Kanye West’s Brave Wake-Up Call to America: Porn Is ‘Not OK’

Perhaps this was the wake-up call we needed.

Perhaps this was the jolting news required to stir us out of our apathy.

Perhaps this jarring quote from an icon such as Kanye West was needed to force us to stop denying the utterly destructive effects of pornography in our culture.

In a recent interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1 Radio, which aired on October 24, Kanye West said, “My dad had a Playboy left out at age five and it’s affected almost every choice I made for the rest of my life — from age five ’til now, having to kick the habit.”

“And it just presents itself in the open like it’s OK and I stand up and say, ‘No, it’s not OK.’”

Did you catch that?

After being exposed to porn at a young age, this hugely successful individual admitted that “it’s affected almost every choice I made for the rest of my life.”

Related: Over 1,000 People Accepted Christ into Their Lives at Kanye West’s Recent Sunday Service

What can be more serious than that?

Every generation has faced sexual temptation and engaged in sexual sin. There is nothing new about it.

What is new is the technology today that makes sexual temptation ubiquitous — and by ubiquitous I mean anywhere, anytime, with almost anyone, doing virtually anything.

It’s all there, fully accessible — including to our children — and it’s only one click or tap away.

No generation in history has ever had to deal with sexual temptation at this level. It is nothing less than the sexual seduction of America.

The Fight the New Drug website notes these startling statistics:

• Porn sites receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined each month.
• Thirty-five percent of all internet downloads are porn-related.
• Thirty-four percent of internet users have been exposed to unwanted porn via ads, pop-ups, etc.
• People who admit to having extramarital affairs were over 300 percent more likely to admit consuming porn than those who have never had an affair.
• At least 30 percent of all data transferred across the internet is porn-related.

Back in 1953, when Hugh Hefner published the first edition of Playboy showing a naked picture of Marilyn Monroe, there was outrage from conservative America. How scandalous!

Today, there are countless images available for instant viewing — and many are far are more scandalous than that Playboy image.

Today, many a child’s cell phone even carries pictures that would have likely made Monroe herself blush.

A 2015 article on the Exodus Cry website noted, “In 1991 there were fewer than 90 different pornographic magazines published in America. By 1997 there were about 900 pornographic sites on the internet. In 2011, the internet filtering software Cyber Sitter blocked 2.5 million pornographic websites. By [2015], that number has increased exponentially.”

Just think of an exponential increase from 2.5 million. The numbers are beyond staggering — and that’s just thinking about numbers.

What about content? Today, there are chat rooms with performers engaging in sexual acts at the viewer’s personal request; countless websites cater to every sexual fetish and perversion out there. Even middle schoolers are exchanging naked pictures as they engage in sexting.

All people need is a computer, or tablet, or cell phone — and within seconds, they have access to more sexual material than did all previous generations combined.

All of this must be placed in the larger context of the hyper-sexualization of our culture, which is reflected in TV shows that glorify prostitution, pimping, stripping and more. Where will this end?

When Hugh Hefner died in 2017, I wrote an article for The Christian Post titled, “The Death of Hugh Hefner and the End of the Sexual Revolution.”

(I was not making a prophetic declaration that his death marked the end of this disastrous era. I was expressing a fervent hope.)

In my article, I noted, among other things:

• Eight-year-olds are getting exposed to hardcore pornography.
• Twelve-year-olds are sexting each other, sometimes committing suicide when their naked pictures then circulate.
• Condoms have been made available to first graders. (What, pray tell, does a six-year-old child do with a condom?)
• Healthy young men cannot perform without Viagra because of their porn addictions.
• Married couples in their 20s no longer have sex because it has become meaningless to them.

As for the men who feed on porn — although, to be sure, an increasing number of women do as well — it actually reduces their manhood. They become one-dimensional, viewing women through the narrow lens of sexual attraction. As a result, they have difficulty enjoying meaningful relationships.

To quote from Gary Wilson in his book “Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and the New Science of Addiction,” “There are now 23 studies linking porn use and porn addiction to sexual problems and lower arousal to sexual stimuli … In addition, more than 50 studies now link porn use to less sexual and relationship satisfaction. Similarly, some 40 studies link porn use to poorer cognitive function and mental health problems.”

Brain scans also confirm that porn is as addictive as any drug.

The evidence is undeniable.

Related: Kanye West: ‘Now That I’m in Service in Christ, My Job Is to Spread the Gospel’

Now Kanye West has added his personal story — explaining how exposure to porn at a tender age had a detrimental effect on him for most of his life, until recently.

It’s wake-up time, America.

The alarm is blaring.

We dare not hit the snooze button again.

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