Porn, porn and more porn!

[Neo-Scholastic]

Actually, psychologists and sex therapists say a fantasy sex life is healthy. But what is there to object to about your SO imagining getting it on with a famous person?

I believe there is a middle ground. I disagree with the notion that any lustful thought is necessarily sinful. The passage most quoted is Jesus saying that men who look at women with lust in their heart is an act of adultery. Yes and no. There is a big difference between noticing the sexual allure of another and cultivating a desire for another. My personal rule is the first look is free but the second look crosses the line. Or the line from Sienfield...cleavage is like the sun, you look but you look away. A red blooded man, even a married man, cannot help but glancing at a beautiful woman who walks into a room. Fine. But only a creep keeps staring at her, unless of course he's single and making an evaluation about whether to ask her out or not.

I agree that fantasy and whimsy, "naughty nurse" or whatever, are healthy for a couple to keep the spark alive but focusing on each other as the fulfillment of those fantasies is critical. Again, it is about cultivating an interest in the enjoyment of permitted pleasures rather than growing hurtful and divisive ones. I want my wife to make love to ME and not some hot stud inside her head.

Movies and television are filled with handsome men and glamorous women and usually that makes perfect sense. But it seems to me that entertainment is far too graphic, not just sex but violence too. The producers of Voyager didn't have to dress Seven of Nine in a catsuit or people ripping off their clothes to know they're having sex. We don't need to see Punisher shoot everyone in the head with bits of skull and brain spattering the wall. I don't think I'm that much of a prude. I just think sex and violence have replaced the art of suggestion in art and undermined viewer engagement.

I don't believe movies, or music, or video games directly cause either promiscuity or pathology. Nor am I naive enough to believe in some prior golden age of virtue. There were problems with prudery in the past and today we have different problems related to promiscuity that cannot be brushed away.