By Ganzi Muhanguzi

Stories of adultery, fornication and prostitution never miss out in the press today.
An increase in pornographic tabloids and literature means pornography is reaching all levels of society.

According to Police statistics, rape cases in the country shot from 15% in 2003 to 42% in 2004. 70% of the convicts in the national prisons are charged with rape-related cases.

Research has shown that many rapists and criminals are also addicted to pornography. It is this mounting pressure that prompted the Uganda Revenue Authority, last month, to embark on an anti-pornography campaign. The tax body’s Commissioner General, Allen Kagina, advised the public not to embrace everything from the West.

According to Pastor Martin Sempa, pornography is any material in graphic, written, verbal or visual form that is intended to sexually arouse the reader or viewer.

“Porn is like cocaine,” Steven Langa of the Family Life Network, a local NGO, says. “One gets addicted to it gradually. The addict becomes susceptible to any kind of deviant sexual behaviour and, in extreme cases, becomes a criminal or rapist.”

Langa says research shows that pornography is becoming more rampant in schools. In some boys’ schools, students hang pictures of nude women in their lockers and on the walls of their dormitories.

Judith Reisman, a renowned psychologist, argues that pornography causes major alteration in children’s perspectives on sex and also traumatizes them, making them unable to properly deal with sexual stimulation later in life.

“Children react with fear to the stimulus of sexual touch. Exposing them to pornography would trigger either greater or less alarm, impairing the child’s cognitive and emotional development in the long run,” Reisman observes.

Perhaps, the most repulsive example of the effects of pornography is the story of Ted Bundy.

Born in 1946, Bundy became a porn addict before turning 15. Although he was outwardly a very ordinary boy and was described by his college professors as ‘exceptionally brilliant’, Bundy’s fight with sexual addiction made him kill 35 known women and another unknown 65 victims. After his conviction in 1979, Bundy admitted to being addicted to pornography.

On his way to the execution room, Bundy told his executors: “You are going to kill me and that will protect the society from me. But out there, there are many more people addicted to pornography and you are doing nothing about that.”

Bundy’s chilling confessions reveal the disastrous path we choose when we condone pornography.

A pornography-free society may only be realised if parents echo Kagina’s calm but unalterable resolve: “I will not sell my children’s future for naything pornography has to offer.”

How to avoid pornography
-Let your children know the evils of pornography. Tell them you will periodically check their flash disks and iPods.

-Lead by example and be the first to stop porn. Don’t download adult content and take it home for viewing.

-Locate the home computer centrally, where anyone passing can view the screen.

-Employers should monitor and ensure that only work-related and appropriate content is viewed by employees.

-Install Internet filtering software on the computer.

-Schools should monitor students’ DVD and TV content.

-Do not take home adulterated publications like playboy and local tabloids home.

-Encourage children to share every book they are reading with you.

-Kids shouldn’t have tvs in their bedrooms.