The madness of the porn-addicted culture, now playing at an Iowa prison

from Stand Firm by Timothy Fountain 

An Iowa - yes, that Iowa - prison administration let some of the state’s most violent inmates watch movies full of sex and sexual sadism, and threatened a female guard harassed by the convicts with insubordination for turning off the films.
A bit of the AP report showed up here in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader today.  Some high lowlights, includingadditional AP content:

Murderers, sexual predators and others at a unit for mentally ill inmates at the maximum-security state prison in Fort Madison watched movies such as “Deranged,” a horror film that includes a scene in which a woman is beaten, raped, hung upside down and flayed…
...(Correctional Officer Kristine) Sink, who started at the prison in 2003 after the factory where she had been working shut down, said the movies played multiple times a day for a week on a television in a common area where 45 inmates could watch. Some inmates would openly masturbate and make sexually harassing comments to her.
Sink said that when prison officials finally acted on her complaints in September 2011 by largely barring movies with sexually explicit content, inmates blamed her and subjected her to a torrent of insults and threats to beat or even kill her. One threw urine on her… 

Despite standing suspicions of porn’s negative impact on the brain and resultant behaviors, much research remains blocked by assertion of “rights” and opposition to “moralizing,” as documented by Psychology Today in a 2011 piece on brain research.
In other words, the culture, like an addict, comes up with layers of defenses to avoid any hard looks at its drug of choice.
In a revealing quote, the Iowa prison’s warden, in a rebuttal to Officer Sink’s complaints, said,

“I question who here has created a `more hostile environment to work in’ or an `unsecured environment to work in’, as you call it,” Ault wrote. “I cannot disagree with you that some of the scenes in movies have shown sexual violence, especially those involving females, and should not have been shown, and we believe we have tightened up the process to lessen the likelihood of such movies being shown. We must remember, however, that we are an institution of adult males, and much of what we show can be seen on general television broadcasts.”

Just our culture’s normal entertainment.  And those who’ve shown they can’t make a distinction between fantasy and reality deserve their fair share, don’t-cha-know.
Other defenses for the right to porn are feminism (ironically and unintentionally), which would limit this story to something about women in the workplace rather than a more critical look at the culture’s debasing of sex; LGBT activism, with its constant assertion of sexual expression as a necessary and inviolable human right; and Civil Libertarians who extend “privacy” out of the bedroom and into the public square as a form of “speech.”
Jesus, in contrast to our tribal politics, points to the fallen nature of humanity:

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality [porneia], theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.”
(Matthew 15:19-20 ESV)

Paul points out that even with an expansive view of freedom, some people need to refrain from some stuff:

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.  (1 Corinthians 6:12 ESV)
“All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. (1 Corinthians 10:23 ESV)

But America, of which the Iowa Department of Corrections is but a microcosm, has no use for such wisdom when it comes to pornography, in any and all of its forms.