# Lee Shelton: How Pornography Became Normalized - Church History, Alfred Kinsey, and the Fight for a Biblical Sexual Ethic, Ep. 51

An episode of [The Walk Worthy Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1832487476), 27 Jul 2026, 49 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2526976/episodes/19509719-lee-shelton-how-pornography-became-normalized-church-history-alfred-kinsey-and-the-fight-for-a-biblical-sexual-ethic-ep-51.mp3

I sit down with my longtime friend Lee Shelton, creator of the documentary Unmentionable, to unpack the chronological history of pornography and how it became as widespread, normalized, and accessible as it is today. Drawing from Lee’s research, conversations with church historians, and insights from historical experts, we look at how the Church has understood and defended a biblical sexual ethic throughout history. We also discuss what sexual morality looked like in ancient port cities like Corinth and Ephesus, and how the early Church stood apart in cultures marked by sexual confusion, exploitation, and distorted desire. This conversation also examines the influence of Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey Institute, including how his research shaped Western views of sexuality in the twentieth century. While Kinsey’s work has been treated by many as groundbreaking, it has also been deeply controversial because of the nature of his research, the darkness surrounding much of the data, and the lasting impact his conclusions had on sexual ethics in the West. Subscribe now so you don’t miss future episodes, and join us as we take a stand for sexual integrity and spiritual wholeness—one step at a time. Follow us on social media! Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/walkworthy_ministry?igsh=cHdkeGVoM2tldXV3 YouTube — https://youtube.com/@walkworthy-ministry?si=zG-fa7ENsfvXc_k3 TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@walkworthyministry?_t=ZP-8ymyTw7xVKp&_r=1

## Transcript

[0:02] SPEAKER_04: Welcome to the Walkworthy Podcast, where honest conversations spark real transformation, and biblical truth meets everyday life.
[0:10] SPEAKER_04: I'm your host, Joshua Broom, and every week we'll dive deep into culture's most pressing issues with experts, pastors, counselors, and leaders who are not afraid to tell the truth.
[0:23] SPEAKER_04: From sexual integrity and relationships to purpose, identity, and calling, we're going there.
[0:29] SPEAKER_04: No filters, just freedom.
[0:32] SPEAKER_04: Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1 says this live a life worthy of the calling you've received.
[0:40] SPEAKER_04: So whether you're chasing healing, clarity, or courage to keep standing in today's world, you are not alone and you're in the right place.
[0:50] SPEAKER_04: I'm so glad you're here, and let's go now into today's conversation.
[1:02] SPEAKER_00: This episode contains honest conversations about sin, brokenness, and redemption in Christ.
[1:07] SPEAKER_00: Some topics, such as pornography, sexual brokenness, and trauma, may be difficult to hear for some listeners.
[1:13] SPEAKER_00: We share them to point you to the healing and hope found only in Jesus.
[1:17] SPEAKER_00: Listener discretion is advised.
[1:23] SPEAKER_04: Hey, welcome to another episode of Walkworthy.
[1:25] SPEAKER_04: And today we're doing something really interesting.
[1:27] SPEAKER_04: So my friend Lee and I, we did this eight-part, yes, eight-part docuseries.
[1:34] SPEAKER_04: And it was a deep dive on my story, kind of um from my family of origin to some of the stuff that I'm doing in ministry today.
[1:43] SPEAKER_04: But simultaneously, we are tracking uh the really the birth of uh porn uh regarding what what was going on regarding the sexual ethic of the day and in like early church history, was in the pork cities and Corinth and Ephesus, and then how did pork how did pornography ultimately end up being what it is today?
[2:05] SPEAKER_04: But Lee Shelton, welcome back.
[2:07] SPEAKER_04: Thank you, sir.
[2:08] SPEAKER_01: Thank you, sir.
[2:09] SPEAKER_01: Honored to be here.
[2:10] SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
[2:10] SPEAKER_04: So, man, I I want to start with, I think it was so we I learned so much that I use on a consistent basis um from this podcast.
[2:20] SPEAKER_04: It was really just this, I mean, for both of us, uh just a really great um, you know, project that we got to do together.
[2:28] SPEAKER_04: We grew our friendship, we you know, went back to where I grew up, all this stuff, but we learned so much.
[2:33] SPEAKER_04: And it wasn't just us reading data.
[2:36] SPEAKER_04: We sat down with church history experts, you know, different um experts in different fields.
[2:45] SPEAKER_04: And um, I mean, you you worked very hard on this and we we put this together.
[2:51] SPEAKER_04: Um, so would would you kind of take us into because I want to kind of recap, you know, if we can in one episode, uh, the the project that that is unmentionable.
[3:02] SPEAKER_01: Yes, this was really a a two-year project for us uh working on this together.
[3:06] SPEAKER_01: And again, our friendship very much grew because we were all over the place.
[3:09] SPEAKER_01: Like a lot of it we recorded in Dallas, but we went back to your hometown, like you said.
[3:13] SPEAKER_01: We went out to Los Angeles for days, uh, walked into what is no longer uh a pornography studio, but was some kind of office space.
[3:23] SPEAKER_01: We just kind of interjected ourselves into a lot of places that we probably weren't supposed to bring cameras and and definitely weren't supposed to bring recording equipment.
[3:31] SPEAKER_01: We did it anyway.
[3:32] SPEAKER_01: Uh shout out to Jacob Jolly, who walked through a Nike store with uh with all that, and um and then and then DC, which was a really impactful one.
[3:44] SPEAKER_01: And I learned so much through this, like a a ton of the time was spent in on research for us um and learning.
[3:53] SPEAKER_01: And as soon as I got into we started asking questions, like, how did it get here?
[3:58] SPEAKER_01: Right.
[3:58] SPEAKER_01: Like how did it get you you cite the the stats all the time about how it's bigger than the uh Netflix and Disney combined or the NBA, MLB, and something else.
[4:09] SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
[4:09] SPEAKER_04: Or uh Netflix, uh Netflix, Disney, NBA.
[4:14] SPEAKER_01: It it it's ridiculous how large this industry is.
[4:17] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[4:17] SPEAKER_01: And um, and so how did how do we get where we are?
[4:21] SPEAKER_02: Right.
[4:21] SPEAKER_01: And started off very much with the biblical narrative.
[4:25] SPEAKER_01: Uh Paul, like some of this is tail as old as time.
[4:28] SPEAKER_01: Like Paul's addressing a lot of this stuff.
[4:30] SPEAKER_01: Corinth was wild, uh, kind of sexual ethic gone wild.
[4:34] SPEAKER_01: And so he's trying to rein that in and say, hey, sex is a gift from God.
[4:39] SPEAKER_01: How do we do this like Jesus?
[4:40] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and I and I think, you know, just to kind of double tap on that, um, some people will hear, okay, uh, Corinth was this place where there were these sex gods, and people were, you know, the way that you gave the sex god the worship is you slept with the prostitutes that were part of that temple.
[4:59] SPEAKER_04: Uh, but they're for clarity, Christians were doing this.
[5:04] SPEAKER_04: Um, and and and and and this is part of Paul's addressing this.
[5:09] SPEAKER_04: He's saying, What are you doing?
[5:12] SPEAKER_01: It culture infiltrates everything.
[5:15] SPEAKER_01: And in a lot of ways, you get to be a Christian in the culture that you're in.
[5:19] SPEAKER_01: So we live in Texas.
[5:21] SPEAKER_01: Nothing wrong with being a Christian and enjoying uh Texas barbecue, nothing wrong whatsoever.
[5:26] SPEAKER_01: Um, porn is part of our culture.
[5:28] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, something wrong with that, right?
[5:30] SPEAKER_01: And so, same thing, Paul is diving into culture and saying, here's the stuff that you can keep.
[5:38] SPEAKER_01: You can you can still wear that and be a follower of Jesus, you can still eat that and be a follower of Jesus.
[5:45] SPEAKER_01: Um, but there are things about your culture that you're gonna have to lay down to pick up a another culture, a kingdom culture.
[5:53] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[5:54] SPEAKER_01: And and so, yeah, I got to sit down with uh with a few people talking through the history of this, and I learned a lot too, like diving deep into uh Ephesus being this port city, uh Corinth being this place where part of your worship was these sexual acts.
[6:16] SPEAKER_01: And uh, and all of a sudden the church is is being written to saying, hey, there's some crazy stuff going on.
[6:22] SPEAKER_01: We read it as like, really?
[6:24] SPEAKER_01: Like, because we don't have anything like that in our culture.
[6:26] SPEAKER_01: We have other things in our culture that we have to deal with, right?
[6:28] SPEAKER_01: Saying, no, you have to lay that down.
[6:31] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that is no longer something that's that you can pursue and call yourself a follower of Jesus.
[6:38] SPEAKER_01: And for me, it was okay, if that was happening then, and we're certainly seeing echoes of that in some shape, form, or fashion where we live, uh and in the world that we live in, the time that we live in, how did it get to where it was in this country?
[6:54] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[6:55] SPEAKER_01: Um, and so one of the most interesting, anytime you're doing a podcast series like this, so very much a documentary podcast series, you're reaching out to a bunch of people.
[7:04] SPEAKER_01: You send them an email, you send them a DM, and it's kind of like, hey, here's what we're working on.
[7:08] SPEAKER_01: Will you talk to us?
[7:10] SPEAKER_01: And for the most part, it was just yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
[7:13] SPEAKER_01: You had a ton of people that we got to reach out to, got to sit down with some amazing people in LA, um, N DC, in your hometown, all that kind of stuff.
[7:22] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and JP contributed in a big way to that.
[7:25] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we drove down to Waco, got to sit on his back porch and talk with him.
[7:28] SPEAKER_01: That was one of the, like, I'm like crying while I'm interviewing him because he's telling some of the coolest, most amazing stories of men wanting to be free, some of whom are training for ministry, wanting to be free because it's such a part of our culture.
[7:45] SPEAKER_01: It's such a part of, it's almost coming of age to a certain degree in our culture of, you know, when was your first encounter with porn?
[7:52] SPEAKER_01: That sort of thing.
[7:53] SPEAKER_01: We tell that with Lament in our voice.
[7:56] SPEAKER_01: Other people tell that uh with a, yeah, my dad, like that was that was a thing.
[8:02] SPEAKER_01: Like he he gave me my first Playboy or bought me my first VHS or DVD or whatever.
[8:07] SPEAKER_04: It's like a coming of age.
[8:08] SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
[8:10] SPEAKER_01: And and so one of the most interesting ones that we reached out to was a historian.
[8:16] SPEAKER_01: She wrote a book on the history of pornography in America, and she did so through her own words, kind of without judgment.
[8:24] SPEAKER_01: This is just the history of porn in America, not a follower of Jesus.
[8:28] SPEAKER_01: Um, but she told the history in a way that I'd never seen before.
[8:31] SPEAKER_01: And I was like, we've got to talk to her.
[8:32] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, people gotta know how how do we get to now?
[8:35] SPEAKER_01: That needs to be part of this docuseries.
[8:38] SPEAKER_01: And so we reached out to her and she declined.
[8:41] SPEAKER_01: And uh one of our team members reached out to her and she had declined, and I was like, hey, I'm responding to this one.
[8:46] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[8:46] SPEAKER_01: And I and she declined because she had uh had done some other projects, and basically what it became was bouncing in and out of her interview, saying how wrong she was.
[9:00] SPEAKER_01: And it was kind of a dishonest, dishonoring way of handling it.
[9:04] SPEAKER_01: Sure.
[9:05] SPEAKER_01: Totally got it.
[9:06] SPEAKER_01: And uh, and I was like, hey, listen, we really do like my commitment to you, it's in writing, my commitment to you is not to do that.
[9:15] SPEAKER_01: We literally want you to walk us through the history.
[9:18] SPEAKER_01: Um, the the uh the whole project is not for the porn industry, it's not for pornography.
[9:24] SPEAKER_01: Um, but we will not take your work and uh and really dishonor it in any way.
[9:30] SPEAKER_01: And we stayed very true to that.
[9:31] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[9:32] SPEAKER_01: And it was fascinating.
[9:33] SPEAKER_01: I think it was one of the most fascinating interviews we did in the entire the the whole way through.
[9:37] SPEAKER_01: And she took us all the way back to uh to the Civil War.
[9:40] SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
[9:40] SPEAKER_04: What will you will you give us a few snapshots of?
[9:44] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so during the Civil War, um pornography was uh was very prevalent.
[9:50] SPEAKER_01: Obviously, not they're not pulling it up on their iPhones back in the 1800s.
[9:53] SPEAKER_01: Um, they don't have Playboy magazine back in the 1800s.
[9:57] SPEAKER_01: What they did have was pamphlets, and these things were so prevalent that when uh soldiers would leave camps, the most common thing left behind was uh were these pornographic pictures that they were importing in from England.
[10:13] SPEAKER_01: And so there was a book, a book row on uh in in downtown London that the most common shop there was pornography shops.
[10:24] SPEAKER_01: So again, pamphlets, that sort of thing, uh imagery that uh that had been drawn to uh to show these sexually explicit things, and they were rampant in civil war camps, rampant.
[10:37] SPEAKER_01: So much so that uh that Lincoln had chaplains sent to every single one of um of these camps.
[10:47] SPEAKER_01: And that was the first time that's ever happened.
[10:49] SPEAKER_01: Ever happened.
[10:50] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[10:50] SPEAKER_01: Um and and literally in a response to that.
[10:53] SPEAKER_01: Like this has gotten so gross that we need to send chaplains in to help these guys.
[10:59] SPEAKER_04: And if I'm right, what wasn't there some correlation regarding the timeline where um like matt like the printing press or like mass printing of of things that that was happening for the first time?
[11:11] SPEAKER_01: So we're just post uh the, you know, we're we're a little bit post the Gutenberg press, and this stuff is getting printed en masse for the very first time.
[11:19] SPEAKER_01: So early stages, it's the Bible.
[11:21] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[11:22] SPEAKER_01: That's that's that was the the advent of the Gutenberg Press meant that uh that our great grandparents got to have a copy of the Bible that they held in their home.
[11:31] SPEAKER_01: This is the advent of the family Bible that gets handed down from generation to generation because it was prevalent, meaning people had one copy.
[11:39] SPEAKER_01: And it was the it was this large, ornate, beautiful family Bibles that they would hand down from generation to generation.
[11:45] SPEAKER_01: Uh, what also happened was porn started getting printed for the first time.
[11:49] SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
[11:50] SPEAKER_04: And I don't I don't want to jump too far ahead, but the reason I touch on that is just the trajectory of once the silent films came into fruition.
[11:58] SPEAKER_04: Um, but anyway, you you keep going.
[12:01] SPEAKER_01: So she takes us there pretty quickly to the silent films, and very likely in the United States, the very first uh silent film that was ever made um was a was a porn film.
[12:12] SPEAKER_01: Um and it was called The Casting Couch, which is wild to think about because that has had echoes in the porn industry for years to come.
[12:21] SPEAKER_04: And again, I just want to double tap on something because if you're gonna title a movie something that's cultural, well, the the assumption would be this is so prevalent within the culture that you are, you know, you you are trying to distribute this media to that there's an understanding because you know that what you want, what you don't want to do with the title is is title it something confusing.
[12:43] SPEAKER_04: No, you want to title it something that is relevant, that's understandable, or or inciting um excitement in some way.
[12:50] SPEAKER_04: So there is an assumption that in and what date was this?
[12:54] SPEAKER_01: Early 1900s.
[12:55] SPEAKER_04: So early 1900s, you could say the word casting couch that was describing a director and an actress, and then the director saying, Well, if you want this part, then you're gonna need to have sex with me.
[13:09] SPEAKER_04: And that being an overarching understanding to create a title of something in the 1900s is wild.
[13:16] SPEAKER_01: So literally, this is not a a this happened in Hollywood, the culture of Hollywood changed uh over decades.
[13:24] SPEAKER_01: This is literally early, early, early days, beginning days of Hollywood.
[13:30] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that culture was baked in from the from the jump.
[13:36] SPEAKER_01: So much so that one of, if not the very first film that came out of there was that.
[13:41] SPEAKER_04: Wow.
[13:42] SPEAKER_04: Okay, so so let's keep going.
[13:43] SPEAKER_04: So so what else did we learn that was interesting to use along the journey?
[13:48] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so some of it was legislation that took place.
[13:52] SPEAKER_01: Um there were times where you know there was a whole lot of um legislation around, hey, we're putting, we're piping this into homes in America, people are gonna go to movie theaters, that sort of thing.
[14:06] SPEAKER_01: So go ahead, you had something to mean.
[14:08] SPEAKER_04: Well, just uh I think something that um I I don't know if I learned this within the documentary or is something that um I'm pretty sure it was, but just the idea that regarding the schools in America, where the way that you can, well, let me back up.
[14:26] SPEAKER_04: So in the schools in America, there's sex ed classes.
[14:30] SPEAKER_04: And in those sex ed classes, there's pornography that's being shown to students.
[14:37] SPEAKER_04: And the reason that it's not um found to be obscene, the way that it gets around any kind of obscenity clause, is that it's deemed educational.
[14:46] SPEAKER_04: And this is not just like porn, like this is not like pornography, like, you know, it's not stick figures that someone drew.
[14:52] SPEAKER_04: No, this is this is real porn from a real porn company that's being distributed to a real school and being shown in a public setting and saying, This is sex.
[15:04] SPEAKER_01: The she says a name during the interview that I had not heard before.
[15:10] SPEAKER_01: And many people who are listening to this right now are gonna be like, Have you never heard of that before?
[15:14] SPEAKER_01: This guy's one of the most influential people on uh the sexual culture in America, but I hadn't.
[15:19] SPEAKER_01: And so I look into it.
[15:21] SPEAKER_01: She she kind of says it as this throwaway line.
[15:24] SPEAKER_01: And I looked into it afterward, and because of my commitment to her to not bounce in and out and and call cry foul, you know, uh uh give not give her response uh the ability to respond during an interview.
[15:39] SPEAKER_01: I I touch on it with one line and say we're gonna come back to it.
[15:44] SPEAKER_01: And uh the one thing I regret about this project is I didn't come back to it.
[15:48] SPEAKER_01: So we get to talk about it today.
[15:50] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[15:50] SPEAKER_01: The name is Alfred Kinsey.
[15:52] SPEAKER_01: Alfred uh Kinse was a sexual researcher.
[15:56] SPEAKER_01: Um, and you can you can look up some of the things that he researched.
[16:00] SPEAKER_01: At the University of Indiana, um the uh the sexual institute is named after him.
[16:07] SPEAKER_01: This guy did what can only be described as uh like Holocaust style uh experiments.
[16:16] SPEAKER_01: It it was absolutely like disgusting and disturbing things that this guy was doing.
[16:22] SPEAKER_01: And there's an institute to this day named named after this guy that if you and it's the institute, by the way.
[16:28] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's the one that if you want to learn about sexual health in America, you go there.
[16:34] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[16:35] SPEAKER_01: And this guy was was taking advantage of staff members in the name of research.
[16:43] SPEAKER_01: Um there was a lot of a lot of the reason why America has the perception of pornography, why sexual education is what it is in America, in American public schools, they use his work for all of this.
[16:58] SPEAKER_01: He's the guy.
[16:59] SPEAKER_01: A lot of the reason why homosexuality is seen the way that it's seen in this country, um, the research that's cited for that is this guy.
[17:08] SPEAKER_01: And this guy is um, for those of you who didn't know his name like I didn't a few years ago when we were working on this project.
[17:16] SPEAKER_01: If you want to know how did we get to now, and how do you get people with letters in front of and behind their names saying the things that they say about sexual ethic, it's this guy.
[17:28] SPEAKER_01: He uh put on blast the amount of affairs that were happening in this country and normalized them.
[17:34] SPEAKER_01: Um he put on blast and normalized premarital sex in this country like it never had been before.
[17:41] SPEAKER_01: He uh normalized uh uh teenage sex, early, early, early age sex, like it had never been normalized before.
[17:50] SPEAKER_01: Um, this guy is he's the most influential guy in the world of sexual ethic, and he's the last human being on the face of the planet you want speaking into sexual ethic.
[18:01] SPEAKER_04: And how do you think, how do you think he got to where he got to?
[18:06] SPEAKER_04: Like how, like, I I just find it hard to rationale in my brain, like, how are you getting these kids in here to do these experiments?
[18:14] SPEAKER_04: And and then how do you go from where we were to where we went and and somewhat are um based on this one individual?
[18:24] SPEAKER_04: Like, why was he so influential?
[18:26] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so universities want to be first because they get known for specific things.
[18:32] SPEAKER_01: So you know you can go to MIT for computer science, you know that you can go to these certain universities for certain things, and then they're bet they're the best on the planet at what they do.
[18:41] SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
[18:42] SPEAKER_01: Uh the University of Indiana was was wanting something like that.
[18:47] SPEAKER_01: Um, they do many things, you know, they just won a national championship last year.
[18:50] SPEAKER_01: No crap on the University of Indiana, but um, but at the same time, this guy's doing things that nobody had done before in a subject matter that touches all of us in some shape, form, or fashion.
[19:02] SPEAKER_02: That's how we got here.
[19:03] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[19:04] SPEAKER_01: And so we as a people are very interested in sex, very interested in sexual ethics, very interested in um, and and so kind of every question that a teenage boy possibly could have come up with, he went off and did an experiment on that thing.
[19:20] SPEAKER_02: Wow.
[19:22] SPEAKER_01: And so from that, you see literally some of the most disturbing experiments that have ever been conducted in the United States, and uh it all in the name of science.
[19:32] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[19:32] SPEAKER_01: And we trusted the science.
[19:34] SPEAKER_01: And as a result of that, anytime you see a believer or even just a sane individual saying, Hang on a second, maybe hookup culture is not a good thing.
[19:44] SPEAKER_01: Hang on a second, maybe addiction to pornography is ruining your marriage.
[19:49] SPEAKER_01: Hang on a second, maybe we don't need to give a nine-year-old axe full access to the internet.
[19:54] SPEAKER_01: They will go back to these studies and they will point them out.
[19:58] SPEAKER_01: And because this guy is as respected as he was, uh, it kind of to a degree it shuts down arguments and it's disgusting.
[20:06] SPEAKER_04: So, to your point, I mean, this guy kind of rewrote what sex is in the way that we experience it uh in this country.
[20:16] SPEAKER_04: And I'm just kind of thinking, well, also a part of the the story that we told was how does porn go from being something that you have to pay to go to a specific, you know, movie theater to see, to going into uh the backroom of a store and buying a magazine that's that's covered in black plastic, um, to today uh one porn site, you know, you you know, it's getting a hundred million visitors per day.
[20:47] SPEAKER_04: That's just in the US.
[20:48] SPEAKER_04: Uh, and you don't have to look for it, it's looking for you.
[20:52] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so uh kind of the next big step in this sexual revolution that we had would have been Playboy magazine.
[20:59] SPEAKER_01: So uh Hugh Hefner gets a loan, uh, I believe from his mom to start this thing.
[21:06] SPEAKER_01: And uh it's talking about awkward conversations, uh, and and really wants to know that there's gonna be a desire for this, knows that there's gonna be a demand for this, and is perfectly fine with being the guy that's at the forefront of it.
[21:22] SPEAKER_01: And so Playboy magazine's born.
[21:24] SPEAKER_01: And Playboy took something that was very much hush and whispers, and you just would not have brought up anytime, any place whatsoever, uh, and kind of throws it into the mainstream.
[21:40] SPEAKER_01: And through that, throwing it into the mainstream, the conversation culturally changes drastically.
[21:45] SPEAKER_01: This is this is something that uh Playboy can be mentioned on the nightly news.
[21:50] SPEAKER_01: Playboy can be uh he this guy's interviewed on late shows, um, kind of heralded as a hero.
[21:56] SPEAKER_01: He comes onto the stage and the crowd goes wild, men and women.
[21:59] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[22:00] SPEAKER_01: And and it took oftentimes uh people that you would not have seen in that context, actors and actresses, and gave you a glimpse into their lives uh and and and under their clothes, uh, in a way that you just did not get in other in other formats.
[22:17] SPEAKER_02: Right.
[22:18] SPEAKER_01: Um, as a result of that, the conversation shifted pretty drastically and Playboy became this thing that was culturally acceptable of hey, did you and and kind of the joke was I read it for the articles.
[22:31] SPEAKER_02: Sure.
[22:31] SPEAKER_01: Um and they did journalism.
[22:33] SPEAKER_01: They did.
[22:34] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[22:35] SPEAKER_01: Um, and so as a result of that, you know, as you're flipping through pages, you're seeing these images and and and reading things, and there's a justification.
[22:44] SPEAKER_01: The human mind is a justification machine.
[22:47] SPEAKER_01: Sure.
[22:48] SPEAKER_01: And so these things start becoming more and more justified.
[22:50] SPEAKER_01: And again, talking about coming of age, like many people, our age, the coming of age would have been, I turned 13 and my dad gave me my first Playboy magazine.
[22:59] SPEAKER_01: I turned 15 and my dad gave me my first Playboy magazine.
[23:02] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then the late ones, I turned 17 and my dad gave me my first Playboy magazine.
[23:07] SPEAKER_01: And it's like, hey, that you want to talk about shifting of a uh of a father-son talk, of a healthy father-son talk around sexual ethic.
[23:17] SPEAKER_01: That's a really perverse way of doing it.
[23:20] SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
[23:20] SPEAKER_04: I mean, I I think that I mean, I have conversations on a weekly basis, hearing people that either um that was their first sexual experience, like that instead of having a you know birds and bees conversation, it's like here it is, um and just the impact that it would have on the brain and and the child and just the what would be formulated after that.
[23:46] SPEAKER_04: Then also this idea of well, this is just dudes being dudes.
[23:53] SPEAKER_04: And the amount of people that are now I'm I'm hearing that, well, um, we were virgins, and then um we we didn't really know how to do it.
[24:04] SPEAKER_04: And some we had some mentors and they suggested that we watch porn.
[24:09] SPEAKER_04: And and and it's just this bizarre thing.
[24:12] SPEAKER_04: Um, it's probably the I I can't imagine something that's less complicated than sex, you know.
[24:20] SPEAKER_04: Like you it's kind of like pizza.
[24:23] SPEAKER_04: It's like even when it's bad, it's really good, you know.
[24:26] SPEAKER_04: Um, but but then it's like, well, I need to I need to learn, but it's so anthetical of of creation, of God's creation of it.
[24:35] SPEAKER_04: Like the intention was uh you you it's you're you're in the dark, and you know, there's there's no preconceived notions, there's no I want to be good at it, or I want to do it in this way.
[24:48] SPEAKER_04: Um, you're just coming together and it just continues to get better because you there's self-discovery, um, there's trust, there's intimacy, and it's built in this beautiful way.
[24:59] SPEAKER_04: And it's just wild that I hear so many times, because I I have obviously I have a skewed, you know, uh view of it, um, not just because I'm a Christian, just because I've I've seen the damage that it's caused to me personally and to the people that I love, but uh just to say that this is a viable solution regarding information and education about something that's is spiritual is wild.
[25:29] SPEAKER_01: It takes one of the greatest gifts connected to one of the greatest commands that God ever gave us and perverts it.
[25:38] SPEAKER_02: Right.
[25:39] SPEAKER_01: So sex is a gift from God, be fruitful and multiply is a command of God.
[25:43] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it takes those those two things and says um completely flips it and says, A, how do I do this and not be fruitful and multiply?
[25:55] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's kind of the goal.
[25:57] SPEAKER_01: And uh how do I take this and with no regard for the other human being, get as much satisfaction from this as I possibly can.
[26:07] SPEAKER_04: And I and I think an another interesting thing to kind of pull from that is that that that sex was presented pre-fall.
[26:16] SPEAKER_04: Yes.
[26:17] SPEAKER_04: It's like so so it it it was corrupted, you know, to a certain degree.
[26:21] SPEAKER_04: But I think, you know, just that idea that sex is God's idea and it was a good idea, and there was there was nothing, there was nothing about it that was bad.
[26:33] SPEAKER_01: And the enemy takes everything God makes beautiful and tries to figure out how to how to sow seeds of corruption into that thing, including sex.
[26:42] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean that's why it's so important that you know that that we collectively do what we do.
[26:48] SPEAKER_04: It's because when we don't say something, it says something.
[26:51] SPEAKER_04: Um when you don't talk about sex in your home and in our churches, uh, there is an there's a an unspoken message, and sometimes what you don't say speaks louder than what you do.
[27:01] SPEAKER_04: And if there's an assumption that, well, um sex is just something that's not on the table, we're not gonna talk about it.
[27:07] SPEAKER_04: Well, it's it's intimate and it it's ingrained in each and every one of us.
[27:13] SPEAKER_04: There's a there's a sexuality, there's a desire for intimacy, it's part of each and every person.
[27:18] SPEAKER_04: So, with that being true, well, if I don't have a context for how to think about it, and then I experience it, because I'm gonna experience it in the world in some way, shape, or form, and then I experience it outside of a of a of a context, well, we didn't talk about it.
[27:38] SPEAKER_04: So we don't talk about it.
[27:39] SPEAKER_04: So not only do we not talk about it, then if I experience it, well, I can't talk about it.
[27:44] SPEAKER_04: So there's there's a recipe for shame built, and it's something that the world is screaming about.
[27:52] SPEAKER_04: You know, how do you sell anything?
[27:54] SPEAKER_04: You know, sex and violence.
[27:57] SPEAKER_04: Um so anyway, I'll get off my soapbox.
[28:00] SPEAKER_04: But how how did how do we continue?
[28:03] SPEAKER_04: How do we get from, okay, so we were talking about silent films, and then Playboy magazine somewhat um normalized it.
[28:11] SPEAKER_04: Um, all of a sudden, people are not whispering about it.
[28:14] SPEAKER_04: It's something that's very normative.
[28:16] SPEAKER_04: It's on, you know, it's on, he's on talk shows, Playboy magazine.
[28:19] SPEAKER_04: You you see athletes on the cover.
[28:22] SPEAKER_04: Um, but why was really the internet kind of the game changer for pornography?
[28:31] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so backing up just slightly to the 70s, and then I'll hop immediately to the 2000s uh or the really late 90s.
[28:39] SPEAKER_01: Um, so there was a film that was uh that was put out in the 70s that was really the first big theatrical release of a rated X film.
[28:50] SPEAKER_01: And it, you know, just putting it out there in the public saying, hey, buy tickets to this, let people watch you walk into this place, all that kind of stuff, um, was a was a problem um in and of itself as far as culture.
[29:03] SPEAKER_01: Uh the they promoted that film by interviewing actors and actresses, mainstream ones, um, Jack Nicholas being one of them.
[29:12] SPEAKER_01: And it was kind of a, have you seen this film?
[29:16] SPEAKER_01: Sure.
[29:16] SPEAKER_01: And over and over and over again, the answer was yes and yes, and yes, and yes, and yes.
[29:21] SPEAKER_01: And uh, and so it you see this, this, the culture shifting in a way that when the internet hits, pornography being the most, you know, the most transferred data on the web makes every bit of sense with where our trajectory was going.
[29:38] SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm gonna use my story as a bit of an anecdote and then um and then zoom out and kind of talk about it as a whole.
[29:45] SPEAKER_01: So early stages, I'm out riding bikes, I'm 13 years old.
[29:48] SPEAKER_01: So in the 90s, that's kind of what you did.
[29:50] SPEAKER_01: And so I'm out riding bikes with a friend.
[29:52] SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's these ditches in front of homes so that rainwater can run into that, not make your your yard a uh a swamp in the southeast.
[30:01] SPEAKER_01: And in one of these ditches, as we're riding by, there's a VHS tape with the title ripped off of the front of it.
[30:07] SPEAKER_01: And so we stop, we're 13.
[30:10] SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, that's hilarious.
[30:11] SPEAKER_01: Somebody's like left a VHS on a car or something to that effect.
[30:15] SPEAKER_01: We sweep that up and we're gonna go home, pop at my buddy's VCR, fully expecting this to be like a family reunion or a graduation or a submission into America's Funniest Home Videos or something like that.
[30:28] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[30:28] SPEAKER_01: And immediately it's it's pornography.
[30:32] SPEAKER_01: Um, we stop it immediately, take that out, throw it under his bed.
[30:36] SPEAKER_01: Like, how do we get rid of this thing?
[30:37] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[30:37] SPEAKER_01: And shame enters the equation, like immediately.
[30:40] SPEAKER_01: I went home that night.
[30:41] SPEAKER_01: I remember going to bed.
[30:42] SPEAKER_01: I was weird at home that night.
[30:44] SPEAKER_01: My mom asked me four or five times what's what was going on with me.
[30:47] SPEAKER_01: I go to bed.
[30:48] SPEAKER_01: I get up in the middle of the night because I cannot sleep, go down to her room, have her step out into the hallway to not wake my stepdad up.
[30:54] SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I did something terrible.
[30:57] SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't tell her what it was.
[30:58] SPEAKER_01: Scared to death to tell her what it was.
[31:00] SPEAKER_01: She's in a in a dream state, like figuring out what the heck is going on right this second.
[31:06] SPEAKER_01: And he's 13.
[31:07] SPEAKER_01: How terrible could be like, did you ding-dong door ditch somebody?
[31:09] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[31:10] SPEAKER_01: Like, what'd you do?
[31:11] SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, I'm not gonna tell you, but I need to tell you that I did something terrible.
[31:16] SPEAKER_01: And her response was, I don't even know what else you do in a situation like that.
[31:20] SPEAKER_01: She goes, Well, don't do it again.
[31:22] SPEAKER_01: Like she was trying to like alleviate some shame from me.
[31:25] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[31:25] SPEAKER_01: And so I go to bed and I was able to go immediately to sleep.
[31:28] SPEAKER_01: That like half confession did it was enough to allow me to sleep that night.
[31:33] SPEAKER_01: But it awakened something in me that was uh that that did something.
[31:40] SPEAKER_01: Um you know, we we had internet in our house at that time.
[31:45] SPEAKER_01: And in my brain, it was like, okay, I'm gonna justification machines.
[31:50] SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm gonna type in this thing into a search bar.
[31:54] SPEAKER_01: Okay, you know, I I landed on a site now.
[31:57] SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh my gosh, this is all over the internet.
[31:58] SPEAKER_01: Like I can, this is easy to find.
[32:00] SPEAKER_01: This is like 98 or something.
[32:02] SPEAKER_01: And you'd never heard of it or seen of it.
[32:04] SPEAKER_01: I didn't even know the word pornography at 13 years old.
[32:06] SPEAKER_01: Wow.
[32:08] SPEAKER_01: And so I'm typing in sex because I didn't know what else to type in.
[32:12] SPEAKER_01: And then I felt really, really bad about that.
[32:14] SPEAKER_01: And so I started typing in like slightly lesser things that were still absolutely the thing.
[32:19] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[32:20] SPEAKER_01: And um, and it was something I struggled with like through throughout partially throughout Bible college.
[32:26] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[32:27] SPEAKER_01: Like I'd come home and like like go down this curiosity train that I'm like, I'm not trying to go there, I'm trying to go like five steps before that, but then I end up getting there every single time.
[32:40] SPEAKER_01: And that's a story you've heard thousands of times.
[32:43] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like some version of what I just said, you've heard thousands of times.
[32:46] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
[32:47] SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
[32:49] SPEAKER_01: And so when you're that age and parents don't know to protect their kids against the internet at that point, it was chat rooms.
[32:56] SPEAKER_01: That was the thing that you had to be careful of.
[32:58] SPEAKER_01: Like, don't let your kid on chat rooms because you don't know if the person posing to be a girl is some 55-year-old dude in in Vermont.
[33:06] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[33:07] SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh, and it literally like I've heard that anecdotally with every single one of my friends, period.
[33:17] SPEAKER_01: Right.
[33:18] SPEAKER_01: Some version of what what I experienced, not finding a VHS in a ditch, but the internet.
[33:22] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[33:23] SPEAKER_01: And you know, you know the stats around this.
[33:25] SPEAKER_01: We've we we got to unpack the brain science around this quite a bit in this series.
[33:30] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the stats are insane.
[33:32] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[33:32] SPEAKER_01: And of how permeating this thing is.
[33:34] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, it's it's wild to see.
[33:36] SPEAKER_04: I mean, you got average of exposure somewhere between 11 and 12, drifting towards eight.
[33:42] SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, you you got the church, yet the people who are saying, hey, I'm a follower of Jesus, uh, in the age demographic 18 to 25, around 85 to 88 percent of guys and 68% of girls are saying, um, yeah, this is something that I'm struggling with as a follower of Jesus.
[34:02] SPEAKER_04: And and when I see data like that, I always think, man, um, data is only good as people are honest.
[34:08] SPEAKER_04: And my assumption is it's worse.
[34:10] SPEAKER_01: Can we pause for just a second on the average age side of things?
[34:13] SPEAKER_01: If the average age is 11 and there are people who are 15, 16, 17 years old the first time they get exposed to it, that means that that the opposite is also true.
[34:24] SPEAKER_01: So if the average age is 11, and in a couple of days I'll have an 11, my youngest will be 11.
[34:30] SPEAKER_01: That means that four and five and six years old is by the by the hundreds of thousands as part of the equation.
[34:40] SPEAKER_04: A thousand percent.
[34:40] SPEAKER_04: I mean, I was just at uh I was just at a Christian uh apologetic uh event where there was about 350 high school kids there, juniors and seniors in high school, and I had about a hundred conversations with people around um around porn and and and their experience with it.
[34:58] SPEAKER_04: And I didn't hear anyone, not one person say anything older than eight.
[35:04] SPEAKER_01: That that is what I'm hearing over and over and over again as well.
[35:08] SPEAKER_01: Um, you get to see a lot more of it than I do, but the conversations that I have, and because of this project, and this is a a large amount of the conversations that that I have with parents and that sort of thing.
[35:20] SPEAKER_01: Um, I get asked questions about this all the time.
[35:22] SPEAKER_01: The number one question I got asked uh was parents saying, Okay, you you like great story.
[35:28] SPEAKER_01: I learned a lot.
[35:29] SPEAKER_01: What do I do?
[35:31] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
[35:31] SPEAKER_04: I mean, I would I would say that I mean I think we should spend, I mean, however much time we have left.
[35:37] SPEAKER_04: Well, maybe not all of it, but I think, you know, you've got you're you're you're a you know, you've got two boys and a girl, and you know, I've got four boys, and um, you know, still your your kids are a little bit older than mine, but still kids, um, even even big man Jude, you know, who's conquering the world.
[35:55] SPEAKER_04: But um I I think there's so many people they're like, well, what do I do?
[36:02] SPEAKER_04: And I and I think there is the statement that I say often, which it's not just me trying to sensationalize the situation, but it is true that like most people are like, man, um, when do I give my kids a smartphone?
[36:16] SPEAKER_04: Because I want them to have access, you know, to friends and information, AI, and stuff like that.
[36:22] SPEAKER_04: Well, you you have to wrap your head around the fact that you're not just giving them access to the world, you're giving the world access to them.
[36:30] SPEAKER_04: And as a parent, I know that you want to protect your kids from the world because the world is not overarchingly good.
[36:38] SPEAKER_04: Jesus said no one is good.
[36:40] SPEAKER_04: So if that's true, man, what do we do?
[36:44] SPEAKER_04: I mean, obviously it starts with us, but how how do you how do you protect and lead your home?
[36:49] SPEAKER_04: Like I would love to um I let's let's we can talk about tech second, but just practical.
[36:56] SPEAKER_04: Like what are conversations that are age appropriate that that we need to be having like in our home about pornography, about sex, about private parts.
[37:06] SPEAKER_04: Like what like where like what age would you think um it would, you know, when do you start having these conversations?
[37:13] SPEAKER_01: So I started with, and this project actually changed how I approached it.
[37:19] SPEAKER_01: It was really good for me too, as a dad.
[37:22] SPEAKER_01: Um, I wish I had had the conversation with Jude a little bit earlier on than I did.
[37:25] SPEAKER_01: And here's what I mean by the conversation.
[37:28] SPEAKER_01: Uh we've always been a as our kids start getting curious about anything and where do babies come from is a thing that parents are gonna get asked, like, how did I get how did I get here?
[37:37] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[37:38] SPEAKER_01: Um is a thing that parents are gonna get asked pretty early on.
[37:41] SPEAKER_01: Um at that point, it's I'm not going through the the uh uh incredible details of a penis and a vagina at that age at five years old.
[37:52] SPEAKER_02: Right.
[37:52] SPEAKER_01: Um, but I we like Lara is having conversations with with Nora about about her parts and what those are for.
[38:01] SPEAKER_01: And I am having a conversation with Jack and with Jude about the their parts.
[38:05] SPEAKER_01: They've got questions about this stuff, yeah.
[38:07] SPEAKER_01: And and why God gave them that and all and all those types of things.
[38:12] SPEAKER_01: And so um I had some level of age-appropriate conversations starting at five years old with with my kids.
[38:22] SPEAKER_01: Um, I think with Jack it was a little bit earlier than that, actually, because he had an older brother, and so there was a little bit more um maturity, really, as far as conversations were concerned with Jack, uh, just because of his his age order.
[38:37] SPEAKER_01: And so, because of that, uh we're very early on, we're having body part conversations, those types of things.
[38:45] SPEAKER_01: Um, the how did you get there in our home conversations when you're five is well, mom and dad like loved each other.
[38:53] SPEAKER_01: And uh, and when you share your body with uh with your with your wife, in my case, um uh sometimes baby babies are are yeah, and I and I think it's it it most people are uncomfortable talking about stuff like that.
[39:08] SPEAKER_04: Because what I always tell people is like sex is not weird, you're weird.
[39:13] SPEAKER_04: So don't be weird about sex because it's not weird.
[39:16] SPEAKER_04: And I think it's like if you have like whatever your experience is first introduced to sex, or uh maybe you've had a bad sexual experience, that can cause you to look at sex as it's something that's bad.
[39:28] SPEAKER_04: And it's like I want to protect my kids from this bad thing, and I don't want them to experience it too long.
[39:34] SPEAKER_04: And I and I think there's this um I want to be careful with how I say this, but I think more often than not, like parents that are unwilling to have these conversations, especially once they get 12, 13 years old, um because I I understand like having an age-appropriate, contextualized conversation about these things is is difficult because you don't want to say anything, you know, you don't want to go too far.
[40:02] SPEAKER_04: But you you want to protect them because you know who's not filtering their language?
[40:07] SPEAKER_04: The world.
[40:08] SPEAKER_04: So if if the understanding is it's inevitable that they're going to see it.
[40:15] SPEAKER_04: Not if, when, when they see something sexually inappropriate, if they don't have a context of what's happening, they're not gonna know how to respond.
[40:28] SPEAKER_01: Choose your uncomfortable, yeah.
[40:30] SPEAKER_01: I am uh uncom, it is uncomfortable having a conversation with a 10-year-old around sexual things, it's uncomfortable.
[40:40] SPEAKER_01: What is significantly more uncomfortable for me is the world telling him what the sexual ethic is and him growing up with that in my home.
[40:49] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[40:49] SPEAKER_01: Like we get to set the culture, the tone, and the center of our home.
[40:53] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[40:54] SPEAKER_01: In our home, we've decided that pornography is not a part of the culture of the Shelton family.
[40:59] SPEAKER_01: Period.
[41:00] SPEAKER_01: End of story.
[41:01] SPEAKER_01: That's that is not welcome in our home.
[41:03] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[41:04] SPEAKER_01: And so I'm going to choose my uncomfortable.
[41:07] SPEAKER_01: I'm going to have uncomfortable conversations so that I don't have to have significantly more uncomfortable conversations later.
[41:13] SPEAKER_02: Right.
[41:14] SPEAKER_04: So, so that's kind of how you set the tone.
[41:16] SPEAKER_04: And there's great resources out there, good book, bad pictures.
[41:18] SPEAKER_04: It's like, hey, uh, private parts are private.
[41:21] SPEAKER_04: You shouldn't show them to anyone, but they're on the internet and in books and in magazines.
[41:24] SPEAKER_04: And if you see them in the same way that if you're scared, come to mom and dad, hurt, come to mom and dad, see porn.
[41:30] SPEAKER_04: Uh, you're not bad.
[41:31] SPEAKER_04: You're not in trouble.
[41:32] SPEAKER_04: But it's something that um, since we've had this conversation that you're not surprised by, but it is not good for you, please come bring that information to me and let's have a conversation with that.
[41:43] SPEAKER_04: So that's how we lead our home.
[41:45] SPEAKER_04: Um, from a tech standpoint, um, as as we come to a close, I just want to say from a tech standpoint, just based on what we've learned about how prevalent it is, how quickly it grew, and how it's everywhere, um, how do we guard our tech?
[42:00] SPEAKER_04: I mean, like, yeah, I mean, covenant and eyes, great partner of ours.
[42:04] SPEAKER_04: We've got, you know, a free code.
[42:05] SPEAKER_04: Yes, covenant and eyes is a great tool, but it's not an ultimate solution.
[42:11] SPEAKER_04: Um, how do we navigate our tech?
[42:14] SPEAKER_04: I I think it starts with how we, our relationship with tech as well.
[42:18] SPEAKER_01: But totally agree.
[42:20] SPEAKER_01: Um, and so it I don't for many reasons.
[42:26] SPEAKER_01: I I care about my relationship with Jesus, I care about my relationship with my wife, and I care about being a model for my children, and I care about me.
[42:35] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[42:36] SPEAKER_01: Probably in that order.
[42:38] SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't ever want to have anything on my phone that my kids cannot see.
[42:46] SPEAKER_01: Right.
[42:46] SPEAKER_01: From an imagery standpoint, from uh any of that stuff whatsoever.
[42:50] SPEAKER_01: Probably don't want to read all the conversations between me and your mom, but there's not gonna be imagery on my phone that you can't see.
[42:56] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[42:57] SPEAKER_01: And so as a result of that, we again, I know we live in a culture, I've heard et nauseum, uh, well, everybody their age has got a phone, everybody at their age has got this, everybody at their age has got a computer in their room and all that kind of stuff.
[43:13] SPEAKER_01: My humble submission to you, and I know these are hard conversations, and I've had to fight back against culture in my home as well.
[43:20] SPEAKER_01: Uh, we we have had uh very difficult conversations with our oldest around uh around phones and access to them and that kind of thing.
[43:28] SPEAKER_01: My submission to parents listening to this is great.
[43:33] SPEAKER_01: I understand that it's a we're living a difficult culture.
[43:36] SPEAKER_01: I do, I will not submit to that culture if it hurts my child.
[43:43] SPEAKER_01: Period end.
[43:44] SPEAKER_01: Period end.
[43:45] SPEAKER_01: If all of a sudden tomorrow it becomes, but everybody's doing heroin.
[43:49] SPEAKER_01: I'm not letting my kids stick a needle in their arm.
[43:52] SPEAKER_02: Right.
[43:52] SPEAKER_01: I I we Jude does for the first time have an iPhone.
[43:57] SPEAKER_01: We've got a lot of parameters on that.
[43:59] SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty Tech savvy.
[44:00] SPEAKER_01: And so as a result of that, we've got it's pretty dang locked down.
[44:04] SPEAKER_01: And Jude is a really mature, good man.
[44:10] SPEAKER_01: Part of that is I didn't give him one at 12 years old.
[44:13] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[44:13] SPEAKER_01: Part of that was he did not have, he's never had an an like absolute complete access to the internet.
[44:20] SPEAKER_01: He is mature.
[44:20] SPEAKER_01: We waited until we knew that maturity was there.
[44:23] SPEAKER_01: If I ever go to him and say, hey, I need to see your phone, it's not weird.
[44:27] SPEAKER_01: It's here.
[44:28] SPEAKER_04: But I would say, even there's an example that he proved to you that he understood because he saw it somewhere and he was like, immediately he comes to you.
[44:38] SPEAKER_04: And I think that's the litmus test.
[44:39] SPEAKER_04: And that's the litmus test for us.
[44:41] SPEAKER_04: Yes.
[44:41] SPEAKER_04: If we see something we ought not see, and we like when we don't say something, we say something to ourselves.
[44:47] SPEAKER_04: Like back to your justification.
[44:49] SPEAKER_04: When we see something we ought not see, we don't say something about what we saw, we say something to ourselves.
[44:55] SPEAKER_04: We justify what we saw.
[44:57] SPEAKER_04: And then what that what that does is the line that used to be really clear in the sand is now blurry.
[45:03] SPEAKER_04: So the next time I see something in that realm, I'm like, well, um, I I was, you know, uh strong enough to not be tempted by this.
[45:11] SPEAKER_04: So maybe I can watch this show or look at this thing or or be in this place.
[45:15] SPEAKER_04: And and Satan is saying, great.
[45:19] SPEAKER_01: We the other thing that we are really faithful to in our home is we do not put what you and I would call pornography, that culture would call great shows on our screen.
[45:32] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[45:33] SPEAKER_01: Um, I we if our children are at grandparents' house on the weekend, that's not our time to watch Game of Thrones.
[45:38] SPEAKER_02: Right.
[45:39] SPEAKER_01: I'm not overly picking on that.
[45:40] SPEAKER_01: I know that that's a broadly watched show.
[45:42] SPEAKER_01: Um, I get it.
[45:43] SPEAKER_01: And I also anytime somebody asks me if I've seen that show, my sort of joking, sort of like, hey, probably don't watch that response to that is no, because I don't watch porn.
[45:54] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
[45:54] SPEAKER_04: And same for Bridgerton, ladies.
[45:57] SPEAKER_01: So these are uh I I did not give the phone to him when he turned 16 because he turned 16.
[46:07] SPEAKER_01: Like he was given one when he was ready for that.
[46:10] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[46:10] SPEAKER_01: And if the answer had been never, and that is very likely, by the way, going to look different for the different ages of our children.
[46:16] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is 100% based off of knowing your kids and knowing maturity level, and then being the types of parents that are gonna follow up with at 16, I didn't give him the the access to nuclear codes either.
[46:31] SPEAKER_01: Like he still has parameters around him, he still has accountability, he still knows, and I do this on a somewhat frequent basis of hey, I'd like to see your phone.
[46:41] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[46:41] SPEAKER_01: Just to check in.
[46:43] SPEAKER_01: And if that phone does not ever never just go straight into my hand at that exact moment, I'm concerned.
[46:49] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[46:49] SPEAKER_01: And he doesn't have a phone anymore.
[46:51] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[46:52] SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
[46:52] SPEAKER_04: I think that's practical and wise.
[46:55] SPEAKER_04: And I just appreciate you sharing that.
[46:58] SPEAKER_04: And just um, man, if if someone wants to go check out unmentionable after after hearing this, um, I think there's a lot to learn there, but where can they find it?
[47:08] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Spotify or Apple Podcasts, literally just type in Unmentionable.
[47:12] SPEAKER_01: It's the first thing that comes up.
[47:13] SPEAKER_01: It's an eight-part series, deep diving into Josh's story and then the the uh trajectory of porn in America, um, and then a lot of the work that you're doing that I think a lot of people don't realize the degree of what you do, uh especially in that eighth episode.
[47:27] SPEAKER_01: Um, it's fascinating.
[47:29] SPEAKER_01: Um, and and we've seen a lot of fruit from it.
[47:33] SPEAKER_01: Like salvations have happened as a result of this thing of people finding Jesus afterward.
[47:37] SPEAKER_01: A lot of repentance has happened from this.
[47:39] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[47:40] SPEAKER_01: Um, it's been really beautiful to see and exciting to be a part of.
[47:43] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[47:44] SPEAKER_01: Well, love you, man.
[47:45] SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you so much.
[47:46] SPEAKER_01: Love you too.
[47:48] SPEAKER_04: Thank you so much for joining me today on the Walkworthy Podcast.
[47:52] SPEAKER_04: And if this conversation challenged you or encouraged you, don't keep it to yourself.
[47:57] SPEAKER_04: Share it with someone who needs to hear it.
[47:59] SPEAKER_04: And if you haven't already, hit subscribe and leave a review.
[48:03] SPEAKER_04: It helps more people discover truth and walk in purpose.
[48:07] SPEAKER_04: Be sure to follow us on social media and you could find those links below in the show notes.
[48:12] SPEAKER_04: Remember, Ephesians 4.1 reminds us to live a life worthy of the calling we received.
[48:18] SPEAKER_04: The calling is real, the walk is hard, but you don't have to walk it alone.
[48:25] SPEAKER_04: So until next time, stay rooted in the word, stay faithful in the fight, and let's keep walking worthy.
[48:33] SPEAKER_04: One step at a time.

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