Several months ago phone provider Telus decided to sell images of naked people in arousing poses to age-verified mobile phone customers. The images were entirely legal and purely softcore. No sex acts were depicted.
Independent of that specific Telus service, millions of mobile phones users already have access to vast amounts of sexual imagery, including hard-core images..
After the tame Telus program launched, the Catholic Church protested the move. Vancouver’s Catholic archdiocese ordered its more than 130 parishes and schools to cancel their phone contracts with Telus mobility. Its media release slamming Telus executives for their “lack of ethical leadership” garnered media attention across North America.
A few days later Telus executives capitulated. They pulled the service.
The purported reason for the Catholic protest is that simple images of people in sexually alluring poses are socially harmful. Archbishop Raymond Roussinclaims that such images cause: “the abuse of countless vulnerable persons - including children, women, and men - who view pornographic material, those who are portrayed in sexually explicit material, and those who suffer from the behavior of their loved ones.”
Of course nowhere does the Archbishop cite any evidence that the type of material Telus offered caused such harms. Indeed scientists have empirically studied that claim and concluded that it is false; to the contrary, softcore imagery has no negative impact on society.
Of course there is evidence that child pornography and violent pornography do cause harm. But that is not the type of material Telus offered.
The Catholic cleric denigrates an entire class of media because of the harms of only a small segment of that class. This is highly inappropriate stereotyping.
The Catholic church rightly protests such crude stereotyping when the church itself is the target. For example, Catholic priests as a class are sometimes referred to as sexual predators. You hear this occasionally in informal conversation, in comedy routines and in the media.
A small but significant number of Catholic priests are sexually dangerous. Indeed in the midst of the Telus affair, a west end Vancouver priest was charged with sexual crimes. What did Archbishop Roussin say when he heard the news? “I also pray for all priests, who may now have their integrity unfairly questioned.”
Unfairly questioned. That exactly describes the bishop’s campaign against all images of nudity.
His fear-mongering is irresponsible. It helps stigmatize both images of the human body and the sexual appetite that the images are designed to arouse. It helps fuel the toxic system by which millions of people suffer shame and fear about a normal part of themselves.
So why would the Church hierarchy indulge in such harmful conduct?
There is a simple explanation: bashing sexual images and sex itself promotes the idiosyncratic needs of the men who run the Church. In the guise of protecting society, the Archbishop advances selfish interests.
Recall that the Catholic hierarchy consists of men who have renounced sex. Only a tiny, tiny proportion of our community favours lifelong sexual abstinence. Such a choice creates highly abnormal personal interests.
Nature gave normal men a powerful sex drive, as billions can testify. Male chastity is overwhelmingly unpopular because it involves a difficult and unrelenting struggle to repress natural erotic urges.
Sexually provocative material such as the images Telus offered its customers, provoke those urges. The more freely available those images, the more difficult is a celibate’s struggle. In the same way that a person fasting from food does not want to be tempted by the sensual stimuli of a feast, a chaste priest naturally wants to avoid sex-stimulating media.
In struggling to control themselves, priests struggle to control the world.
Yet this highly peculiar personal interest of the Catholic clergy is never acknowledged by the hierarchy and very rarely mentioned by commentators discussing the Catholic position on sexual media. In the extensive coverage of the Telus case, not a word was mentioned about the sex starvation of the protestors.
Another self-serving motive behind the Church attack on Telus is more political than personal. Sociologists have identified that pressure groups often promote “moral panics” by unjustly attacking racial minorities or homosexuals or even inanimate things such as sexual images – to attract attention, inspire the group’s membership, and advance its own power.
The Catholic attack on the Telus images does exactly that. It has attracted enormous attention to the Archibishop and his fear-mongering. It has humbled a powerful company. Such success surely inspires more sex-negative action.
The lack of ethical leadership on this issue from Catholic celibates harms our community. The Catholic Church does much good in society but is a toxic force on the issue of sex.
