The Challenge
There was a time when somewhere in every large city there was a dirty building, dimly lit, tucked back where decent folks would never go. Nearby was a liquor store and a cheap motel that rented rooms by the hour.
It cost more if you wanted clean sheets. An XXX and a blinking neon sign, sporting a girlie silhouette, marked the building. Only the sleaziest characters in town would go to such a place, and then they hurried in with their collars up or their hats pulled down low. Zoning laws prevented the placement of these hellholes close to residential areas or churches. Those ordinary fathers who might have lusted to know what tantalizing secrets lay behind the black door and painted windows had more self-respect, or at the least, concern for their reputations, than to risk being seen patronizing those outposts of Sodom. The Canaanites, whom God slew down to the last woman and child, would have been destroyed sooner if they had obtained this 16-millimeter sin.
Twenty years ago most of us didn't even know one person who patronized these places. It was unheard of and the buildings were seldom seen. The law and the courts treated those "Adult Book-stores" like spilt sewage.
In the early nineties, most of us heard about people who owned computers in their homes. Then we heard about something called the web. What is that? Something like a spider web? Do I remember a famous line from one of the books we used to read, something about, "O the tangled web we weave…?"
"They are looking at dirty pictures on their computers," someone said.
"Doesn't look like they could see much on those lousy screens."
"Oh, they are improving the monitors every day; they will soon be as good as the TV."
"Thankfully, the computers are too expensive for most people to have one in their home, and they are too hard to operate, so the children won't be exposed to that stuff. Anyway, they will soon make it illegal."
Well, here we are just one decade later, and the Supreme Court of the United States of America has protected the rights of profiteers and perverts to display images of child molestation on the web. It is illegal for public libraries to filter out pornography. While the Ten Commandments are considered offensive and are being removed from government property, taxpayers are forced to support the government supply of pornography to the masses, free of charge. Most homes now have computers with monitors that are more realistic than the TV. Children can operate them better than the adults; and over 20% of everything on the web is pornography or worse. Half of the Christian families in America now have the XXX store right in their homes. Families lie down at night and sleep just a few feet from the black door of Sodom. People who would have been outraged to have found a stack of porno magazines under a mattress now have a stack 30 miles high, right in their home.
