Absolutely amazing. Our friendly Iranians have decided that being part of the porn industry warrants a death sentence. Now, I have to agree that the prevalence of pornography has definitely had an impact on society and the world-at-large. The sheer volume of publications, television shows and Internet sites related to sex is almost mind-numbing. The domain name, Sex.com, sold for over $14 million dollars last year. That’s a lot of zeros.
Google for sex and you get 406,000,000 hits. That’s only from pages that Google has indexed so I’m sure there’s a wee bit of variance. Live.com reports approximately 701,000,000 search results. That’s 2.3 sex-related websites per person living in the United States or 10.7 sites per Iranian.
From a religious standpoint, lust is probably the most easily identifiable sin that we commit. Sex is so pervasive in the culture that it’s easy to minimize our sinful nature and accept the status quo. Young people are taught to abstain, to stay celibate, to protect themselves meanwhile our culture drives them into a hormonal frenzy devoid of morals and “high on self.” By putting the worship of the body over the worship of God we idolize the cravings of our body.
The Iranian Parliament has taken the rather drastic step of curtailing pornography in the region by instituting the death penalty for pornography-related offenses. Drastic is the word I use because I don’t see the punishment fitting the crime, but that’s just my opinion. I agree that the prolific nature of pornography and sexual impurity can easily corrupt anyone, including those who are feel they are pious and righteous. It doesn’t surprise me that we fall pray to this sin, like any other. As the writer C.S. Lewis noted:
We are half hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased.
Iranian law will consider pornography “corrupting of the world,” an extreme charge in the Koran. I agree that it definitely does have a tendency to corrupt and destroy people, families and relationships. I don’t necessarily agree that killing someone for distributing porn is the answer. I don’t have any idea what the right answer is. In my mind, raising children with strong morals (in my case Christian morals) and standards may help. The best change is pro-active change. Hanging someone is definitely a reactive change with the GOAL of deterring others from committing the same crime.
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Looks like Emma had a great birthday. She’s a very lucky girl! I’m sure you’re glad to have her there; have a great visit!!!
It seems like they’re executing people for just about anything sexual over there.
I know, it’s amazing. And people think that devout Christians have issues, at least we’re not executing people for starring in a porn movie. We’d lose half of our Hollywood stars. =)