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WAR
PORN: U.S. Military?s Other Problem in Iraq
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BAGHDAD,
Iraq — Pornography in the military has been
a problem for decades. But not like today.
During World War II, GIs carried decks of cards illustrated with naked
women and posted photos of “pin-up gals”
Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth.
The Iraq War at its most extreme
had Abu Ghraib and its photos of naked Iraqi prisoners.
Catholic author Patrick Madrid said
his first thought on seeing the photos was that
Americans shouldn’t be surprised: “The
pornography chickens are coming home to roost.”
Today, pornography is sold at most
base exchanges (BXs) in the United States. It’s
part of a $57-billion-a-year worldwide industry.
Porn revenue is larger than the combined revenues
of all professional football, baseball and basketball
franchises, according to the Internet Filter Review.
In the United States, revenue from pornography ($12
billion a year) far exceeds the combined revenues
of the three major television networks — ABC,
CBS and NBC ($6.2 billion).
In Iraq, alcohol and pornography
— including Internet porn — are banned
for enlisted personnel out of sensitivity to adherents
of the country’s dominant religion, Islam.
But despite the prohibitions and blocking software
on military computers, Father Mark Reilly, who served
as a marine chaplain in Iraq this year, said increasing
numbers of both men and women serving in Iraq have
access to porn, and have become addicted.
“I don’t think I’ve
ever been confronted as much face-to-face with men
and women — in and out of the confessional
— saying, ‘I’m addicted to porn
and I don’t know how to get out of it,’”
Father Reilly said. “They’re looking
for a life preserver. It’s wrecking their
marriages. Like any addiction, they lose control.”
British historian Joanna Bourke said
that at their worst, pornography causes imitative
behavior like the Abu Ghraib photos — made
by and for porn addicts. “The abuse is performed
for the camera,” she wrote in the Guardian.
“These obscene images have a counterpart in
the worst, non-consensual sadomasochistic pornography.
Rochelle Gurstein in The New
Republic said that the Abu Ghraib photos “speak
to the coercive and brutalizing nature of the pornographic
imagination so prevalent in our world today.”
The conditions soldiers must endure
make them more susceptible to porn addiction, said
Steve Wood, president of the Family Life Center
in Port Charlotte, Fla.
Wood, a convert who has written about
breaking addiction to porn, said the worst conditions
to fuel an addiction are stress, isolation from
family and sleep deprivation.
“If some Marine was out there
on the front lines and got wounded, vast resources
of the United States would be mobilized to bring
him to health,” he said. “Here, he’s
in mortal sin, which endangers not the body, but
the soul for eternity, and he’s suffering
in silence. These guys are hurting — good
guys who want to be good Catholic men and husbands
and fathers — but get hooked on this and can’t
find their way out.”
Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, who
leads the U.S. military archdiocese, told the Register
that chaplains’ guidance in and out of the
confessional is invaluable.
“They can counsel — whether it’s one-on-one or whether
it’s in the sacramental realm,” he said.
“But chaplains have the added opportunity
to speak publicly about it and form policy. They
have access to the commander, who sets regulations,
and I think most commanders are leery of the spread
of pornography.”
Chaplains can help influence “what
is sold in the BX, what’s allowed in a public
space, an office or a barracks, and I think a chaplain
can have great leverage here,” the archbishop
said.
Wood, who served in the Navy during the late ’60s, said most pornography
addicts have internal scars — usually from
childhood.
“High numbers of people —
both men and women — involved in pornography
have been sexually abused as children,” he
explained. “It could be an oppressive, cruel
father or abuse when they were young, a breakup
of parents’ marriage — the type of thing
that could cause depression and/or internal struggles
in any average person.
“When you start dabbling in pornography, it becomes like an aspirin
relieving that internal pain,” he said. But
a stronger dose of pornography will be necessary
to “medicate” the next time.
The key to breaking the addiction,
he said, is to first go to confession, then seek
professional counseling for the internal pain and
the addiction.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
teaches that any association with pornography is
a grave sin. “It does grave injury to the
dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the
public), since each one becomes an object of base
pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses
all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy
world. It is a grave offense” (No. 2354).
Barry Marteson is so ashamed of his
own pornography use that he didn’t want his
real name used for this story.
“It’s humiliating and
certainly one of the seven deadly sins,” said
the Catholic former Marine.
Marteson was a child when he began
looking at discarded magazines his father owned.
Being a Marine in the 1970s didn’t help.
“Some of the guys just got
back from Guantanamo Bay and were talking about
‘how great the chicks were’ down there,”
he said. “All these guys were 18 and I’m
23. I knew better, but I like to be one of the boys,
so we would get drunk and go out to the X-rated
film parlors” and strip clubs.
Now Marteson’s son is serving
in Iraq and is also dealing with pornography addiction.
Marteson finally reached a point where he knew he
needed help.
“It became really obvious five
years ago that it’s bigger than me,”
he said. “I was getting it in the house over
the Internet and it was truly addictive to the point
where I’m panicked. I’m screaming and
I’m crying.”
After years of going to confession
and spiritual counseling, he says he’s having
some success. After a recent trip to the airport,
he had some time to kill in an area where he used
to frequent strip clubs. When he made it home without
stopping, he said he knew he was on the right path.
“It was hardly worth writing
home about, but I put a note in my book about it,”
he said. “It’s grace. There was an incredible
amount of grace. I don’t know that I want
to cry, but I just feel giddy!”
Patrick Novecosky
is based in Naples,
Florida.
Fighting Back
St. Joseph’s Covenant Keepers’
website has resources on fighting porn addiction.
www.dads.org
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