Will Removing Adult Movies From Hotels Help Win Battle Over Porn?
A campaign led by two religious scholars asking the hotel industry to remove porn movies from its rooms has the approval of some Christian leaders. However, many admit that choosing this particular battle against pornography may only be scratching the surface.
"We believe that despite the lucrative nature of the pornography business that hotel executives, people of goodwill, shareholders can act on the basis of conscience here and lay profitability aside for the sake of human dignity," said Christian scholar Robert George during a CNN interview.
Muslim scholar Shaykh Hamza Yusuf is also calling upon the hotel industry to quit offering porn.
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Craig Gross, founder of XXXChurch.com, a ministry aimed at helping those addicted to porn, said that the letter to hotels pleading to eliminate the availability of the adult sex movies is an "empty gesture."
"This is about money and dollars and that's why this is sold in hotels," said Gross during the CNN segment. "So removing it from hotels isn't the issue. The issue is that people are consuming pornography."
However, in a blog written for The Institute on Religion and Public Life by Greg Forster titled "Hotel Porn: Let's Pick this Fight" the argument is made that because of technology, porn is more accessible to individuals, and profit for hotels is no longer substantial.
Forster notes that two of the nation's largest hotel chains – Marriott and Omni – have already decided to no longer offer porn.
"This is a fight very much worth winning. The anti-porn cause desperately needs a win. We've been fighting too many losing battles. This is a very smart play. It's the equivalent of going after partial-birth abortion," Forster states. "It's also worth winning this fight in order to establish that the market is moral."
Columnist and Pastor Duke Taber believes pornography is a serious enough problem that it should be attacked on multiple fronts.
"With porn being a contributing factor in over 50 percent of all divorces and with it being a prevalent problem within the church with somewhere close to 45 percent of all people attending church admitting that they have watched porn on a regular basis, any attempt that is made to eliminate the availability of porn is a good thing," he told The Christian Post.
"I do not think that this campaign will make a big dent in the problem but it is at least an achievable goal," Taber added. "I think that any business person or corporation would be making a wise business decision to eliminate porn from their establishment. When you raise your standards to a higher level, it is always better in my opinion, than to lower those standards. Businesses thrive in the long term on excellence and not decadence."
The troubling problem of pornography is its addictive nature for so many people, he explained.
"Our society and it's addiction to pornography will not be changed by one campaign. It will be changed when the hearts of the people have had enough sleaze and decadence rubbed into it that they rebel from what is being promoted and hundreds of grass roots campaigns spring up to make pornography unprofitable," Taber said.
