaking in fear.  And why not?  We’d spent so much of our lives committing sin against our compassionate Lord (who committed genocide against the Sodomites only because they deserved it) whenever we turned on Rick Dees or Casey Kasem.  I had no musical creativity for that musical Bible Thumper to crush with his twisted mythology, but had I been, I most likely would’ve pointed back to that day as a terrifying turning point in my life.  He could’ve easily crushed my life’s aspirations.

I can’t stand fundamentalist Jesus freaks (to borrow a term from John Lennon).  Seriously, these people need to open their eyes to the world around them.  They need to do less preaching and more learning.  They harm our society with their preachings of hatred and intolerance and their rejection of science and logic, and they need to stop for the sake of society.  Equally importantly, smart people need to challenge them.  It’s the right thing to do.

Back to porn–it doesn’t surprise me that these Bible Thumpers consume so much porn, much the same way it didn’t surprise me when Pastor Ted Hagee came out of the closet.  When you live your life in a state of self-imposed repression, that’s what happens–you don’t find your true self until it’s too late.  I’m glad the dude in the video above is coming out.  I think it’s brave, and I applaud him for stepping forward.  But this pattern of condemnation by Jesus freaks needs to stop.  Let’s let people be people.

For the Asian American part of this post, I’ll say this: Asian Americans need freedom from fundamentalist religion AND freedom from artificial constraints. Too often, acceptance within the Asian American community rests on our membership in religious groups and our acceptance of religious dogma.  Many have replaced the repression of Confucianism with the repression of religious fundamentalism.  This kills our ability to create, to feel, and to love.  It’s not working.  Instead of prostrating ourselves before some god who may or may not exist,we need to work harder to find our true selves.

Related posts:

1. What Asian America Could Use (Part I of III)
2. The State of Asian America
3. The Great Portland Ramen Controversy, Part II