The Family Research Council isn’t afraid to pick a tough fight. It has pushed for the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, endorsed the requirement of a one-year waiting period for couples with children who want to get a divorce, and publicly discouraged the extension of civil rights to homosexuals. Supporters of the FRC, a conservative Christian lobbyist group, gathered Wednesday to discuss the organization’s latest crusade: the elimination of pornography on college campuses. Fighting “Porn in the Dorm”—as the FRC called their Family Policy Lecture on the subject—is an uphill battle. A 2001 study conducted by scholars at Texas A&M revealed that while 56% of men admit to using the Internet to access sexual explicit materials, 72% of college-aged men readily say the same. Recent figures show higher percentages of porn site subscriptions in zip codes with a great density of young people and those with undergraduate degrees. The prevalence of porn on campuses hasn’t defeated Dr. Patrick Fagan, Director of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute and Wednesday’s speaker. An Irish former grade school teacher and trained clinical psychologist, Fagan has worked on family issues in Washington with organizations such as the Free Congress Foundation, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Heritage Foundation. His controlled tone, combined with the hum of the FRC’s air conditioning and free Potbelly’s sandwiches, lulled the audience of about 40 young professionals into a comfortable midday trance reminiscent of Sunday school. “Our teenagers today cannot know what is natural sexuality,” he said, citing a UK study frankly titled, “Basically…porn is everywhere.” Fagan compared modern American society to “pagan Rome,” claiming that the proliferation of sexual deviancy in our country is a direct threat to the “people-forming institutions” of family, church, and school. He considers the matter of paramount importance to civilization as a whole. “Sexual intercourse, like atomic energy, is a powerful agent for good if channeled well, but for ill if not. Healthy societies maintain their stability by channeling the sexual energies of young adults into marriage,” says his 2009 paper, “The Effects of Pornography![]()
