The Porn Debate: Ron Jeremy vs Pastor Craig Gross

[TheManWithNoName]

My University is hosting a debate on the 27th, Ron Jeremy vs Pastor Craig Gross. They'll be debating pornography and sex. I'm definitely going - if anything just to see Ron Jeremy. Apparently they tour the country doing this thing... Have any of you seen it? I'm interested in seeing the conservative Christian reaction (there is a high proportion of them here).

Perhaps even more interesting than the debate, is the "discussion" that will follow. It's hosted by a local minister, and supposedly will allow for an open-minded discussion. He'll also be handing out software called CleanHeart, which is supposed to help you "stay pure in your thinking" while using a computer, and includes a web-filter, as well as prayer screen saver.

I doubt the pastor will bring anything to the table beyond the typical anti-pornography arguments - degrades women, unrealistic, some get harmed etc. Have any of you heard of this debate? From what I've seen, Pastor Gross is billed as young, and hip. Given that, do you think he'll bring anything new to the table? (Is there even anything new to bring?)

[Zor]

Ron Jeremy does not seem like the person who should debating in this case, it would make much more sense to have a Psychologist or an Anthropologist who specializes in sexual issues in defence.

Zor

[Darth Wong]

Sounds like it was intended to be a circus all along, rather than a serious debate. The minister will probably employ one of the four most popular attacks on pornography:

1. "Pornography is degrading to women."
2. "Pornography causes sexual assault."
3. "Would you want your daughter to be a porn star?"
4. "Pornography is for sad, lonely men, losers, and men who are unhappy with their marriages."

All of these accusations have their own massive logical flaws, but the question of whether Ron Jeremy is well-equipped to answer them probably depends more on experience than competence. The shitty logic inherent in these kind of attacks is not particularly difficult to pick apart, provided he has heard and discussed them all before, and there's a decent chance that he has. Nobody has come up with a new or original attack on pornography since before I was born.

[Sarevok]

Sounds like it was intended to be a circus all along, rather than a serious debate. The minister will probably employ one of the four most popular attacks on pornography:

It's not like fundamentalists are swayed by logic and facts too often. Your own correspondence with them shows it. At least a circus is entertaining and seeing an famous Porn Star take on a a church guy should be a hilarious spectacle that grabs more attention both off and on the internet than the infinite loop of porn debates that existed since time immemorial.

[Tahlan]

I Googled "pastor Craig Gross" and turned up several links, for those who are curious and want more info.

And here's an article about the Jeremy v. Gross debate at Northeastern University. Article. It seems like more circus than substance.

Last Thursday, Ron Jeremy, the world’s biggest porn star, came to Northeastern to debate pornography with a pastor named Craig Gross. Gross founded an anti-porn website, xxxchurch.com, and claims God avenges masturbation by killing kittens; he also ministers to porn addicts and former adult film stars. Jeremy and Gross met at last year’s Erotica LA convention. We’re not making this shit up.

Hordes of porn-crazed students milled about the Blackman Auditorium, anticipating the titanic clash. Allison Romano came looking for “a good debate.” She also predicted a victory for Jeremy, in no small part because the Hedgehog “can suck his own dick.”

Inside the auditorium, the debate began dubiously. The moderator demanded a substantive discussion, with “fluff questions” kept to a minimum; the instructions set the room all a-titter.

Boos and laughs peppered Gross’s introduction, but the audience did seem impressed by the 60 million hits xxxchurch.com has logged. More impressive, though, was Jeremy’s résumé of over 1,800 adult films, and his bold wardrobe choice—a Hawaiian shirt paired with red and black track pants.

Gross, the young and confident underdog, got things started. “I started my website because of people like you, who’ve been misled about pornography,” he said. “I don’t want to shut down the porn industry, but for some people, it leads to a dead end. Porn is all about creating fantasies, but the fantasies are creating unrealistic expectations of what you should expect in sex.”

Gross also laid one-third of the nation’s divorces at the feet of porn-related relationship dysfunctions, and warned, to more twitters, “Porn is a parasite on your brain. Get off now while you still can.”

“Why he picks on porn, I don’t know,” Jeremy countered. “It’s consenting adults having consenting sex, and being watched by consenting adults. If you have a problem with it, don’t watch it.”

He continued, “Any kind of addiction is not good. But if you have a good job, you’re a productive member of society, and you want to go home, watch porn, masturbate and go to sleep, that’s OK. Why do you have to stop watching porn? Why stop having cream cheese on your bagel?”

During the debate’s Q&A session, the crowd seemed maddened by Gross’s refusal to sensationalize his argument. He wouldn’t say that porn creates murderers and rapists, but only that it might establish behaviors and expectations that can undermine monogamous relationships.

Two streakers interrupted a discussion about the merits/evils of double-anal penetration. The guy screamed his devotion to Jeremy and then escaped out a side door, but when his female companion reached the auditorium stage, she froze; not knowing where to go, she threw her hands in the air, turned around and galloped back up the aisle she’d just run down—right into the arms of an NUPD officer.

“Wow,” Jeremy marveled, “this is the first time I’ve ever been upstaged. I’ve spoken at colleges all across the country, and never been streaked.” Then he became introspective, musing, “She had a pretty nice body … ”

Streaker Girl wasn’t the evening’s most humiliated female, though; that honor was won by a student who suggested to Jeremy that porn degrades women.

“It’s sex—it’s not dehumanizing,” he replied. “What are you referring to, a pop-shot on your face?”

The student said that, while money shots weren’t the specific thrust of her complaint, they were problematic. So Jeremy suggested several other ways of finishing off a guy without taking a blast to the kisser: “On your stomach, your back, your shoulder, your breasts, in your mouth, a towel, a condom—there are lots of ways to do it.”

However, the Hedgehog added, “Some girls don’t mind a little sperm on their face,” and requested a show of hands to prove his point. A girl in the balcony stood up, and received an ovation from several guys nearby. This caused the first student to blurt out, “I don’t want men to cum in my face, ever!”

“Why not?” Jeremy asked. “I let girls squirt on my face!”

At that point, the moderator stepped in and declared the event over. “Thanks for coming,” he said, to even more laughter.

[Venator]

... that.... seriously? I knew that kind of debate could get rowdy, but that's just a whole new level.

One has to give this Gross a bit of credit for at least going after the addictive/harms relationships element rather than the "sensation" aspect. It's still easily refuted, but it's not malignantly, willfully false.

[Zadius]

I saw them debate on Nightline a while back and Ron Jeremy pretty much kicked Craig's ass. He was funny and seemed pretty competent at debating. He obviously knows a lot about the industry as well. Craig Gross has the whole youth pastor shtik and tries hard to be hip. I think he may have employed every single one of the arguments on Darth Wong's list. He thinks "Porn is not real, it's a fantasy!" is an argument against it.

It's free to watch online.

[PeZook]

He thinks "Porn is not real, it's a fantasy!" is an argument against it.

Funny, isn't it? If someone argued that you shouldn't watch theatre plays or movies because they're fantasy, not real and could create unrealistic expectations for life, he'd get laughed at.

Use the same argument against porn, and people start nodding sagely. Apparently, the public turns on their doublethink when sex is involved

[Kanastrous]

Not to mention the dangers of entering a house of worship, being subjected to a raft of fantasy-based nonsense, and walking out with unrealistic expectations regarding reality...

[Darth Yoshi]

Oh wow, I didn't think anyone seriously thought that kittens die when you masturbate. I mean, why would anyone believe that? Kittens have nothing to do with masturbate; saying they die for our masturbation just makes Yahweh look like even more of a dick.

[Zablorg]

[quote="Darth Wong"]
[*]"Would you want your daughter to be a porn star?"
/quote]

Where do they actually go with this one? I can just see the whole thread of debate halting with an awkward screech if the guy said, "Yes. Yes I would."

[Darth Wong]

Obviously, they feel that any form of employment I would not personally want my child to do is evil and should be banished from society. Of course, they fail to realize that by this logic, we should outlaw janitors.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Wait, there are people who actually seriously claim that every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten?

You mean that wasn't just some random phrase coined for the sake of humor?

I need to sit down, this is a lot to take in.

[CarsonPalmer]

I have a feeling, just a feeling, that this is probably part of the pastor's "young and hip" schtick, and that he throws the line into the debate to show that he's "with it". I'd have a hard time accepting that he seriously believes such a thing, but who knows?

[Elfdart]

Obviously, they feel that any form of employment I would not personally want my child to do is evil and should be banished from society. Of course, they fail to realize that by this logic, we should outlaw janitors.

I wouldn't want my kids to work in a slaughterhouse or meatpacking plant, but it doesn't change the fact that I eat meat and enjoy it.

I'm a little sick of the concern trolling about how the porn industry "uses and discards" women. Professional athletes are also used and cast aside when they can't perform at a high level anymore. On top of that, many are left crippled or otherwise permanently disabled. Pro wrestling is even worse. Hell, regular movies have had people killed on set. These crocodile tears being shed over porn performers are a farce.

[Darth Wong]

On another note, the irony of Christian churches complaining about porn demeaning women is so thick you could cut it with a knife. The Christian Bible is as misogynistic as any story you're likely to read. The hero of the Pentateuch even orders his men to rape women as war booty, and berates them when they're slow to do it. The Book of Ruth is an ode to feminine domestication, where a woman gets a man by laying at his feet and meekly doing household chores for him. Most of the Lesser Prophet books rant at length about the evils of allowing women to dress nicely and speak in public, as the eeeevil and decadent Babylonians do. Much is made of Jesus "ministering to women", but out of 12 disciples, he doesn't pick even 1 woman. And then there's "I do not permit women to speak in the church" Paul. And the Book of Revelation where we discover that only men who have not "defiled themselves with women" will be raptured up to Heaven (sorry, all of you non-virgins are SOL).

[Kanastrous]

Maybe they think that a stuntwoman dying on set or a meat packer with an accidentally severed carotid are merely being propelled into the kingdom of heaven, while being a porn starlet has negative consequences persisting into the afterlife.

There's that whole thing about women being treated as significated rather than significator, as bearers of meaning rather than creators of meaning. A woman's value lay in how well she played the roles demanded of her rather than any choices of action she might take herself outside her pre-defined part. So in the sense that you can prize and love a purebred race horse while she's receiving a ribbon but no so much while she's dropping a warm pile on your living room carpet, the patriarchs could value and praise a woman so long as she cooperated in acting her part but damn and revile her the moment she stepped outside its prescribed bounds.

Wow. That was like undergrad-school afterbelch. I guess Prof. Shapiro would approve.

[Darth Wong]

Maybe they think that a stuntwoman dying on set or a meat packer with an accidentally severed carotid are merely being propelled into the kingdom of heaven, while being a porn starlet has negative consequences persisting into the afterlife.

There's that whole thing about women being treated as significated rather than significator, as bearers of meaning rather than creators of meaning. A woman's value lay in how well she played the roles demanded of her rather than any choices of action she might take herself outside her pre-defined part. So in the sense that you can prize and love a purebred race horse while she's receiving a ribbon but no so much while she's dropping a warm pile on your living room carpet, the patriarchs could value and praise a woman so long as she cooperated in acting her part but damn and revile her the moment she stepped outside its prescribed bounds.

Wow. That was like undergrad-school afterbelch. I guess Prof. Shapiro would approve.

That seems like a really complicated way to say that these people value women primarily for their sexual purity, much as ancient primitives did.

[Surlethe]

Which is of course no surprise, given that

1. Their code of morals is explicitly founded upon that of a tribe of ancient primitives,
2. Their roots are ultimately a visceral reaction against science & modernity (in fact, in a speech to the Bible presbyterian church's 11th annual synod in 1948, a pastor, Schaeffer, I think, declared that two great evils facing Christianity were communism and modernity), and
3. Many of these people are actively striving to bring about a sort of combination of the idealized chivalric code of the high middle ages, where women are placed upon a pedestal as symbols of purity, chastity, and perfection, and the barbaric property rights model of tribal antiquity (cf. No Greater Joy ministries, and a half dozen others I can't recall but my wife could rattle off the top of her head).

Perhaps I should resurrect that thread and post some more quotes about what a good Christian wife is like ... .

[Dark Flame]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFzp_0RnLM4

I watched that clip on Youtube, and I cracked up when the pastor went on and on about how porn ALL BY ITSELF ruins marriages, and then admits that he has no statistics!!

I just hope these guys show up at my school to debate, that would be fantastic.

[Xenophobe3691]

Holy Crap, Ron Jeremy has a master's degree in special education?!?

[Dread Not]

Sounds like it was intended to be a circus all along, rather than a serious debate. The minister will probably employ one of the four most popular attacks on pornography:

1. "Pornography is degrading to women."
2. "Pornography causes sexual assault."
3. "Would you want your daughter to be a porn star?"
4. "Pornography is for sad, lonely men, losers, and men who are unhappy with their marriages."

I watched the Nightline debate posted and all four points were brought up, but the most ironically moronic argument was that porn is harmful because those who participate in filming it are then shunned by society. As in they think that America being overrun by prudes like them is to blamed on the porn industry.

[Zwinmar]

Have to say my favorite part was when he claimed that someone who watches porn goes out and commits violent acts. I dunno about the rest of you but I get that feeling after a really good action movie, not after a porn, were I head to the bathroom.

[TheManWithNoName]

I'm now entered in a contest to meet Ron and Craig. What should I say to them if I win? Even if I don't win, are there any questions you want to me to ask them during the Q and A session?

[Samuel]

I'm now entered in a contest to meet Ron and Craig. What should I say to them if I win? Even if I don't win, are there any questions you want to me to ask them during the Q and A session?

Give him a "What would Ron Jeremy do?" sticker. It is one of Wong's sig images.