CYBERSPACE—Producers of MormonBoyz.com and MormonGirlz.com are publicly responding to a new anti-porn campaign helmed by devout Mormons, “Fight The New Drug,” a program originally conceived by the pro-censorship group formerly named Morality in Media. FTND is currently running a social media and billboard campaign, using the slogan "#PornKillsLove." Its current billboard campaign is in San Francisco; FTND is also holding high school assemblies across the country regarding the “dangers of porn.”
Though its four founders are devout Mormons, FTND pretends not to ground its arguments in religion, but instead to present science and facts. As part of its campaign, FTND has cherry-picked studies, which give an incomplete picture of the porn industry and the effects of porn consumption. In addition, the campaign stigmatizes sex workers: the picture they paint of the industry is one in which all performers are drug-addicted sex-slaves, who are forced to engage in violent sex against their will.
“Four Mormons may be pushing a sex-negative, anti-porn agenda, but they don’t speak for all Mormons,” said one of the site’s owners, LeGrand Wolf. “As the world’s premier purveyor of Mormon erotic fantasies, MormonBoyz and MormonGirlz, we are committed to free speech, sexual liberation, and the spread of Mormon plural marriage, the longest-running alternative lifestyle in American history.”
The #PornKillsLove campaign features slick graphic design and lots of social media savvy, with images of attractive kids who have pledged to “Fight the New Drug.” At the same time, they are perpetuating harmful stigmas about porn consumers.
Brooke Hunter, another owner, assessed, “It’s a ‘cool kid’ campaign which bullies ‘losers’ who consume porn. ‘Real men don’t watch porn,’ they claim, alongside a picture of three studs. They are calling men who enjoy porn (read: most people) unnatural, effeminate, and stupid. They may be posing as friendly, but FTND is definitely the mean kids you went to school with. And by the way, women like to watch porn too.”
FTND also presents itself as a public service, yet with its donation levels, it definitely seems to be a profit-seeking venture. To join the Fighter Club, for example, people may donate money, preferably as a monthly recurring donation of $10, $40, $100 or even $500. In addition, FTND also sells tee shirts, wrist bands, and other propaganda, including literature and a $40 self-help program to combat “porn addiction.” With over 1 million “Fighters” on Facebook, the potential profit of this campaign is staggering.
“Those behind the FTND campaign are engaged in irresponsible fear-mongering,” charged Wolf. “Their rhetoric is highly combative. Porn kills love? Fighters? Those bright red billboards communicate a sense of imminent threat. Without scientific evidence, the CEO of FTND calls porn ‘a public health concern,’ as though he is fighting an actual epidemic. They claim porn causes violence toward women and rape; it supposedly ruins marriages and warps viewers’ ideas of sex and intimacy.”
Hunter added, “With sound bites such as ‘Very few things are scarier than what porn does to relationships, and ‘If love is a battlefield, then porn is a nuclear warhead,' FTND’s tactic is to spread unsubstantiated, dangerous, scapegoating hype. This is threatening to anyone working in the porn industry and it’s decidedly un-Christian and un-American. Rest assured we, as well as our fans, will be doing our part to send the correct message to the public.”
For more information, visit MormonBoyz.com and MormonGirlz.com; the sites can also be followed on Twitter here and here, and on Facebook here and here.
