Students for Child-Oriented Policy’s second annual conference to address pervasiveness of pornography

 

Scholars from across the country will gather in Notre Dame’s McKenna Conference Center on Saturday, January 31 to explore the personal and social costs of pornography.  The conference, hosted by Students for Child-Oriented Policy (SCOP), is meant to educate Notre Dame students, faculty, staff, and members of the South Bend community on aspects of pornography use in the internet age that are not often addressed.  The event will begin with opening remarks by Tiernan Kane, President of SCOP, and will feature four panels comprised of scholars from diverse disciplines.

The goal of the conference, which is free and open to the public, is to “provide sound scholarship along with personal testimony and therapeutic experience in an effort to better understand the personal and social costs of pornography in modern society,” according to the event’s registration site.

Sociologists, psychologists, lawyers, philosophers, and theologians alike will make presentations and engage with the audience in question and answer sessions.  The conference seeks to highlight how pervasive pornography has become since the introduction of the internet and personal computers, and how pornographic material shapes a viewer’s psychology, sometimes irrevocably.

Among those presenting at the conference will be William Struthers, Professor of Psychology at Wheaton College; Mark Regnerus, Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Texas, Austin; Mary Anne Layden, Director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania; Mary Leary, Professor of Law at Catholic University of America; and Father Peter Ryan, SJ, Executive Director of the Secretariat of Doctrine and Canonical Affairs for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  Topics to be addressed include pornography addiction, the exploitation of women and children in the production of pornography, and how pornography affects relationships, among others.

The conference is co-sponsored by the Rover, the Tocqueville Program for Inquiry into Religion and Public Life, Center for Ethics and Culture, Sycamore Trust, Love and Fidelity Network, Ethika Politika, and 5 male residence halls—Fisher, Morrissey, Stanford, St. Edward’s, and Zahm House.

Kane hopes that SCOP will be able to shed light on the corrosive nature of pornography so that policymakers are inspired to take action against this growing social harm.  When asked about his hopes for the outcome of the event, Kane told the Rover, “We hope the conference offers students and other attendees an opportunity to think clearly and speak freely about pornography.  We aim to spread awareness about the direct personal harm that pornography does to young viewers and the indirect social harm that a pornography-laden environment does to all children.”

Gerard Bradley, Professor of Law, told the Rover that “pornography has proved itself to be so very problematic, so much of a threat to healthy relationships between men and women that it has become a matter of social justice.”

His hope for the outcome of the conference is to inspire people “to limit and stigmatize pornography as dirty, as harmful, as unworthy, as immature, as shameful.”  Bradley will be speaking on a panel with Christopher Tollefsen, Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina, and will address the proper relationship between pornography and the law.

Another speaker at the event, Gabriel Reynolds, Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology, explained to the Rover that pornography draws people further away from God.  Reynolds’ main concern is how pornography shapes the neurology of the young men and women who become addicted to it and how that, in turn, changes their entire nature of thinking.  He said that “conferences like this one are critically important for the way they can inspire young people to fight back against pornography.”

For more detailed information about the conference or details on how to register, visit tocqueville.nd.edu.

 

Anna Bradley is a freshman in the College of Arts and Letters who is undecided as to what major she will pursue.  She can, however, definitively tell the world that she will not be attending law school like several of her family members before her.  Contact Anna at abradle4@nd.edu.