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Click here to view porn?

 
Helen Thorne | 24 Jul 2013

It's not a bad idea. In fact there's a lot to commend it. The Prime Minister has suggested that internet service providers should automatically block porn sites. Residents in the UK would need to "opt in" to be able to access explicit material. It's an idea that could become law in the coming years. It's designed to protect our children.

There's no doubt that our children need some protection. Statistics from Covenant Eyes suggest that 9 out of 10 boys and 6 out of 10 girls watch pornography before the age of 18. The majority have seen scenes of group-sex and same-sex interaction. Such images drag our children away from God's design for sex and preach the lie that instant gratification is the ultimate goal, regardless of the consequences.

Worse still, the stats indicate that 15% of boys and 9% of girls have seen child pornography online. No child needs to see that. No adult does either. Such pictures linger in the mind and as they do they scare, confuse, warp and desensitize.

Something definitely needs to be done. And praise God that the Prime Minister is trying to take a step. His actions may well help some.

There is one small problem, however. If one of the parents wishes to watch pornography, they'll click the button. It's not hard. It's not something that will cause them distress. They're likely to be able to do so without their spouse knowing (how many people actually check?). Then the whole family and every teenage friend of the children of that family will have access to all the web has to offer.

And on top of that there's the small matter of children who are far more technologically aware than their parents being able to get round the controls ... and having their own mobile devices over which they have almost total autonomy.

The desire for pornographic material springs from the human heart (Matthew 15:19). And no mouse click can tame that. Only at the cross can we find forgiveness, transformation and hope. Only by being honest about the temptations we face as adults and asking for help from our Lord and saviour - and our Christian community - will we make the right choices for ourselves, and be able to model those choices for our children.

2 Comments

Ben Thorp

8:00 PM AEST on July 24th
My biggest fear is that this will be used as a substitute for proper parenting. It is, in essence, attempting to provide a technological solution for a spiritual problem. It's not even a good technological solution, and could potentially pave the way for increasingly intrusive government sanctions on the internet - Great Firewall of China, anyone?

Pornography is an increasingly big problem within our society (and within the church), but an equally big problem is the abdication of responsibility, and the proposed measures are an inadequate response to the former, and merely exacerbate the latter.

A B

8:45 PM AEST on July 24th
Are you aware that there is already an IWF (http://www.iwf.org.uk/) that blocks reported illegal content online such as child abuse (please don't call child abuse child porn, it doesn't help anyone)

How will this new filter stop accidental exposure to this if it's not already on that list as not known about.

There are so many reasons why this new initiative does not work, easily circumvented and is actually plain wrong.
As much as we may want it to be pornography isn't illegal. The government wants to block access to legal sites. As a parent I've taken steps to block access to sites, my choice to protect my children. Parents need to be educated, not nannied.

Is this not the thin end of the wedge? How long before religious sites are blocked for bigotry, intolerance? Think of the children they could be brainwashed!

The only way to stop it is to teach people about wrongs of it on every level, to show there are better and more fulfilling things out there. Labelling them perverts or abusers because they opt of this filter isn't a good thing.