Porn industry's enemy No. 2 warns Utahns

Jan LaRue received applause from a Salt Lake City audience Saturday morning for her No. 2 ranking on a national list of most-hated people.

LaRue and those who gathered at the Marriott Hotel Salt Lake City Center to hear her speak consider the distinction a badge of honor.

The group that publishes the list is the adult entertainment industry, and LaRue has ascended in the ranking for her tireless fight against pornography in all forms.

In the course of an hour, the keynote speaker at a daylong conference entitled "Protecting Families and Children From Pornography" made it clear why she has been labeled public enemy No. 2 by the porn industry.

LaRue chronicled, in horrific and unapologetic detail, the toll she believes the pornography business — particularly Internet porn — has taken on American society and family life.

As with drug addicts, users of pornography gradually require more and more of the material to achieve gratification and many are eventually driven to commit sexual crimes — often against children — to satisfy their cravings, she said.

Pornography and its wide availability to both adults and children in this country is at the root of an affliction that not only leads to sexual crimes, she said, but works in more subtle ways to break up families and erode the fabric of society.

The answer, said the attorney for the Family Resource Council based in Washington, D.C., is for citizens everywhere to band together and battle pornography's stronghold.

"I hate pornography. I know what it is doing to children," said LaRue, author of "Raising Kids in an X-Rated World."

"I know what it does to the minds of men who take advantage of little boys and girls and women. . . . It's a total abuse of a beautiful thing created by God."

LaRue said pornography has been allowed to saturate the Internet, and society, in part because of several "myths" perpetuated by the industry — that pornography is a victimless, harmless pastime; that it is vital to the American economy because it generates $12 billion in business each year; and that pornography is only "airbrush nudity" that would not be offensive to most people.

LaRue said pornography is more widespread than commonly realized and used by all types of people. For example, she said, a national hotel chain reported its highest use of pay-per-view adult movies was during a youth pastors' conference.