Porn Covers Up

Playboy magazine was once an avant garde phenomenon, perhaps the first of what had been the domain of the dark and seedy neighborhoods to bring pornography mainstream.  When I was a kid, Playboy was what passed for accessible pornography to those living far from the city.  Sure, it was always soft core in comparison to the stuff that was wrapped in cellophane and cost a small fortune to buy (as if it were something precious and good).  Sure, it was joined by many clones along the way.  But Playboy had a certain cache to an industry notably lacking in that department.

So it is not without notice that Playboy has decided to cover up the female form.  It is no longer radical or avant garde or even financially viable to compete with the much more accessible, anonymous, and cost free pornography of the internet.  Instead Playboy has decided that some clothing is sexier than none at all.

That might be good news but according to Playboy the overthrow of an entire system of sexual morality that had once defined pornography as sin has already been accomplished.  It is now the role of civilized society to define what must be done to protect the hard fought right to pursue sexual boundaries freely and without burdens imposed by others and to define those consensual relationships and even marriage itself.

Now I don't even read the articles in Playboy much less look at the pictures.  I have no skin in this game (pardon the pun).  But I have to wonder about our society when one of the institutions of the industry that brought nudity and pornography into the mainstream of American magazines has now decided that the future lies with less obvious and more subtle sexuality.  Have we become so immune to the rampant forms of nudity and the myriad options for hard core pornography that the Playboy pin up is no longer of interest?  Surely this says something, not good, about the shape of things today.

I don't have a clue what is in Playboy's future and I don't care.  But I am gravely concerned when nudity is not enough or when our culture has become saturated with naked images.  This is not a good thing.  We live at a time when any child will see more sex acts in movie, on TV, or on the internet than any adult might have a generation or two ago.  We have become comfortable with erotic images and our culture has decided they are normal.  What cost will we pay down the road for the casual way we have come to terms with pornography?

There is probably not much chance others will follow Playboy's lead and cover up.  That would be too much to hope for.  But it is also hard to imagine that our culture, the marketplace, and ordinary life could be saturated with sex -- sex without values, without commitment, without love, without marriage, and without boundaries.  It is no wonder that some view the West with disdain and abhor the high value placed upon democracy and freedom when they see it squandered in this way.

Cardinal Dolan was right when he wrote recently that the new marginalized minority are husbands and wives who remain faithful to each other, who live within the boundaries of marital love even with all of life's struggles, and those who resist the temptation and impulse of sex before or outside of marriage and who fight the fallen desires of the heart in pursuit of purity and chaste relationships.

Playboy is covering up what they pioneered to uncover for the mainstream market and it signals a real problem for the direction of our society, for the values we cherish, and for the way we have squandered liberty and freedom.  The Church needs to be even more counter culture than ever before or we will risk being merely a tag along on a cultural ride to destruction of that which is most basic and essential to building family, neighborhood, community, and nation.