“This book rests on one fundamental presupposition: if you want something to flourish, you need to use it in accordance with its nature.  Don’t plant tomatoes in a dark closet and water them with soda and expect to have vibrant tomato plants.  To do so would be to act contrary to the nature of tomatoes.  Similarly, don’t rip sex out of its obvious relational context, turn it into a commodity, and then expect individuals, families, and society to flourish.”

This past weekend I spoke at a conference in El Paso alongside my friend Matt Fradd.  I was delighted when he gave me a copy of his new book, The Porn Myth.  The next day, between time in the United lounge, time at an altitude of 39,000 feet in the sky, and time back home, I finished reading his book—in under 6 hours.  And I can’t say it enough: Please buy this book.  Do not delay.  You can order it here.  Then, please share it.  If there is only one book you will read that makes the secular case against pornography, make it this one.  Why?  I think the best way to answer that is to share with you my list of the “Top 12 Best Quotes from Matt’s Book”:

1. “This book rests on one fundamental presupposition: if you want something to flourish, you need to use it in accordance with its nature.  Don’t plant tomatoes in a dark closet and water them with soda and expect to have vibrant tomato plants.  To do so would be to act contrary to the nature of tomatoes.  Similarly, don’t rip sex out of its obvious relational context, turn it into a commodity, and then expect individuals, families, and society to flourish.”

2. “Which activity sounds more ‘mature’ and grown-up: making love for a lifetime to one real flesh-and-blood woman whom you are eagerly serving and cherishing, despite all her faults and blemishes (and despite your own), or sneaking away at night to troll the Internet, flipping from image to image, from one thirty-second teaser to another, for hours on end, pleasuring yourself as you bond to pixels on a screen?”

3. “In a letter to a friend, Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis offered some insights about masturbation.  He said that a man’s sexual appetite is meant to lead him out of himself, to lead him into being a self-gift that both completes and corrects his personality—first by sharing whole-life oneness with a lover and second by procreating children.  With masturbation, however, the appetite is turned in on itself and ‘sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides’.”

4. “Whatever we might say about the exact relationship of porn to sexual violence, it should be clear that in order for men to violate a woman’s body, some part of them must first believe she is an object to be used rather than a person to be respected—and porn is quite possibly the most powerful means of delivering that belief.”

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