How many times have we heard about our tax dollars paying for government workers who spend their days watching porn at work?

Which city in the United States is home to the most pornography viewers? The answer is Washington, D.C., the seat of the nation’s power players. Do you ever wonder why the Department of Justice does not enforce obscenity laws? Could the viewing habits of D.C.’s denizens influence the lack of enforcement?

The source of this information is PornHub, a XXX website. The New York Daily News carried the story about the study and noted that the rate of online pornography watched in D.C. is 14.18 videos per person in a year. While that may not sound like a lot to some, consider that the D.C. rate is nearly twice the rate of the second highest porn viewing state, Hawaii, where it is 7.57 per person.

We know that not everyone watches pornography, so that means the people actually watching online pornography in Washington are watching a lot more videos than 14.18 each. Who is watching them, and are they doing so at work? Does it influence their work?

How many times have we heard about our tax dollars paying for government workers who spend their days watching porn at work? One Washington Times article lists these agencies that have employees with porn problems: Pentagon, Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration, U.S. State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Missile Defense Agency. The article quotes a cyber-security expert who warns, “Many pornographic websites are infected and criminals and foreign intelligence services such as Russia’s use them to gain access and harvest data.”

You would think that national security nugget would be a good enough reason for prosecuting obscenity producers and purveyors, but evidently it is not.

In 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder shut down the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, which was established under Pres. George W. Bush’s Administration. A Politico article quoted Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in reaction to this move:

“Attorney General Holder told the Judiciary Committee last year that this task force was the centerpiece of the strategy to combat adult obscenity,” Sen. Hatch told POLITICO in a statement Friday. “Rather than initiate a single new case since President Obama took office, however, the only development in this area has been the dismantling of the task force. As the toxic waste of obscenity continues to spread and harm everyone it touches, it appears the Obama Administration is giving up without a fight.”

According to the PornHub statistics, obscenity blankets Washington. The lack of adult obscenity prosecutions is harming everyone. While the Department of Justice focuses on prosecuting cases of child pornography, those who are watching adult pornography may turn to child pornography when the adult material no longer excites them. If adult pornography prosecutions are non-existent, a gateway to child pornography is left in place to ensnare new viewers.

So, while some of D.C.’s denizens turn a blind eye to punishing the producers and distributors of obscenity, others are glued to their porn-filled computer screens. The key to why obscenity, while illegal, thrives in D.C., and beyond may be one mouse click away on screens hidden behind closed doors and cubicle walls in offices throughout Washington.

So here’s a little story about the time I blushed, well, fifty shades of red.  You can’t miss the smash hit, Fifty Shades of Grey.  You see women reading it on every bus, subway, and in every hair salon.  So what’s a girl to do?  Read the book to see what all the hype is about, right?  Sure, I thought.  So I flipped through a couple of pages to check it out.

Yeah.  Instant regret.

Two pages in, I had to put the book down and ask God for forgiveness!  Talk about “mommy porn.”  I thought books like this were only found in some women’s homes on a hidden book shelf next to covers of Fabio, a horse, and some buxom beauty. Put a glossy new cover on it, and it’s a best seller?

American women are in dire straits. Our country’s national debt is sky rocketing; women account for 92% of the jobs lost under this administration, and our children’s and parents’ health care is in dire jeopardy of being run by Washington bureaucrats obsessed with taking away our right to “shop” for this commodity.  It’s no wonder women need an escape, but while Fifty Shades of Grey may seem like a simple “escape” from the real world, it’s more like jumping from the frying pan into a nuclear reactor.

And what’s it going to get us?  Nothing.  It’s erotica, sexually themed fantasy, quasi-intellectual word candy that’ll rot our brains … and maybe our souls.

Christian women, we need to wake up!  This country needs us. It needs our passion, our intensity, our desire to defend ourselves and our families.  It needs the $22.50 we spent on “Fifty Shades of Grey” to be invested in a cause or campaign in which we believe (click here for a good place to start).

But women everywhere are politically and spiritually asleep, lulled into a cultural obsession with Christian Grey, an abusive therapist who seduces a college senior.  And some men are even buying it on the advice of women as a lesson book for what women like.  I recently heard a male bus driver say he wants to get this book on audio!  (I’ll bet you do, ya perv!)

Is this what we’ve come to: Women — Christian women — flocking to bookstores in droves to buy morally reprehensible tripe?

Why are we falling headlong into this grey area, where Hollywood tells us that all we should care about is stepping outside of reality and filling our heads with hormone-driven daydreams of men to whom we are not married?

Do you remember being afraid of the dark as a child?  (Ninety degree turn, I know.  But stay with me.)  Do you remember the day you stopped being afraid?  It was probably when you learned that darkness is simply the absence of light.  Have you thought about that?  While we can study light, we can’t study darkness.  Why not?  Well, how do you measure how dark a room is?  You measure the amount of light present.

Now let that sink in for a moment. What in your life is dark? What is light? We can only measure darkness in our lives by looking at how much light is in it.

And somewhere, in this struggle between light and dark, we have the annoying issue of “grey,” that fuzzy middle ground in which we find such a false refuge from condemnation, but which in reality God hates so very much.  And we need to ask ourselves, “What is grey for me? Facebook? The music I listen to? The movies? What about the books I read? What about Christian Grey?”

Sisters and fellow Christians, if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that Fifty Shades of Grey is merely a pornographic pleasure for our minds, and, as we know, the Bible commands us to guard our hearts, for everything we do will flow from it (Proverbs 4:23).  By investing our energy in smut, we are tearing down these walls of protection around our hearts.

The Lord has given us a clear, black-and-white example of true love.  The images that are depicted in Fifty Shades of Grey are full of lust and give a false perspective on how men and women should present themselves.

While Christians are still to be a part of the world, we must not conform to its patterns. Anne Frank once said, “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” Ironically, sometimes we have to be that candle. Let us choose to defy and define darkness in our lives. It just may shine light on a grey area in your life and maybe in the life of another.

Let us resolve to keep our eyes, our money, and our time away from morally questionable pursuits, and, instead, let us focus on the God of true love, who is fifty shades of great.  Let those of us who are single resolve to wait for a man who knows our value is not in how much you can service him, but how much we can serve the Lord.  Let us wait for a man who knows that true love is black and white, not shades of grey.

Today’s guest blogger is actually two women. This piece was authored by Alison Howard, Concerned Women for America’s (CWA) Executive Assistant to the CEO, and Amy Clemenson, an intern with CWA’s Ronald Reagan Memorial Internship Program.

Editor’s Note: This article was first printed on The Baltimore Sun, August 06, 2009.  It’s underlining message is as appropriate today as it was then.  Today, marking the 39th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade desicion and as we prepare for the upcoming elction, we thought it important for you to read throught Penny’s pice once again.

The battles on Capitol Hill over Sonia Sotomayor and health care have convinced me that pro-life Americans should take a cue from a popular chick flick. A hit movie newly out on DVD recently proclaims a shocking truth to women who make excuses for the bad behavior of men they date. That fact is: If he lies, cheats and treats you disrespectfully, “he’s just not that into you.”

The movie evokes cringes as one recognizes realistic scenes of bright women and men making humiliating mistakes and errors in judgment. In 2008, many pro-life Americans made a horrific error in judgment. Exit polling from the presidential election sponsored by Beliefnet.com showed that 20 percent of those voting for Barack Obama defined themselves as “pro-life.” According to Christianity Today, 25 percent of self-identified evangelical or born-again Christians voted for President Obama.

Why? Most of these same folks turned out in both 2000 and 2004 for George W. Bush. The reasons for this change of heart are complicated, as in any breakup. They may have been reacting to the war or overspending by Republicans or any number of scandals. Maybe the spark was gone. Or maybe they were seduced!

It’s OK, admit it. He’s cute, he’s smart, he’s likable and he’s charismatic. He promised change and attention to issues men and women of faith care about, such as poverty. One Christian conservative professor even wrote a book proclaiming that truly living like Jesus includes a vote for Mr. Obama. (Good to know.)

However, pro-lifers have been wronged. This lover who showed so much original ardor lied to you – and it started on the honeymoon. On the president’s third day in office – one day after the 36th March for Life – he issued an executive order reversing U.S. policy that prohibited the use of U.S. funds to promote or pay for abortions abroad.

In March, he restored funding to the United Nations Population Fund that had been frozen due to its support of organizations that promote and even coerce poor women in other countries to have abortions. He opened the door for the federal funding of research that requires the destruction of human embryos and canceled the Bush “conscience clause” regulation that protected health care workers from being penalized for refusing to participate in providing abortions.

The president has meticulously chosen advisers and top administration officials who have outstanding pro-choice credentials, including Kathleen Sebelius, who is in charge of the nation’s health care system as secretary of Health and Human Services. Make no mistake; in Washington, people are policy.

Then, of course, there is his appointee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, who said in her Senate confirmation hearing that Roe v. Wade is settled law and that there is a constitutional right to privacy. Americans United for Life’s research of her record warns that she is far more radical then even former Justice David Souter.

There are many other “indiscretions,” but let’s cut to the Mac daddy of all slights: heath care reform.

The Obama administration is pushing relentlessly and recklessly for government-run health care that would force almost all health care plans to include unlimited numbers of abortions for any reason and would make Americans complicit in these abortions due to the pooling of premiums. The legislation on the table amounts to the largest expansion of abortion in U.S. history.

How could he, you say? My fellow pro-lifers, grab a tissue and listen up. The truth is, he’s not scared to get into a relationship, he hasn’t lost your number, and he is not simply busy. Noooo. He is in bed with someone else. That’s right! President Obama loves the abortion lobby. He takes their money and their calls, but more importantly, he does their bidding.

We’ve all heard the taunting tune.  Many of us sang it in kindergarten, ribbing older siblings and starry-eyed lovers with its lyrics:

“—– and —– sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!  First comes love…then comes marriage…then comes the baby in the baby carriage.”

Looking back, it’s amazing how much our simple nursery rhymes taught us about life, including the natural progression of relationships.  Intuitively, we knew these axioms to be true and passed them down throughout the generations.  But these days, as conventional wisdom is increasingly convoluted, it isn’t surprising that many have rejected the order of romance first, marriage second, and finally childbearing, instead creating their own rules of the game.  Indeed, gone are the days of Brady Brunch families and June Cleaver-style households; they have morphed into ABC’s “Modern Family“ — a show promoted as “redefining what family means,” and portrayed as “one big straight-gay, multicultural, traditional, happy family.”  Hence, every day it seems, a new tide of case studies surfaces on the shores of our Hollywood-esque world of hook-ups, shack-ups, babydaddys, and babymommas, attempting to prove how “liberated” we are, unbound by the shackles of tradition.

Riding on this bandwagon is Russian tennis star and Biggest Loser trainer, Anna Kournikova, who claimed in the latest issue of Women’s Health magazine, “[Marriage] isn’t important to me. I’m in a happy relationship — that’s all that matters.”

While this creed sounds good to some, realistically, it isn’t true.  On the contrary, marriage does matter!  Social science research and demographic data make the case that marriage matters and has far more impact on adults than most people acknowledge.  Researchers indicate that married people have better health, longer and more productive lives, greater general happiness, and better mental health than non-married individuals.  Further, they agree that marriage performs a critical function for society.

Cultures globally consider marriage the link that unites parents with their children and families to their communities.  In fact, as author Caitlin Flanagan proclaims, “There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage.”  Marriage provides the context within which the next generation establishes lifelong habits and develops character, preparing young people to become well-adjusted, productive adults and involved, law-abiding citizens.

Still, the overwhelming message for youth today is that marriage can wait or be disregarded entirely, as the Anna Kournikovas of society suggest.  It’s time for the reams of research and the common experiences of teachers, social workers, and law enforcement officers, who daily observe the outcomes of family breakdown, to penetrate the media fog to change the attitudes of the public and convince young people that marriage matters — for each of them and for all of us.

The National Enquirer reported last week that now-38-year-old Monica Lewinsky (famous for her shocking affair with President Bill Clinton) is living the life of a near recluse and is “desperately trying to live down her scandalous past.”

One of Monica’s friends said her “self-esteem is at an all-time low.” She has tried several high-profile projects to become self-supporting — most notably, a line of handbags that failed spectacularly. She has reportedly given up her own apartment and “drifts between the two coasts” staying with relatives and friends. Friends say that she is “alone most of the time and is pretty much a social pariah” who has given up on finding love. To summarize: “Monica still feels like she’s the punch line to a dirty joke.”

There is something wrong — but not surprising — when a young female intern suffers long-term consequences for an affair, while the powerful male, former President Bill Clinton, has moved on with his life and regained most of the power and prestige that he enjoyed before the firestorm of publicity about his moral failings and his ultimate impeachment in the House and trial in the Senate (where he was found “not guilty” and remained in office to live another day and rebuild his reputation and career).

Monica was 21 and an intern at the White House in 1995 when she engaged in a sexual relationship with then-President Clinton (D). Like many young women engaged in such illicit behavior, Monica claims that their affair was driven by mutual love, and she contradicts the accounts by Mr. Clinton that dismiss the relationship as mere physical lust that meant nothing. She was profoundly wounded by the former President calling her “that woman.”

Yet, throughout the ages, women have paid a high price when they have put a low value on the worth of their gift of intimacy. Monica is not alone in realizing — after the fact — that a guy who wants free sex will place no value on the privilege of sexual intimacy no matter what he says beforehand, and no matter his wealth, status, power, or position of privilege.

Bottom line: a man with character does not take what he wants without first making a commitment commensurate with the value of the gift he desires. This is a sad lesson that Monica Lewinski and countless other women have learned from bitter experience.

Or not.

According to the New York Post, former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey has been denied his request to join the priesthood of the Episcopal Church.  McGreevey, you might remember, resigned as governor in 2004, declaring himself to be a “gay American.”  After leaving public office, McGreevey also left the Catholic Church and enrolled at General Theological Seminary in Manhattan to earn a master’s in divinity.  He and his partner, real estate agent Mark O’Donnell, live together openly in Plainfield, New Jersey.    

But none of that is at issue.  Apparently, the church that has proudly embraced, ordained, and promoted homosexuals was “bothered” by the former governor’s “bitter divorce” from Dina Matos McGreevey.  Apparently, divorce itself is not a problem for the Episcopalian Church –– Gene Robinson, both divorced and homosexual, was appointed a bishop.  Ah, but McGreevey’s divorce was “bitter.”  Hence the rejection. … over a “bitter” divorce. … not divorce per se and certainly not unnatural, dangerously unhealthy sex preferences. 

Hey, a church has to have some standards!

Two Notre Dame professors, Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, analyzed data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, the National Survey of Family Growth, and the College Social Life Survey (and others), in their effort to understand premarital sex among young Americans. Their book, Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying, is a 312-page review of the current sexual situation for contemporary young adults. Naomi Schaefer Riley reviews the book for Commentary. Miss Riley reports:

• Young adults today do not associate sex with marriage.
• An “increasing share” of young adults don’t even think about getting married.
• 84 percent of 18- to 23-year-olds have had premarital sex.
• College students are less promiscuous than those who are not in college.
• Serial monogamy is the typical pattern for today’s young adults.
• Men tend to overestimate their peers’ sexual activity.
• Half of the women, and 25 percent of men, engaged in “unwanted” sexual activity in the two weeks prior to the survey conducted by one study.
• Young adults have bought into some significant myths:
  • They believe married sex is a “let down,” when, in truth, married couples have more and more satisfactory sex than unmarried couples.
  • They are under the mistaken impression that cohabitation is a good “testing ground” for marriage, when numerous studies disprove that myth and, in fact, show that cohabitation is more a guarantee of divorce and unhappy married relationship.
  • Pornography is a major source of sexual information and attitudes and has, in fact, replaced sexual activity with a real woman for many young men.
• Women continue to control access to sex (though many young women do not realize their power in the sexual realm); women are still the ones to decide if and when sex occurs.
• Regnerus and Uecker conclude that women are poor “sexual economists” — that is, they think their sexual power is their control over sexual desire in men (actually, men are thinking about sex all the time). In fact, women’s sexual power consists of establishing the terms and conditions for sexual interaction — a fact of which many young women are unaware.
  • On campuses with more women (the situation on most of today’s college campuses), there is more sexual activity (women have less power within the context of that environment than in situations where there are fewer women).
  • When the environment pushes women to have sex, they make choices that end up making them unhappy.
  • One study revealed that 70 percent of young adults regret the circumstances and timing when they lost their virginity, with women having the most regret.
  • Women are more unhappy the more partners they have (but men are not). And, regrettably, the younger the loss of virginity, the more sexual partners young people tend to have.

Source: “Premarital Wrecks,” by Naomi Schaefer Riley, a review of Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think About Marrying, by Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, Commentary, February 2011, pp. 59-61.

Iran may execute Sakineh Ashtiani by hanging, a human rights group warns. Sakineh’s original sentence of stoning to death for what appears to be a trumped up charge of adultery drew international outcries.

The International Committee Against Stoning reports that her sentence was to be carried out on November 3. Officials in Iran have not confirmed the report.

Concerned Women for America joined the chorus condemning the barbaric sentence. Iranian officials suspended her sentence when international leaders took up Sakineh’s case, calling Iran’s action “medieval” and “brutal”. Even Brazil, an ally of Iran, offered asylum to her.

Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed Western media concocted Sakineh’s case. Two German men were arrested in Iran last month for attempting to interview Sakineh’s son.

Please pray for Sakineh and other unknown victims of Iran’s harsh imposition of Sharia law. 

For background information on Sakineh and her story, click here to see my article in Human Events.

Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America (CWA), the nation’s largest public policy women’s group, said the following about Rep. Mark Souder’s (R-Indiana) resignation:

“I am deeply saddened by the news of Congressman Mark Souder’s fall into the temptation of an affair. Those of us who have worked with Mark over the years know him to be a kind and thoughtful legislator. If Mark Souder is capable of sexual misconduct, it could happen to anyone. The frat house environment on Capitol Hill does nothing to encourage accountability. Most Members do not live with their families while they are working in D.C. during the week and have even ditched common rules of etiquette that even major corporations follow such as office doors with windows or careful examination of employee/boss interaction.

“There are many Americans running for office this year who want to bring integrity and family values back to Washington. I challenge any incumbents who manage to escape the wrath of the American people to guard their hearts and reputations and to live by higher standards that reflect the traditional moral values our country holds so dear.”

“In addition, as a Christian I believe that we are all fallen and in need of redemption. I join the countless others now and throughout ages past who cling diligently to the hope of grace and redemption.”

It’s been too easy to mistake the U.S. Congress for frat house brothers recently.  And the worst part is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi could care less.  She might as well say “boys will be boys” and let them have their tickle fights and hit on staff members and interns to no end. 

Like Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), I have serious concerns about when Democratic leadership knew of the allegations against former Congressman Eric Massa (D-New York) but refused to take action.  It’s time that Nancy Pelosi (D-California) hand over the gavel.  Instead of draining the swamp like she promised, she’s now taking a bubble bath in it — and loving every minute.