Dear Friend,

Here’s a disturbing fact.
 
Children and youth in Canada – some as young as seven years of age – have witnessed disturbing acts of sexual abuse and violence in their homes.
 
How? Through online pornography.
 
It’s frightening how easy it is for a young person to stumble upon degrading pornographic images accidentally or unintentionally while doing homework or playing games online. Pornography has never been more accessible – to adults or to children. The internet is feeding increasingly violent pornographic material into our homes – through our computers, cell phones and other mobile devices – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With millions of pornography sites on the internet, sexually explicit videos and images are much more difficult to avoid than they are to encounter.
 
Much of today’s mainstream pornography is sexually violent and cruel to an extent unimagined in the past. It is misogynistic, and centered around the abuse, domination, and humiliation of women.
 
That there are a wide range of harms linked with early and frequent exposure to pornography should deeply concern all of us. A whole generation of children is being impacted!
 
Repeated exposure to pornography has been shown to have significant detrimental impact for the development and health of our young people, affecting their ability to develop and maintain healthy relationships. The American Academy of Pediatrics has stated that exposure to pornography can lead to increased rates of depression, anxiety, and violent behaviour. It can negatively impact a young person’s self-image and lead to distorted views on what healthy intimate relationships look like.
 
Research also shows that early and frequent exposure to pornography leads young people to seek the kind of sex they view online. It shapes what a young person will expect and accept in their relationships. These include unsafe sexual practices and an acceptance of sexual violence and violence towards women.
 
Boys who are exposed to pornography at a young age are more likely to sexually harass and be violent, and to see women as sexual objects who exist only to satisfy men’s desires. Girls exposed to pornography are more likely to accept sexual harassment, to be victims of rape, to believe it is normal for their partner to be violent, and to treat their bodies as objects that exist to please others.
 
Even for children and youth exposed to good Christian influences, biblical teachings on what God intends for healthy relationships (1 Thess. 4:3-8) are competing with the contradictory messages they are continuously being bombarded with from the internet. As the primary sex educator of our kids today, online pornography teaches that sex has nothing to do with intimacy, commitment, love, or mutual respect. Rather, it is about self-gratification, without regard for the other person’s well-being, objections, pain, or humiliation.
 
Currently, there are no laws in Canada mandating commercial pornography websites to use age-verification mechanisms to stop minors from accessing pornography online. With just one tap of the finger on their mobile devices, our young people have unfettered access to internet pornography anywhere and anytime they wish.
 
Many groups, including the EFC – committed to protecting our young people from the serious harms of online pornography – have been urging the federal government to enact laws requiring commercial pornography websites to have strict and comprehensive measures in place to protect our children and youth from exposure to inappropriate adult content online.
 
Bill S-210 is a private Senate member’s bill aimed at making it a criminal offence to make sexually explicit material available for commercial purposes to young persons on the internet. It requires sites hosting pornography to verify their consumers are adults before they access their content. This is similar to what is being done or planned in jurisdictions like France, the U.K., Germany, and Australia.
 
Such accountability is urgently needed, and the EFC applauds this effort. We must now work with our Senators and MPs to ensure that this bill gets passed into law.
 
Scripture teaches us that the eyes are the gateway to the heart (Lk. 11:34) and that the heart determines how lives are lived (Prov. 4:23). We must guard the eyes of our young people. We cannot allow the pornography industry to shape their beliefs about, and understanding of, sexuality. Exposure to pornography puts our children at risk of developing destructive attitudes and behaviours that pollutes all their relationships—with God and with others.
 
The time for action is now! Together, we can work toward important change! You can do something today to protect the next generation – their marriages, their families, and our society as a whole – from the harms of pornography. Will you partner with us financially and in prayer as we work to support the passing of Bill S-210 and the creation of other pieces of legislation to protect our Canadian children and youth from harm? Thank you!


Sincerely,

Bruce Clemenger
President
 

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