Gross misrepresentation
I just recently read that the season opener of Bullshit staring penn and teller covered the topic of the war on porn. As I dont own a television, and havent seen the episode in question, I cant comment that much on it. But theyt do interview Craig Gross and I have wanted to write about him for a long time now.
I first found out abotu Craig Gross a while back when I discovered the documentry ‘Missionary Positions‘ that talk about his lectures and the website he helps run. Now I know the reflexive action as soon as you find out he is a christian talking abotu porn is to assume he is some wacked out nutjob standing on the street corner holding up a sign and screamign through a bullhorn that everyone difrent than him is going to burn in hell. Craig Gross is not that guy. At around the 20 minute mark in the video, Craig Gross speaks out AGAINT the fanitics. If you dont watech the rest of the documentry, at least watch that one clip.
The documentry actualy does a fairly good job of pointing out how the ‘christians just hate sex’ steriotype has worked againt him. Attempting to get his message out somehow, he agrees to do radio moring talk show ’shock jock’ interviews. Every one of them held him up as an obect of ridicule, oking fun at him by painting him as the steriotype of the ‘christians hate sex’ fundementalist.
But some wacked out bible thumper he is not. In the documentry it shows that Pat Roberson refused to give him any air time on the 700 club because he disagreed with the message that Gross was presenting. In other interviews, I have seen Gross speak out harshly againt James Dobson.
What gross speaks out againt is not porn spicificly, but porn adaction. not long ago, Gross toured the nation gving a series of debates with pornstar Ron Jeremy. Even Ron Jeremy admits that what Gross is doing serves a worthwhile purpose. There are people out there who have probelems with porn adaction, and it does ruin their lives and it does destroy their family. Just as bear companys always remind their customers to enjoy responsabaly, Ron Jeremy is saying that porn should be telling its customerts to enjoy responsabaly. And just as peopel who have problems with alchoal need faith/religion based help like A.A. so also do people who have problems with porn need faith/religion based help like what Craig Gross does.
But so hung up are we on the idea of ‘christians hate sex’ that even when the message is not ‘we all hate sex’ it gets spun to that message anyway. Later on in the documentry, Craig Gross teams up with porn producer ‘Jimmy D’ to promote a message they both could agree on. Keep porn away from kids. As soon as this happened, other porn profesionals suddenly considered Jimmy D to have been fratanizing with the enemy. His business took a major hit. Others just assumed that Craig Gross was some ‘christians all hate sex’ fanatic and as such Jimmy D was a traitor for even so much as talking to him.
This all has me very curious to see how Gross was portraied on the Penn and Teller program. Did they actualy show him as offering solutions to porn adaction much in the same way as peopel fight againt gambaling adaction without being oposed to all gambling, or fighting alachoal adaction without being a prohibitionist? Or did they just quickly summarize the work Gross does by presenting the old standard steriotype?
One thing I will give the Bullshit! show however, they didnt just present anti-porn as a right wing thing. They also interviewed anti-porn feminists from the left.