I really want to like this article by someone named Belover entitled "Who Says the Bible is Against Porn?," but there's a huge detail missing in the middle of it.
Belover is not wrong that the Bible, unlike most of contemporary Christianity, holds up the naked human body as a beautiful work of God without requiring a context. Contemporary Christians will argue things like "that's only in the context of marriage," but the Bible doesn't say that. Judaic teachings hold that sexual desire is itself divine. There is no teaching that certain sex acts in and of themselves are abominable before God. (Go ahead, quote Deuteronomy at me, I dare you; I'll see your Deuteronomy and raise you Luke 7 and Acts 10.) Belover also points out just how often in the Bible prostitution is shown as just another career choice, one often taken as a reaction to other downfalls, but never in and of itself regarded as a fallen or degraded state.
But Belover makes a huge mistake when he fails to mention porneia. Because that's Paul's massive elephant in the room.
Porneia is really hard to pin down, no matter what the Evangelicals will tell you. ("Paul says it's bad and it starts with the letters P.O.R.N.! What more do you need to know?") I take, from the scholarship I've read, that porneia is actually about power, and about how there was a power structure prevalent in Paul's time that consigned some people to powerless vessels subject to use as relief vessels for the untamed sexuality of cruel men. This power structure abused impoverished girls and boys, and saw them not as full human beings but instead as toys to be used and thrown away. Disposable lives. Paul (and Jesus, and therefore God) object to that, not to any specific sex act or even what body parts are intermingled.
The Bible isn't against pornography, or prostitution per se. The Bible is against institutionalizing violence for the purpose of creating different classes of people and then declaring that one class exists strictly for the use and pleasure of the other, the lower class's wants and needs never being taken into account.
It's true that most of us sell our bodies one way or another; even if we're not sex workers, we schlub off to spend hours in an enclosed box owned by other people, being used by other people, for their profit, of which we get a pittance and it's called a "fair share." Given that it's hard for office workers to not be seen as victims of a weak porneia, how much harder is it for sex workers to escape the status of being disposable?
Until and unless we create an environment where we are all freely choosing to be what we want, the notion that sex work is somehow "different" from, or "distinct" from, the power differential that exists between the exploiter and the exploited, remains ridiculous, and no amount of trying to excuse one's kinks with Biblical quotes will change that.
Belover is not wrong that the Bible, unlike most of contemporary Christianity, holds up the naked human body as a beautiful work of God without requiring a context. Contemporary Christians will argue things like "that's only in the context of marriage," but the Bible doesn't say that. Judaic teachings hold that sexual desire is itself divine. There is no teaching that certain sex acts in and of themselves are abominable before God. (Go ahead, quote Deuteronomy at me, I dare you; I'll see your Deuteronomy and raise you Luke 7 and Acts 10.) Belover also points out just how often in the Bible prostitution is shown as just another career choice, one often taken as a reaction to other downfalls, but never in and of itself regarded as a fallen or degraded state.
But Belover makes a huge mistake when he fails to mention porneia. Because that's Paul's massive elephant in the room.
Porneia is really hard to pin down, no matter what the Evangelicals will tell you. ("Paul says it's bad and it starts with the letters P.O.R.N.! What more do you need to know?") I take, from the scholarship I've read, that porneia is actually about power, and about how there was a power structure prevalent in Paul's time that consigned some people to powerless vessels subject to use as relief vessels for the untamed sexuality of cruel men. This power structure abused impoverished girls and boys, and saw them not as full human beings but instead as toys to be used and thrown away. Disposable lives. Paul (and Jesus, and therefore God) object to that, not to any specific sex act or even what body parts are intermingled.
The Bible isn't against pornography, or prostitution per se. The Bible is against institutionalizing violence for the purpose of creating different classes of people and then declaring that one class exists strictly for the use and pleasure of the other, the lower class's wants and needs never being taken into account.
It's true that most of us sell our bodies one way or another; even if we're not sex workers, we schlub off to spend hours in an enclosed box owned by other people, being used by other people, for their profit, of which we get a pittance and it's called a "fair share." Given that it's hard for office workers to not be seen as victims of a weak porneia, how much harder is it for sex workers to escape the status of being disposable?
Until and unless we create an environment where we are all freely choosing to be what we want, the notion that sex work is somehow "different" from, or "distinct" from, the power differential that exists between the exploiter and the exploited, remains ridiculous, and no amount of trying to excuse one's kinks with Biblical quotes will change that.
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