One of the costs of having a man like President Trump as our president is that our news is now filled with lurid accounts of sexual liaisons with porn actresses and Playboy models. This wasn’t good for our culture when philanderer President Bill Clinton was president, and it isn’t good for our culture today. It would be better if we could cover or follow the White House without diving into the gutter.
And there’s another danger here: As figures from the world of porn become prominent players in our political debate, there’s a real threat that pornography will become normalized and accepted. It shouldn’t be, because it’s not normal or acceptable.
“The most radical part of [Anderson Cooper’s] interview with Stormy Daniels,” Washington Post writer Alyssa Rosenberg wrote on Twitter, using the stage name for Stephanie Clifford, “was the way he treated her job like any other profession, rather than a reason to shame or doubt her … ”
Rosenberg touched on an important dynamic in the public debate about Trump’s alleged affair. Many of Trump’s defenders have used Clifford’s past and her state in life as a reason to demean and attack her. On Twitter, you can see this constantly, with detractors saying she should be distrusted and critics vilely insulting her because of her past.
Yes, a person’s past and present behaviors affect how much we trust them — this is one reason President Trump’s denials haven’t wiped the matter away. But we should never let someone’s bad behaviors or low state in life blind us to the dignity of each human person. We should never refuse to listen to someone or tolerate others mistreating them because they are “unclean.”
The gospels teach this lesson on two occasions. In one episode, Jesus welcomes a prostitute to the table where he is dining with a Pharisee. The woman anoints his head with oil, and cries at his feet. The Pharisee chides him for this — a real prophet would know who this woman is. Jesus, though, welcomes the woman and later says, “her sins, which are many, have been forgiven.”
Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus tells the chief priests and the elders, “The tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you.”
We should never hold any person to be less of a person because of the things they have done to earn money.
But then, here’s the thing: Jesus never says prostitution is okay. He never says, “Go and keep on sinning — not a problem! Don’t change your ways.” He loves the sinner while hating the sin.
Stephanie Clifford deserves our love, and if she was mistreated by the president, she deserves support and justice. But her work does not deserve our love, our support, or even our toleration. Pornography is bad. It is bad in itself, and it is bad in its consequences.
The very act of producing pornography is the act of denigrating sex. Sex is an important thing, a powerful thing, and a dangerous thing. Our culture, which has spent decades trying to treat sex as just another pastime. But it has been reminded in the past few months that sex is not a light matter. One of the chief lessons of the #MeToo moment has been that simple appeals to “consent” can’t make things okay. Sex is tied up with power, rife for abuse, and can leave lasting scars.
Porn peddles a cheap, inhuman, and violent understanding of sex, and thus scars our culture. It also scars individuals. There’s evidence that porn alters the brains of the watchers, conditioning them to demand more and more graphic stimulation. This leads boys and men to dark places and makes it impossible for many to have decent relationships. With a strong marriage harder to attain, a rewarding life becomes more remote. Alienation and anger are the fruits.
Part of what makes Trump so offensive to so many is his lascivious past — his serial infidelity, his foul talk with Howard Stern, objectification of women, casual sexual assaults (or at least casual talk about such assaults), dalliances with Playboy magazine, and now, reportedly, dalliances with porn stars. These aren’t merely unseemly behaviors. This is depravity.
Trump’s past depravity should never overshadow him as a person. What he’s done wrong shouldn’t prevent us, for instance, from assessing his tax policy independently. The same is true of his accusers and their charges.
But listening to these fallen humans, and even loving them, doesn’t require us to love their sins. In fact, loving them requires us to hate the sin of pornography.
