Scott Yenner, welcome to the Thank God for Bitcoin podcast.
Thanks for having me on. Glad to be here.
All right. This is a very different episode than the episodes we normally record.
This is episode 71, The Case for Banning Porn.
Probably not the thing that you're expecting to see when you tune into a Bitcoin podcast.
And yet we live to surprise. So, Scott, why don't you introduce yourself for maybe people who aren't familiar with your work and then we'll go from there.
Yeah, I'm a professor at Boise State University and I have been a fellow at the Claremont Institute.
I just began a job at the Heritage Foundation where I'm the director of the Simon Center for American Principles and Politics.
and I've written two books on the family,
one around 2010 called Family Politics,
the Idea of Marriage and Modern Political Thought.
And then the other around 2020,
can't remember the exact year,
called The Recovery of Family Life,
Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies.
Written a bunch of white papers too in between
for the Heritage Foundation,
one of which bears entirely on this topic,
which is called A Postmortem on the Sexual Revolution.
what the deregulation of obscenity has wrought.
I think that's the title, but something like that, if it's not that.
And all things will be approximate in our podcast today, I promise.
Love it.
So here's kind of where this is coming from.
So one of the things that we found out in the last six years that I've been in Bitcoin,
it's gone down all kinds of crazy rabbit holes that I never anticipated.
But one of the things that quickly comes up when you start thinking about money,
just from a more kind of general basis.
And then also as a Christian,
you start to quickly get involved in politics
and you start to think about
what is the role of government?
What role should government have in money?
And then you start even going more philosophical,
going even deeper,
you get the nature of what does it mean to be human?
And so we start starting to dig into all these questions.
And so then there's other things
that are tangentially related to that,
including obscenity loss.
And so I would love to kind of get
your, just your background and why is this important to you? I would imagine it has something
to do with the fact that you're a Christian and have five kids, but where, where did your level
of interest come with, you know, this, this topic? And then kind of, you can give a little bit of
unpacking what you're doing about this topic. Yeah. All right. Well, that's big. Um, so,
you know, I'm a political philosophy guy. And, uh, one of the things that people in political
philosophy are concerned with is human nature. And conservatives often, I should say, and that
led me to the family, like studying the family, because the family is a cultural institution
that deals with human nature. It kind of registers human nature. And so when you have the decline of
the family, what you're having is natural things like natural sexual desire, sex differences,
which appear to be natural. The desire to live beyond yourself through having kids,
it bends these natural desires in various ways. And so I don't think you can get rid of nature,
but you can register nature in different ways. And so one of the ways we register
nature is through the nuclear family. And sex differences, which are natural, are registered
in the nuclear family, where men play a role of provider, protector, and leader of the house.
And women play the role of nurturer and beautifier of the house. And it suits their nature in many
cases. And we also like sex as part of marriage. That's what makes kids. So it's a place where we
register sexual desire so that it, you know, is pointed to one woman and it's pointed toward
procreation. So like nature can't be stamped out, but it registers in different ways. And what the
decline in the family has meant is that nature is registering in a lot of different ways.
And many of them are undermining the cultural institution of the family.
And I think there are other great examples of this, but no better example probably than the existence of free, widely available internet pornography on phones and all of this stuff, which has a way of changing and warping nature and pointing people away from family life.
So pornography is just like part of this broader effort to try to understand, I would say, the relationship between nature and the family.
And so I got interested in this. And there was an old approach to pornography that really existed in the United States until the late 1950s.
And that old approach was like a very broad definition of obscenity could be blocked by any local or national government.
The standard was that if a work tended to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to immoral influences, that the government can step in and limit the freedom of the person producing that or distributing it.
And that meant that if there was just one little part of books that would make it difficult for the very vulnerable people in your society, that is, let's say, those subject to addiction, then it could be banned as obscene material.
And this meant that certain books, you know, famously Lady Chatterley's Lover and other books like that were banned and the national government got involved.
They had various acts that also the Comstock Acts that then forced a national ban on obscenity.
And that was done in order to shape sexual desire towards the procreative family and toward monogamous sexual relations.
But in the late 50s and really throughout our whole lives as a result, there's been an entirely different standard applied.
It's not the most vulnerable, but it's rather just applying community standards.
It's not just a little bit of a book, but it's the work taken as a whole.
And it's not like has a subject of immoral influences, but rather is it must be with utterly without redeeming social and cultural value.
So what has happened is obscenity has become increasingly defined narrowly so that only a few things are obscene or almost nothing is obscene.
And those decisions came out really in 1957.
There was a case called Roth versus United States, which helped limit the national laws that regulated pornography.
And then there was a case in the early 70s, 73, I think, Miller versus California, which made it difficult for states to regulate pornography.
Now, this is before the Internet was there.
So cities did a lot of things to, I would say, shame and dishonor those who dealt with obscenity.
They would, they would like deny them zoning ordinances, make them go on the outside of town.
Truck stops, I think were famous for this.
And so it still wasn't widely available, I would say.
But the, the world that we live in now is this very narrow definition of obscenity where almost nothing is obscenity meets the easy access to obscenity and pornography on the internet.
with, you know, I would say this begins in around 2000, maybe a little earlier.
And so, like, that's where we are.
We're dealing with unbelievable access and very ill-suited laws to restrict that access
or laws that basically grant the access, I guess I should say it like that.
and, uh, and, but it's different for, so that's like one like track of, uh, of obscenity law and
experience. Okay. There's nothing parallel in this in human history, like the access and the law
meeting one another. There's nothing like this in human history. Uh, at the same time, uh, kids are
treated differently under the law. Um, and this is a very interesting part of it. There was a case
in 1968, all numbers are approximate, but I think that's right, called Ginsburg versus New York,
where they basically said obscenity as to minors will have the old standard, the Hickland standard,
as it was called, where you have to show that the work, parts of the work would tend to deprave and
corrupt those whose minds were open to immoral influences. And then when the internet came about,
There were attempts to apply that same standard to the Internet.
And the first age verification laws were in 1996, where it was required that Internet sites have parental notification on them.
And those laws were all thrown out by the Supreme Court as abridging the freedom of adults too much.
and uh that case was reinforced in 2004 i think in another case where the congress tried to
restructure its law but that changed uh this year in a texas case paxton versus uh texas
or taxed versus united states no no free speech coalition versus paxton i knew i'd get it
and uh where age verification stuff is now legal to use and the judgment here is that we just know
more about the effects of pornography now than we did in 1957 and than we did in 1996.
And the harm that it does to kids is more like scientifically verifiable, if you want
to think of it like that, so that the Texas legislature and the legislature of any state
that is imposing age verification laws pass muster because they have a real like solid
basis, more than a rational basis.
They need more than a rational basis, but they're not facing what is called strict scrutiny, where the law would be thrown out almost immediately.
So there's a legal context for all of this stuff.
And so now we have these two tracks, basically.
Unlimited access to obscene material, because the definition basically makes nothing obscene for adults, but age verification for kids.
yeah this is i mean i don't know if i mean ben you live in texas and i don't know if you tim
you've worked in texas but i mean the law basically says that you can you can visit some
of these the largest pornography websites uh but you have to like give them your id or something
like that in order to prove that you're of age uh these can be routed around though if you use
things like vpns so there there are like relatively trivial ways that even the people can use technology
to kind of get around these rules.
So I would love to just kind of go back a little bit
because I think the, I mean,
my experience of thinking about this
and even just a challenge as a Christian who's a father
and like, I would love just for porn to be gone,
but I feel like we've all kind of grown up,
people who are probably 40, 40 is,
40-ish, somewhere around there and younger.
We grew up in this era where
even though the libertarians have had
like zero political success,
I think the greatest libertarian success is probably Ron Paul. And, you know, he never, he made, he was a congressman, but didn't really get very far. But we still have a very libertine, libertarian view of freedom and of, again, as a result, speech and some of these other things.
So where do you trace this from if you're going to argue that the founders would have been mortified with this kind of understanding of freedom and this understanding of free speech?
Could you kind of go back to maybe the founding and kind of unpack for us how they thought about some of this stuff?
Yeah, well, I mean, I think the founding is very comfortable with the Hicklin standard being imposed because there's a recognition that sexual desire has to be shaped in civilized ways.
like they always rejected, for instance, polygamy because polygamy, it was thought would lead to a
kind of tyrannical exercise of male authority and families that was inconsistent with Republican
government and inimical, I think, to equality within marriage. So they always opposed polygamy.
They always put restrictions on divorce because they wanted to tighten the marital bond.
and in some states you couldn't get a divorce. So it was not easy to get divorced. So they always
were interested in shaping the institution of marriage toward monogamy. There were laws at the
time of the founding where if you committed adultery, you committed a crime. Premarital sex,
fornication could be a crime. And all of this is an attempt to reinforce the idea that sex,
marriage, procreation, and parenthood are all connected and into an institution
that is supposed to inform and be consistent with Republican government.
And that's the approach they take, you know, I think to every family issue.
And that persisted, you know, for a long time until I would say, you know, post,
in the beginning of 20th century, but especially after the 50s, that hegemonic understanding of it
was challenged by two principal ideologies. One of them is what you were, I think, referring to a
kind of libertarian approach to the First Amendment. And then the other is sexual liberation theory.
and it's a question which one is the straw stirring the drink but i think a careful analysis and not
even that careful of analysis frankly would show that the sexual liberation argument has been the
thing that's been stirring the drink because they are about a certain ethic that they want to promote
by making pornography widely available in the country and preventing localities from regulating
it. They're about promoting a particular ethos. So the sexual liberationists thought marriage was
way too strong in America and that the problem with America was that people were sexually repressed.
The man in the gray flannel suit was sexually repressed and therefore unhappy and subject to
becoming a fascist If we didn allow him to express himself sexually at his will he was likely to invade Poland or commit murder or something like that
So the best way to save people and to save Western civilization was to liberate people sexually.
And they knew, like they intended, this to have a loosening effect on family and marriage, to point women away from motherhood, to point men away from responsible fatherhood.
and to make people just a lot more interested in sex, because the more sex, the less repression,
the less repression, the freer the country. So the sexual liberationists used libertarian
arguments like, who are you to say what obscenity is? And isn't this country about securing
individual rights? They used those arguments, which Americans were kind of willing to entertain
in order to get their ends achieved through political reform.
So there's two groups of people who think pornography
will lead to the loosening of family attachments,
conservatives and liberationists.
They agree on what the effects of pornography are going to be.
And one of them thinks it's a disaster for family life,
and that's bad.
The other thinks that that's going to loosen up family life,
and that's good.
but they all look those two sides like we agree with our enemies on what pornography is going to
do and uh there's just a total difference on the evaluation they think if you free people up from
repression as it's called for that by them they'll make people happy we think actual self-control is
necessary for happiness and if you don't have it you're not going to be happy i think the numbers
are totally on our side on this.
And, you know, 60 years or more than that,
but 60 years of deregulation of obscenity
has left the country barren, unhappy, and divided.
Scott, could you, for the sake of the people listening,
I mean, the four of us may know a lot of this,
but could you just lay out,
for someone who may not be aware of this,
some of the things we have learned
about how pornography affects people
and causes this damage, and especially children?
Yeah. So one of the things that that I want to I want to get away from is only being concerned about the effects on children.
And because I think in a way we've won that debate, the age verification laws are being passed there.
They're passing muster in the Supreme Court.
Um, and so I do want to focus in on adults. Like what, what do we know about pornography use and,
uh, and its effect on men, its effect on marriage and its effect on women. I think we have a good
understanding. I just had a research assistant the other day put together like a little, uh, page
and she found 34 studies. She only had a day, uh, on the effects of pornography. And I'm going to
get into them in a second here. But the one thing we have to realize is that this is not going to be
like some guy goes up and gives a speech and says, we need to kill all the people who are dealing
in corn and raising prices and starving the people. And then everyone goes and kills the
corn dealers. It's not going to be like a one-to-one relationship between the speech
and the effects.
There's going to be kind of like
a slow accumulation of adverse effects
that when you add them all up,
show that there's a serious problem.
Okay.
So, and I want to say one more thing about this
because the conservatives who criticized
pornography in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s,
the last great effort to criticize pornography
was done in the 86 by Attorney General Ed Meese.
like they didn't get it right. They're not really describing the reality of our pornified
internet world. Uh, they were really worried about juvenile delinquency and, uh, lack of
achievement in school and, uh, and like other crimes like that ends up not actually being the
case. Internet pornography has strange effects, but well-studied. And all right, so let's get
into them. States are cast with the police powers to guard the health, safety, and morals of the
people. And I think we can talk about it in those categories, the health, the safety, and the morals
of people. So first of all, health. There's good studies on this stuff. You know, about 15 to 20%
of people who watch internet pornography are going to become addicted to it. And the effects on the
body are not insubstantial. There's new diseases were coming about where young men are having
difficult times standing at attention, if you understand what I mean, as a result of watching
lots of pornography so that dysfunctions in that score, erectile dysfunctions, are now more common
among 30-year-olds who watch a lot of porn than 60-year-olds who watch none. And I'm closer to
the end of that number, the 60 number, than I am to 30. And so, and you know, there's other things
that we can say in this, but it doesn't tend to make people abusive. It actually tends to make
people depressed and withdrawn and antisocial or asocial. So that it's not that they become
juvenile delinquents, but rather they become people without ambition, without hope. And
the Greek word is ascedia, which is a kind of sloth that they fall into. And so the tendency
is to affect the mind away from action and efficacy and toward kind of total retreat into
self so that they're not interested in girls or people. And the psychological condition,
if you think about it, reinforces the physical condition that they can't, you know, stand at
attention. So it's a family show, right? So I say stand at attention. And
And this stuff is being increasingly well-documented.
The way that sites are designed on the internet is designed to addict people and to draw them further and further into more and more perverse experiences and pornography on the internet.
So just simple man-woman stuff is just a gateway to lots of different things on the internet.
So, and then, and people act on the basis of that. Men who watch pornography are three times more likely to have same-sex relations, way more, they're not as, they're just as likely to rape a woman as men who don't watch porn.
Like there's, that was one of the things that the old conservatives said would happen, that men who watch pornography would rape women at higher rates. That ends up not happening. But men who watch a lot of pornography, like, don't think rape's a big deal.
and that's part of this cycle of getting drawn in to ever worse and worse expressions of it.
Men who watch a lot of pornography end up favoring same-sex marriage at much higher rates.
I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think it's like a three-to-one rate than men who don't,
and so it affects their political views a lot. It affects their relations, and this is another
whole category of things. So lots of studies show that pornography is a big factor in divorce and
relationship breakup. It causes the breakdown of trust between husbands and wives, kind of like
adultery would, I think. And it maybe is a species of adultery. So I think the man become less
manly, excuse me, and less marriageable as a result of watching pornography. And like,
That's the whole purpose of protecting the police powers with the health, safety and morals of the people is to repair people for marriage and and responsibility and ambition in life.
So I think this stuff is very well documented.
I mean, I don't know that I left anything out, but those would be some of the major findings.
there's a really good article in the institute for family studies i think in 2022 on the five
big effects of pornography and they really all relate to it undermines marriage and that's what
i mean the sexual liberationists thought it would undermine marriage they were right it does they
were like yes that's why we want it and conservatives and christians have to see it as a threat too
and recognize that there have to be legal options
in order to fight it
because it's not simply a matter of self-control.
That's why we had the laws before.
So anyways, I don't know if that helps, Tim.
There's a lot more to say on this
and stay tuned for my writings on these matters,
but that's a little bit of a sketch.
So how would you respond to those who say that,
oh, no, no, you know,
the law is downstream from culture.
And we've got to change the culture.
Or maybe in kind of a related vein, people who say, no, no, no, it's a spiritual problem.
We need to see people's hearts transform spiritually through revival or something like that.
Otherwise, this law stuff is just a fool's errand.
How would you respond to that?
Yeah, so let's take each of those in turn.
I think it's true that law is upstream from culture.
But I also think the opposite is true, that the culture is shaped by law.
And this is a classic example of that.
so uh who knows what like the natural desire for pornography is i don't know what the number is
but very few people watched it before the or consumed it before the internet
and even fewer before roth versus the united states in 1957 so uh you know the demand for it
was low and the condemnation of it was high. So when you legalize it, do you get more of it?
Yes. Why? Because it's no longer dishonorable. And so law shapes honor and honor shapes behavior.
Or think of it like this. I was talking with a friend about this today. I mean, imagine what,
I don't know, you guys are a little younger than I am, but I'll say like my grandparents,
would they have sat at a dinner table with a pornographer?
Whereas, like, we have to say it, like,
it's not as dishonorable a profession as it used to be.
And you can get elected to Congress or at least assemblymen in Florida,
even after being a stripper.
And there's examples of that down there in Pensacola.
I do that for our friends down there.
And, uh, and so there's just a lot less dishonor attached to these things and it just has to do with the law. So, um, to make, to make pornography dishonorable again, uh, part of that is making it, making it illegal.
and uh and spiritual revival i mean like i'm pro spiritual revival sign me up for all spiritual
revival that doesn't mean that you spread temptation out it doesn't mean like spiritual
revival doesn't happen in an atmosphere where every heresy is given the same credence as christianity
and uh and this is about shaping the environment where options for a good life are available to
people. And so I'm pro revival, but I think it's naive to think that we should multiply the
temptations in order to be more certain that the conversion is the product of a revival or genuine
choice. And, uh, and I think that's kind of, that, that's what you have to face. Um, because the,
emphasizing the importance of revival is basically inviting and celebrating temptation.
And I think we're like not supposed to be led into it.
And this is kind of a matter for not being led into it.
I've heard it prayed somewhere.
Yeah, well, I mean, we can't talk too much about that,
especially at a governmental level, Scott,
because that would be Christian nationalism.
And we all know that that is a great evil that has beset us for some time now.
I mean, how do you, I'm sure you run into people because of this being that being a topic of conversation, you run into people who are imagining theocracy.
They're imagining homosexuals being thrown from rooftops.
Obviously, that's a different religion, but they're still imagining it all the same.
It just it sounds unthinkable and like something that has no precedent in the United States.
How do you answer people when you speak to them?
I'm sure you I'm sure they're very rational when they express these fears to you as you discuss this around the country.
Yeah, I mean, there's there's a kind of thin answer and a thick answer.
The thin answer is that it's impossible to defend the family under the circumstances where you have unlimited access to pornography.
And the family is an institution without which civilization can, you know, cannot be perpetuated.
So, without invoking faith of one thing or another, I think just the protection of family is crucial. But the thicker answer is that the protection of the, like, Christendom's particular form of the family is actually crucial to the protection of our civilization.
because it's the only stable point
that we have in our traditions and our civilization.
So if you're going to defend the family in a Christian land,
you defend the Christian family.
And I do think that we'll call it the Christian nationalist argument
is strongest on the family
because the Christian family is well-ordered.
It leads to more happiness than the alternatives in the main. And so the laws are going to end up, I think, under the best of circumstances, reflecting Christian teachings on these matters.
and we should be thankful for that
because that's really the best way
to save or restore family life
in our circumstance.
So, I mean, I wouldn't lead with it.
I don't lead with it,
but it is the area where the argument,
I think, makes the most sense.
And so basically what are you I mean again I know you writing books Go buy his books I know you working on this on a number of fronts You just kind of talking to people about the issue helping people understand the history of these cases
What else are you doing to try to help? I mean, is there active movements and desire to overturn some of these cases? Is there something in the pipeline right now, like a case in the pipeline that's kind of aiming that way?
Not a case. So here's what I would like to see happen, and I think will happen in the next couple of years, maybe this year, in several states. So after the Supreme Court liberalized pornography in 1973, the Miller v. California case, nearly every state basically took the standards for pornography from the Miller case and made it into state law.
So I have it up on my screen here, so I'm just going to read.
You know, this is the basic part of the Miller case, which is that the average person applying contemporary standards would find that the work taken as a whole appeals to excessive sexual interests and is as a whole utterly without literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
Okay.
So they would put that stuff in their state laws, which meant that the state laws were as liberal as what the Supreme Court demanded state laws be.
And maybe we could get away with that in the era when it was Playboy and Hustler and XXX stores on the edge of town, where, as I say, shame was still attached to the consumption of pornography.
But now that we have Internet pornography and we know more about its effects on men, on women, on families, it's time to actually change those state laws that institutionalized or ratified that Supreme Court case, Miller v. California, and put in our state laws the old standards, the founder standards for discovering obscenity.
and that will immediately be challenged.
But this is how you create a case.
You create a case in a controversy by immediately,
by challenging the standards that the Supreme Court has
in light of new evidence.
New evidence, I think, is ample.
That's why I have this chart of studies
and there's way more where these came from.
And so the goal would be to arm some state legislators with deficient scientific and sociological studies on the effects of pornography so that they would have a factual basis for turning, like turning their laws back to where they were that would allow the regulation of obscenity.
and, as I say, create the controversy that could make these cases be revisited.
I think it's a kind of compelling thing.
And the interests of adults are harmed by this, just like children.
If children's brains and passions are shaped by pornographic addictions
and unlimited access to pornography, so are adults.
And the fact that they can consent, so-called, to these things
has always been taken as only one little piece of evidence
because the goal is not to lead people
in a temptation with the laws,
but to actually shape their choices
toward good institutions like marriage and family life.
Can you give, for an example,
can you give an example of another issue
where they've appealed to, in light of new evidence,
and then there's been some sort of overturning
of a Supreme Court precedent?
Yeah, I mean, well, the classic example of this is Brown v. Board of Education. So that happened in 1954. The previous Supreme Court standard there was Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, where they said separate but equal is the Supreme Court is permissible.
so that I think Plessy versus Ferguson
was riding on railroad cars.
So blacks and whites had separate cars.
But that was fine.
They were separated.
There was segregation.
There was Jim Crow.
But it was equal.
They each had a car.
And so in light of the evidence,
what happened was that the NAACP
and people organized to show
that separate was actually inherently unequal.
And they would show that
the actual services that businesses were providing blacks were inferior to those that the whites were
getting. And therefore, the evidence showed that the doctrine was shaken up by the facts
underlying it, and they overruled Plessy versus Ferguson. So that's a classic example of it.
Yeah, I would say that's the classic example of it. There are probably others,
but that's the classic example.
Scott, I think I know what you mean when you talk about how pornography should be far more
shameful than it is. I agree that there's a lot of things that should be much more publicly
shamed and dishonorable. But as a pastor, I have known many people in my churches who
are mired in pornography, and there's a great deal of shame for at least them attached.
what would you say to say a young man in your church maybe one of your kids friends comes to you
and they are struggling with this and they're saying I get it I agree with you that this should
be illegal that would help it can't just be self-control but what do you tell them and what
have you learned from your research and your studies as far as far as what actually does help
people short of political transformation at a federal level yeah well my own view on this and
I teach undergraduates and I talk to some of the guys who will talk to me about this.
I have adult sons.
My oldest is 29.
And all of them have basically grown up in the internet pornography era.
And so I've had discussions with them about the problem.
And so I don't know.
I'm drawing on a little experience, but probably not as much as you, Tim.
What I do is I try to appeal to their self-respect.
like uh like this is beneath your dignity you're a serious person this is not something a serious
person does and uh i want you to be a serious person and that just is going to require that you
like find some friends i'm not going to oversee this you find some friends hold one another
accountable but do it because you're all serious people don't you go to the top end guys and you
say, look, what about you guys? They talk about it and they hold one another like in accountability,
but not just for that, but also for like the positive part, which is what are you doing to
make yourself better today? And, uh, and I think like, um, the, the friendships, uh, that young
men form in part in opposition to this are like good things and, and, but can't be just about
stopping the bad. And my impression is that a lot of church, uh, accountability groups,
like stop at like accountability for the bad and don't do enough. And what are you doing to make
yourself ambitious and marriageable, uh, when you're 21. And so yeah, my, that's my own view
on that is that, is that it, it can't be, it needs to be replaced by something. And, and it's not,
I mean, it is sinful and I think it's bad. Don't get me wrong. And I think it like can lead to
mortal situations with their souls. Um, but I always appeal to their self-respect,
not condemning them for um for the sin of pornography i'll say
it's interesting right because i mean honestly what you what you're doing like you could think
about an accountability group as as a small society and so you're creating this environment
in this in miniature where uh where you know pornography is shameful where it is seen as a
negative thing. And so you're in those things prove successful, like at least in, I mean,
I know of many of examples where that's been the case. And so it's kind of, I mean, it's kind of
appropriate, right? You're just saying, Hey, we're, we want to apply this, you know, that we've
experienced helpfulness and more healthy situations. We want to apply this at a larger level. And we
expect the same sort of health to originate from it. It really makes sense when you, when you think
about it in that, you know, from that standpoint, but so what are, what are the, who are the biggest
players obviously i know porn is an enormous business but who are the who are the uh who and
what are the groups on the other side who are uh who are not happy uh that scott yenner's uh trying
to take down porn oh i mean i don't know that anyone knows that i am uh not yet after they
watch this you know yeah it was viral um yeah i i uh you know i mean i think the biggest players
are the companies, and I think the biggest company is Pornhub. And, you know, the other side of that
Paxson case was Free Speech Coalition. I assume that that is a coalition of pornographers,
but I'm not positive. And it's not really kind of where I stir what I do for a living to find out
that part of this. But, uh, porn, porn hub is one of the biggest things, you know, the, the advocates
for the ethic of pornography, I think are kind of on the run right now. And it would be a good time
to keep them on the run because, uh, men see what it's doing to them and women see what it's doing
to the men. And, uh, even if a majority of people do not say they want to regulate or ban porn right
now, I don't believe that that reflects the genuine desires of people. And, um, and so,
so I think there's a natural, like we should be the party of decency on this matter.
There was some essay in, uh, I don't know if it was the Atlantic magazine, but it was some essay,
uh, in a magazine like the Atlantic where it was like the case for pornography. And I don't
No, man, it felt like 20 years ago dot com to me.
And so I just don't think anyone believes it.
Anymore.
I don't think people say, oh, you know, all we need is more sexual liberation.
We'll be happier like that is an exhausted dead end road in today's politics.
And maybe it made sense in 1957.
I don't think it did, but maybe it did some.
But to think that now you'd have to be crazy.
Scott are you uh despairing about the whole AI chatbot thing and where this is likely going in
terms of just wild virtual reality pornography and everything and it is that do you remain
confident that we can clamp down on these kinds of things in spite of these things yeah I mean I
do think that that's you're right that that's part of um uh the replacement of actual women
will say, is the AI as part of it. I once wrote an article about sex robots. And I actually have
a portion in my Recovery of Family Life book on sex robots. It's somewhat of a funny story.
I'm the chairman of a classical Christian school. And my wife often orders things to the school
on our Amazon card.
And I was wanted to like,
oh, who writes about sex robots?
So I ordered this book,
like The Case for Sex Robots.
And it arrives at the Christian school
because I didn't change the address to my house.
And like, so the secretary has opened up
The Case for Sex Robots.
Amy, my wife.
And then I had some really weird experiences
reading that book on an airplane
where I like felt like the 1973 guy
who gets the Playboy book.
and I had like covering the, uh, my hands and things like that. But, you know, like people
write books on this because they, they think like sex isn't personal. Like it's just about
gratification or something like that. So any old machine will do. And it's just such a thin
understanding of a person that I don't think these people. So anyway, uh, so I use that just an
example. I think it's something we have to think about. And when we challenge the AI approach to
sex, I don't know exactly what it is, or sex robots that I know more about. We have to be able
to kind of articulate what sex is about. And, and which means that it's not simply about gratification
or two people rubbing together. We're not animals. It's about two people coming together in a
community, like, and they make babies. And so these things like are connected and pornography,
AI chatbots
sex robots
are about separating sex
from other people
and
like that ends up
not being satisfying even as sex
but certainly not as what is
involved in the sexual I would say
desire which is more than just
that
yeah it's inherently antisocial
like by definition you're taking
away others and so
it's yeah what is i i want to get some clarification here what is it with it about or what is it with
you uh you idaho guys in sex uh sex robot books because obviously we've got uh we got doug wilson's
novel ride sally riders which is a fictionalized story about uh about a future date when we will
have these things and what to do about them and he was dragged across the coals by a bunch of
christian publications a number of years ago talked about as if he was insane and then obviously now
we're i mean they're literally they exist already and so but yeah you idaho guys i don't know uh
well but whether you guys have just had more time to think and there's something
i yeah i don't know what it is um a lot of a lot of crazy things happen in idaho you know like
we don't have a lot of murders but they're all big you know and uh and so maybe this is part of
that. Maybe we're like those serial killers.
Any other questions from Ben, Tim?
Any other things that come to mind for you guys?
Well, I was just going to say we, we're doing a marriage and
parenting seminar series in our church right now And one of the issues kind of thinking through the positive side of sexuality and promoting the proper place and expression of sex within side of marriage
we had a Q&A last night because last night our seminar was trust and intimacy. And we brought
and a pastor and his wife, and he's also trained as a counselor.
But anyway, they talk about trusted intimacy.
During the Q&A, one of my younger congregants,
he's probably in his 30s, he was basically like,
why haven't we as the church, Big C, talked about this as much?
and it was kind of a revealing moment.
And, you know, I have theories about that,
like kind of a Gnostic view, right?
Material-spiritual separation.
And so we spent a lot of time talking through
promoting the marriage bed.
And really the whole thing, it seems to me,
is just a sort of a symptom of a greater, what someone calls, I can't remember his name,
expressive individualism, right? It's a greater, it's one other tenet. In other words,
the idea, like in 1 Corinthians, that my body belongs to my wife and her body belongs to me
is foreign in our current cultural moment. And me trying to bring them in on the joy
of that way versus the instant dopamine hit gratification.
I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall to go,
hey, there really is a beautiful joy on the other side of giving yourself
in the ways that God has called us.
And by necessity, young men and women preparing yourself
and withholding that until it is expressed appropriately,
kind of conveying to them like this is a beautiful, joyful thing
versus that instant dopamine hit.
And it is a challenge.
I did college ministry for 13 years.
And one time a few years ago, I wrote down in my journal
the different variations of sexual immorality
that I have encountered with students.
And it filled the page of just one to two, three-word sentence,
phrases of the different expressions of sexual immorality.
And so, I mean, that's kind of, that's just me kind of throwing in there.
Here's what we're doing on the ground game in the church is continuing to build in because I totally agree with you.
I do think marriage is a flourishing marriage is good for humanity.
And of course, particularly, we would say our Christian understanding of marriage is not only the beautiful path for Christians, but also the flourishing of all society.
So not really a question, just kind of throwing out there kind of my day to day as a pastor as I encounter these things.
Yeah. And I guess the way I would kind of respond, I mean, I don't really adhere to the whole expressive individualism thing. I think that's Carl Truman's book that you're talking about. And, you know, it's something. I mean, I do think it's a phenomenon.
done. Um, but like the thing that the thing you have to recover is that sex has a place in marriage,
but it's subordinate. It's subordinate to other goods. And I mean, this is something that in the,
in the water that our grandparents, if our grandparents lived before the sexual revolution,
like that was in the water for them. And the kind of all of us have probably lived in a world
entirely sexified by making sex into one of the great, great, great goods of human life. And in
fact, like happiness is kind of patterned on the orgasm or something like that. And like that's just
a very like out there understanding what happiness is. Aristotle says happiness is living according
to human excellence. And human excellence isn't like being good at sex. It's finding a subordinate
place for sex within a life, right? Your ambition shouldn't be only directed toward the opposite sex
as a man, but rather toward doing great things for a church or for your local community or for
the country or great artistic achievements or something like that. And so it should have a
place in your life. There's no doubt about it, but it's subordinate to other things, including
your marriage. You know, I totally agree with that. I mean, you know, you think about marriages
in God's kingdom as an economic function first and foremost, right? The institution of marriage.
And so, yeah, I was just particularly speaking to, hey, where is, it's not the end all be all.
In other words, another thing, like our identity is, our base identity is not our expression of
sexuality. And so I totally agree with you as underneath, but I'm trying to hold out for them.
The connection between two people in marriage is way healthier than that self-gratification. But
yeah, I understand what you're saying. Yeah. So Scott, what states are kind of leading the way
on this front? I would imagine that you'd have, here's what I would imagine. I would imagine you
have California and New York would probably be on the, you know, they'd be kind of going hard on
the other side of things. Could be wrong because I know there's lots of conservatives in California.
But what are some of the other states that are kind of leading the way in terms of
trying to outlaw porn, at least within the borders, other than Texas, which we've already talked about?
Yeah. I mean, Texas is just the age verification law, which, you know, I'm not saying I'm opposed
age verification, but I'm saying like that's yesterday's battle. It's kind of been a lot in
right states. And I think 20 plus states have already passed the age verification stuff. I
haven't kept track recently. Maybe it was 24. And as far as who's going to do it, stay tuned. I'll
let you know. But definitely talks are happening. Again, there's work to be done. And I'm really,
I mean, I just remember I was listening after Charlie Kirk's death the other day.
I found his interview with Pastor Doug Wilson on Man Rampant,
and they were talking about somebody asked the question in the question and answer time at the very end.
They asked, what can be done to redeem the universities?
And, you know, I was just expecting, Charlie's a pretty optimistic guy.
I just was expecting a more optimistic answer.
And Charlie just basically said, I don't think they can be redeemed.
I think they're a lost cause and we need to start new ones or whatever.
And then,
you know,
a week,
two weeks later or whatever,
a few weeks later,
I guess from when it was recorded,
uh,
you know,
he dies.
And then you start to see in the aftermath,
you start to see,
I think they,
they currently have a few thousand,
uh,
turning point chapters at universities around the,
around the country.
And they had something like 31,000,
uh,
it,
you know,
inquiries to start other ones.
Uh,
so there's a part of me that just thinks really for this thing to happen,
and you've kind of laid out the case for it, there's defense for it.
We still need, for those who really want to emphasize the spiritual point
and who want to emphasize the miraculous,
I do think we still need some sort of move of God in the minds and hearts of people
to prioritize enough to go do something about it.
And I think also starting at the local level is something that a lot of people
completely underestimate the good that can be done
by just stepping up in your local town, your local city,
and just making your voice known.
Yeah, and the hope is that when you propose laws like this
and you're well-prepared for proposing them,
that you can actually move the window on what people think about it.
So I think that having public debates about this topic
will expose the rot inside of the pro-pornography side.
And they have to either be callous or evil
in order to keep promoting this
in light of the crises that it has caused.
As I say, it's not this one-to-one relationship
between an act of pornography and this social dysfunction,
this guy's social dysfunction.
It's like 20% on all of these factors
is making a profound change in society.
And that's what can be changed in a free people.
And I think efforts will be made in this direction,
you know, soon.
Scott, you just made the exact case for a while.
We're Bitcoiners from a few.
You just, the way you laid that out is like,
well, we would say that about the fiat system
in the monetary world.
It's the same line of argument.
Yeah, we would, again, looking at the incentives and a lot of the incentives behind these things,
I have a buddy who's been, you know, just talking about the fact that, so Charlie Kirk,
and there's been a few different things.
He was joking about the fact that these are our first big, like, attacks since U.S. aid ended.
And he's like, they used to, you know, the guns that they used to have were, like, AR-15s.
They were heavily armed, and now they have, like, these rinky-dick rifles.
You know, it seems like like when there's when the money starts flowing in certain directions, like a money, the money drives a lot of the incentives.
And so, I mean, where do you see? I mean, do you see do you see efforts to that end of just trying to cut off funding for some of these things that were attacking the funding?
I know in the case of Pornhub, Layla McElwain is somebody who's done a ton of work.
I can't remember the name of her organization, but she's done a ton of work to go after,
like to go to Visa and to go to MasterCard and go to PayPal and basically throw it up
in their face and say, hey, are you guys support this?
Because there's all kinds of videos of rape and abuse and all kinds of stuff that were
all over Pornhub and some of these other sites.
And so she just basically showed this to them and they started pulling their their the ability for their cards to be used on some of a lot of these sites.
And so talk maybe a little bit about that, because that is more germane to our specific podcast is we kind of talk about the economics of different things.
Yeah, I mean, I think that stuff's great.
That happened, I think, as a result of like a Ross Douthat article in The New York Times.
Nicholas Kristoff.
I think it was Kristoff. That's it.
And and which is, you know, totally interesting because he didn't say anything that the right hasn't been saying for a decade.
So that shows that there's some change, you know, in the left and recognizing these problems.
And only if a lefty says that their problem will these companies, you know, spring into action, then maybe only if a lefty acts against it.
So that's another reason to have the debate, because there actually might be allies and actually honor on the other side to be won by being one of the people who stands up to this.
And that could have some sort of cascading effect on the level of activism taking place against them.
The same thing happens with sex trafficking arguments against them.
Now, I don't like to make that argument because, like, I think perfectly consensual pornography is a problem. So we need to go after a whole not like some of the ways it's made. And but like, I think all like let's empty the toolbox and use all the the tools that we can get.
um so yeah i mean i i don't it makes sense right because there's a liberal establishment in the
country that if there if there can be honor one on the left uh going after pornography um but it's
obvious that they don't care about sex trafficking like they don't yet and uh so can we relate it to
the boy crisis well i think we can and if we can then maybe some of them will be able to pick it up
but you know like they're few and far between unfortunately we another thing we talk about
quite a bit is is the role the way that god has used uh moral arguments to to bring an end to
injustice like there's a lot of people who you know again to your point could want to use technology
to try to do some of these things and again that's it's not a bad thing but it there's limitations to
it and so you look at luther with the you know the protestant reformation he's making moral
arguments. You look at Wilberforce. Wilberforce brings an end to the slave trade by virtue of
making a moral argument and showing that these people are acting inconsistently with what their
faith is. And so, again, I'm hopeful that as the evidence continues to mount and as we have this
conversation more publicly, that again, hopefully we will see an end to this evil sooner rather than
later. Well, uh, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. You know, I, I, I began by telling
Jordan that I owned Bitcoin, that I bought it at 20,000, uh, and I sold it at 112,000, I think.
Okay. And which is pretty good, you know, but I only had, it is pretty good. I won't lie.
I only had two or something and I've taken that money and spent some of it on gold and, uh,
other parts in stock. So we'll see. Um, uh, and I invested it in private equity. So I like,
Like diversified out of Bitcoin.
But I do hope for your sake and for all of your friends' sake that it keeps going up and we can all be friends with different forms of wealth.
Love it.
Yeah, and again, we'd love to have you back at some point.
We can talk about, again, one of the reasons we're into Bitcoin is just because of things like, for example, we've interviewed the spokesperson for the Canadian trucker protest.
And he spoke about, you know, for censorship reasons, you know, they were cut off.
They had people raise millions of dollars for them.
and they weren't able to access any of it because they were declared enemies of the state.
And so the only money that they were able to actually get for a period of time was the Bitcoin that people gave to them.
And so the idea of both for censorship, resistance reasons, moving money around the world,
and then also just with currency devaluation, trying to help Christian organizations and schools and mission organizations
be able to continue to work, having an endowment with at least a percentage of that in Bitcoin
is something that we're talking about with a number of institutions.
So we'd love to have you back at some point
and talk about that.
But Scott, thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
Again, go find Scott's books on Amazon,
wherever else they're found.
Go read them and spread the word.
And we are grateful to have you
on the Thank God for Bitcoin podcast.
Go like, subscribe, all the places.
We'll see you on the next episode.