Pornography & Art

In 1970s a leading entrepreneur who peddled hardcore pornography was brought to trail in a southern city of the United States. Most intriguingly, in the process of jury selection one of the questions posed of potential jurors by the defense attorney was whether or not they were members of a church. An affirmative answer to that value-laden question generally disqualified any juror in the eyes of the defense be­cause "religious people have a prejudice against pornography." One can imagine how long it took in the South to find a jury so "uninfected" by the church that it could be "objective" on the matter of hard-core pornography.

But this was not the lowest point of it all-and it is here that the brains behind secularization manipulate the mind in matters that threaten decency. During the process of the trial the defense attorney resorted to a clever, indeed, intimidating line of questioning that disoriented and confused any wit­nesses against his client. The strategy ran as follows.

"Have you ever been into an art gallery?"

"Yes," would come the answer.

"Have you ever paid to go into an art gallery?"

"Yes," the witness would say again.

"Have you ever paid to go into an art gallery where there were paintings by the great masters of art?"

"Yes," once more the witness would repeat.

"Have you ever paid to go into an art gallery where there were paintings of unclothed people by the great masters?"

"Yes, I have," would come the hesitant reply as the witness would suddenly recognize that the predator was ready for the kill and there was no place to hide.

"Could you tell this jury," the derisive voice would thun­der forth, "why you call what you paid to go and see ‘art,’ yet what my client sells you brand ‘pornography’?"

With wringing hands, a confused mind, and a stuttering voice some meager philosophical banter would ensue-but the trap had been sprung. One could be absolutely certain that the worst possible answer in that secular courtroom would have been for an aged woman with hat and gloves and a cross hanging from her neck to have said, "Well, the Bible says that the body is the temple of God... :" The defense at­torney could have rested his case with no further comment.

How irrational. How repressive. How irrelevant to the secularized consciousness is the invocation of a religious be­lief when establishing social moral boundaries and imposing them upon the ever-shifting soil of "community standards." But we may well ask from which side the imposition and ir­rationality really comes.

Extracted from Ravi Zacharias’ Deliver Us From Evil.