An exercise in futility

Flapping around the InterWeb yesterday evening I stumbled upon the XXX Church, a website both hilarious and deeply sad in equal measure. It isn't what you would expect from the URL, no nuns with donkies or pics of Father O'Murphy's latest choirboy but it's a site devoted to helping cure you of your "pornography addiction".

It's very clever on a lot of levels, first unlike most Xtian sites that seem to have been designed by a kid off the special-ed bus using HotDog v1.0 on a 486 this one is well built, quick and engaging so you think you might well have stumbled on an adult site, secondly getting that URL was fucking inspired. Thirdly they have gone for the "it's an addiction, it's not your fault" line, see it's not your fault, it's the nasty booze, heroin, porn that has made you an addict so don't feel bad, we can help you. It's a pernicious lie if ever there was one; of course it is impossible to be physically addicted to anything that isn't a chemical you put in your body. Sure you can become obsessed with anything, stamp collecting, restoring vintage cars or, indeed, looking at online smut but you don't see sites devoted to helping "stamp collecting addicts" do you. Of course once you have something labelled as "addictive" (which immediately equates to "dangerous") it's a lot easy to get your campaign to restrict or ban said something - and make no mistake this is something the followers of your Middle-Eastern Sky God would love to to, even the moderate ones.

What heartens me though is the utter futility of their task. Firstly take a look at the hatemail section. You would expect the hatemail to be from, well, folks like your favourite grumpy dragon telling them what a bunch of wankstains they were and that they could have my horseporn when they pry it from my cold, dead claws but nope, virtually all the hatemail is from other Xtians telling them what evil scum they are and, showing true Christian charity, that they will all assuredly burn in hell where devils will repeatedly poke their nether regions with tiny pitchforks¹

But for the real giggles you need to go to the "Prayer Wall" where the sad sacks who have been drawn in by this nonsense make their confessions and ask for prayers. These are just hilarious, Mrs Dracunculus had to help me back into my chair I was laughing so loud. From the guy who posted his e-mail asking them to repent of their sins and stop running a porn site he'd sent to the customer support address of "Virtualgirls.com" and was still awaiting a response from the management, to the guy who had finally beaten his "porn addiction" and his wife still left him, to the high school student who is doing his "365 days of purity" and keeps falling off the wagon every three or four days never has a group of people deserving of more derisive laughter been gathered in one place.

Equally however I do feel saddened and not a little angry at the whole thing; look porn has been around ever since Ug the Neanderthal picked up a burnt stick and scratched it against the wall of the cave and it will be with us long after we are all wearing one piece silver jump suits on our day trips to Betelgeuse, it is not going to go away, no matter how much you would like it to and how much you pray. Sex is an integral part of the make up of any animal, us included. We think about it most of the time, it's a basic biological drive and uniquely among the animals we can answer part of that biological drive by looking at pictures of other individuals in a sexual context². There's nothing wrong with looking at mucky pictures or indeed having one off the wrist, it's as natural as breathing and going to the lavatory and the only thing making it unhealthy is getting all tied up in guilt over it because you're a subscriber to some mediaeval unreality cult whose way of controlling you is to make you feel bad about anything that might be pleasurable. I want to go on there and just tell the poor fuckers writing in that "You know, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing, keep it up, just don't do it 24/7."

In fact I have applied for an account as I think there is some prime mischief making possibilities here and the opportunity to maybe to make a point at the same time.

If I get the account I'll start messing with their heads next week... see if you can spot which one is me.



¹ Alas! Spare my posterior!

² Does not seem to work with animals that. As a control I printed off some piccies of hunky stallions and showed them to my mare Sunshine. She sniffed them, nibbled them to see if they were edible and then wandered off and started eating the hawthorn hedge.