Porn in the Classroom

This is Nancy Pearcey, in the Public Square.

College students now have a new way to make the grade-watch pornographic movies.

The Boston Globe reports that many colleges now offer courses where students analyze hard-core pornography. They even shoot their own explicit films to show in class. It's a new trend called "porn studies."

How did pornography get into the classroom?

The answer is that sexual license has become a respectable ideology. As one professor says, "Sex is . . . the motive force of our beings"-our "ultimate" identity.

The idea here is that we are products of nature, and that we find our identity in the natural, the instinctual-primarily the sexual instincts. In this view, moral limits are actually harmful; casting them aside is healing.

This is the worldview that justifies porn studies-and Christians need to critique the ideas, not merely judge the immorality. Humans are NOT products of nature alone. . . and they should not just do what comes naturally.

I'm Nancy Pearcey