Issue date: 3/30/05 Section: Opinion

The last time I wrote about pornography, I received 300 e-mails in an hour, the DP Web site crashed and random strangers sent me images of Cocoa Puffs, themselves and electric toothbrushes. I vowed never to write about porn again.

Last week I changed my mind. When I realized Jesus Week and QPenn overlapped, I cheered. When I learned that an interactive leather and kink demonstration at the LGBT Center and an anti-porn lecture sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ entitled "Porn Nation: The Naked Truth" were taking place within 24 hours of each other, I figured the column could pretty much write itself.

The only question that remained was how to tie the two events together. The leather people would probably suggest heavy rope. The Crusade people would probably suggest heavy therapy. But what I didn't suspect is that after attending both events, I would leave asking the same question: Does it hurt?

Christy Cotton, a staff member with Campus Crusade for Christ, believes porn hurts. "God made sex to bring two people closer together in marriage and [to be] enjoyed between a husband and wife in a way that is completely awesome and good. Taken out of that context, sex loses it's original meaning because it's someone you're not connected with. Porn is just a simple physical act," she said. "To think that it is normal is a really skewed viewpoint."

Without deconstructing everything she said -- which could probably take up a column in and of itself -- I thought I'd just focus on the word normal. Normal is one of those words which can hurt because it carries a lot of political and social implications with it.

It is also a word that kept popping up in the Porn Nation lecture. Michael Leahy was the speaker -- a self-proclaimed former "sex addict" and founder of Bravehearts, an organization that goes around to college campuses to help students overcome what "our media considers 'normal' sexual freedom." His words, not mine.

But what Leahy considers normal is not what I consider normal because really, the definition of the word normal is different for everyone. Leahy asked the audience to consider two questions as we listened to him talk about the horrors of pornography: "How is this affecting me individually?" and "How does this affect the way I interact with others in relationships?"

And that's just the point. It doesn't affect me individually. It doesn't affect the way I interact with others. Don't want to watch porn? Don't watch it. Got a problem with how you interact with others based on what you're watching? Don't watch it. Don't think it's normal? Don't watch it.

Porn is legal, no matter what the religious right says. Watching porn may be addicting for people with addictive tendencies, but it's the people who are at fault, not Playboy.

The difference between the Porn Nation people and the leather and kink people is just that. The leather people don't try to decide what is normal for other people. As Pandora, one of the leather demonstrators, said, "We're not forcing this down anyone's throat. We're not going to make you do it."

The Office of Health Education released a statement about the leather event because they co-sponsored it. In part, it reads, "By educating those interested in these activities, our hope is to promote a safe and healthy environment for personal exploration. We also hope that this program will dispel the myths about the leather community."

But spreading myths and using scare tactics to talk about sex is exactly what Porn Nation did. Leahy defined porn as "any object that has the direct goal of arousing you personally." Ironically, his definition could mean any variety of kinks or people in a safe environment.

The leather community made it clear to me that there were boundaries and that their play is consensual. Had the people at the Porn Nation lecture showed up to the leather event the night before, they would have seen people of all shapes and sizes learning more about themselves in a safe environment.

College junior Phil Cochetti, a co-chairman of QPenn and the organizer of the leather and kink event, perhaps said it the best. "It is very important to teach people about their sexuality and about the diversity of sexuality. It is not just a male or female vehicle, but there's a range of pleasurable activities."

Preventing people from watching porn doesn't solve the real problems of addiction. And spreading myths about sex and pornography hurts a lot more than any bondage or leather play ever will.

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Melody Joy Kramer is a junior English major from Cherry Hill, N.J. Perpendicular Harmony appears on Wednesdays.

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