Porn 'hijacks' sexuality, expert says

SANDY — Pornography "hijacks a person's healthy sexuality," said the closing keynote speaker at a conference sponsored by the Utah Coalition Against Pornography on Saturday.

Wendy Maltz, a therapist, educator and lecturer, said pornography "harms people in ways they do not realize," causing problems in their family life, work life and spiritual life.

Offering closing remarks at the eighth annual conference on Protecting Children and Families from Pornography and other Harmful Material, Maltz said research supports a simple premise: "Staying away from pornography is a very smart thing to do."

More than 700 people attended the conference at the South Towne Expo Center, 9575 S. State. Utah's first lady, Mary Kaye Huntsman, welcomed attendees and praised them for wanting to learn more about the issue of pornography and how to deal with it.

In addition to Maltz and the event's opening keynote speaker, Donna Rice Hughes, eight other presenters spoke at the conference.

Maltz, a family and sex therapist and co-author of the book "Porn Trap," said she first noticed pornography becoming a problem for more and more of her clients in the mid- to late 1990s with the introduction of the Internet. She began researching the topic.

The drive to view pornography, Maltz said, is so strong that people continue to use it in spite of negative consequences.

"What I see pornography as is as a sexual predator," she said. "It actually is a form of sexual abuse. Sexual abuse can be defined as when someone is exploited or dominated through sexual activity or suggestion."

Pornography teaches all the wrong things about sex, Maltz said. It can make a person feel unattractive. Pornographic images in magazines have been airbrushed, she said, and 85 percent of porn stars have had breast implants, for example.

However, healing is possible, Maltz said. "People with these problems can move out of them."

One of the first steps is to create a strong base of motivation. The message people who have a problem with pornography need to hear is that they're not alone, she said. "They need compassion, not shame."

Families also need to open the lines of communication.

"Porn actually makes a man less of a man," Maltz said. "It makes him less attractive. Women want men who aren't into porn. It can render a person powerless to it, and it can compromise values."

Hughes said there is currently a "perfect storm" for pornography proliferation: cyber-savvy kids online, a burgeoning porn industry, sexual predators online and cyber-challenged adults.

"Almost half of parents with kids online are not using any kind of safety rule or software tool," said Hughes, president of Enough is Enough, a nonprofit organization working to make the Internet safer for children and families.

The fastest growing group of pornographic consumers are teenagers, she said.

"It is not just teenage boys. It is teenage girls, too," Hughes said.

People across the nation are banding together to fight pornography, she said.

"We can do this one child at a time, one community at a time, one state at a time," Hughes said.

E-mail: sarah@desnews.com