On December 8, 2011 our staff started with our first program, "A Pastor's Forum: Stopping the Porn Culture" about the pornified and sexualized society and what we as people of faith need to do educate our congregants here in Indianapolis, IN. We learned form the Indiana Attorney General's Office that pornography was a "gateway" for sex traffickers. We learned that Indiana was:
*Advocating for new laws on trafficking in Indiana
*Preparing for the Super Bowl with on going to sex trafficking education across the state
Our Event with Photos
Pastors Learn About the Growing Sex Industry at Indianapolis
A sermon Aug. 21, 2011 on the problem of sex trafficking, was given and I immediately wanted to develop a program centered on the issue and the problem of pornography, too. My interest was due to the fact that I had been teaching abstinence education through the Free Teens program and had learned about the explosion of pornography in the United States
The church is in the business of saving souls. The spiritual deprivation, the coldness of the world that people might feel is somewhat taken care of when people go to church. The promise that somehow the divine would always look after every one of us is a wonderful promise to a lot of people, and that’s why they go to church, they tithe, and they want to hope for something better.
But when we’re talking about brothels or human trafficking becoming extremely profitable at a time when we are suffering severe economic recession, we realize that this is an area of our society that exploits the soul. It destroys the soul of individuals and turns them into empty carcasses, the living dead that we see all around.” Senior Pastor LLM
The Stopping the Porn Culture – A Pastor’s Forum was put together by our team at Lovin’ Life Ministries - Indianapolis
The one day event began with prayer and the 39 minute edited version of that sermon given on 8-21-2011 set the tone. The participates were able to hear our Senior Pastor lay out the significance of this issue and the need to address it. Members of the Lovin Life community, as well as several pastors attended the sessions. In particular, Alida Lark, the daughter of one of the 172 Clergy, Bishop Damon Roach of First Christian Missionary Baptist Church
Pornography
Conferees then watched a CNN interview with Gail Dines, a Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at Wheelock College Boston
The video was short, but powerful. Professor Dines tells viewers that pornography is shaping the attitudes and behaviors of how men in particular view sex and their relationships with woman. “Men I have interviewed say that they want to play out the porn sex that they see on woman’s bodies,” says Dines. When asked if this because they are watching porn, she sites, “They are watching lots of it and with the average age of first viewing porn is 11 or 12 years old which means their first exposure to sex is often pornography. “
“Because of pornography, young boys have nothing else to compare sexual relationships to, so this seems like a normal regular relationship.” She emphasized – because of pornography, the view of woman gets stripped of what is called love and there is no understanding of real intimacy in relationships. “I have interviewed men who tell me that they would prefer to view pornography than have sex with another person.”
The CNN reported sited a 2003 study from Matrimonial Lawyers which found that approximately 56% of divorce cases involve one party in the marriage who has an “excessive interest in pornographic websites.” CNN Report of Gail Dines Click link http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/07/28/am.intv.dines.pornland.cnn
Bruce Smith then presented “How it’s easy out here for a pimp: how a porn culture grooms children for sexual exploitation.” This free slide presentation Stop the Porn Culture Resource Page Click Link ( http://stoppornculture.org/toolkit-for-easy-out-here/ offers the insights of experts who studied the porn industry and its effects not only on kids, but the greater society as well.
Human Trafficking
Ms. Abigal Kuzma from the Indiana Attorney Generals Office and is the Director and Chief Counsel of Consumer Protection and Co-Chair of the IPATH-Indiana Protection of Abused and Trafficked Humans Task Force was the Keynote Speaker. She collaborates with FBI, Homeland Security, Dept. of Labor, as well as Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) and the Marion County Prosecutors Office. Ms. Kuzma and Sgt. Jon A. Daggy, a 23-year veteran of the IMPD shared valuable insights into the problems of human trafficking and sex trafficking. They both presented details of how insidious the problem is by giving the various “layers” of “Human Trafficking” which sex trafficking is a part. This problem is second largest and fastest growing criminal industry, behind the arms trade. Her slide presentation sited a US State Dept. report that human sex trafficking is a $32 Billion a year industry and between 14,500 and 17,500 men, woman and children are trafficked into the United States each year. The slide to the right explains that the United States has a “Very high number of people” coming into the country as a result of human trafficking. We are one of the worst countries in terms of the destination of people victimized by human trafficking.
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