If you think that crack cocaine or methamphetamines are the greatest addictive scourge endured by Americans today, then TV talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey wants you to think again. According to Winfrey, one of the richest and most widely respected women in the United States, it’s pornography which is “the biggest addiction in this country” that torments “millions” of Americans daily.On a recent episode of her popular TV show, Winfrey ominously and disapprovingly intoned the number of adult videos produced each year, the money that their sales and rentals generate, and the demographics of consumers, including the percentage of clergy that indulge or are tempted to indulge in explicit materials.

“This is taking over marriages in the country,” she warned, using words including “smut,” “sleaze,” and “crack cocaine” to refer to pornographic materials which she insisted are “destroying millions of marriages.”

Chances are good that no one has had their television or car stereo stolen to feed a porn hound’s “addiction,” yet the calm, cool, and collected Winfrey kept a serious expression on her face throughout her recent “Porn Epidemic” episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show (www2.oprah.com), while simultaneously confessing absolute ignorance concerning the subject matter yet remaining confident about its destructive effect upon marriage and society at large.

There have been and will be far more sensational and distorted treatments of this controversial subject, but the fact that Winfrey is such an influential figure in American society and that she chose to tackle the complex topic without a single alternative viewpoint is distressing, if not entirely unexpected. Even more distressing is how Winfrey, who has achieved amazing success in spite of extreme odds, can be part of a movement that simultaneously scapegoats the adult industry while creating a victim class that accepts little, if any, responsibility for its behavior.

The multiple Emmy Award winning personality brought the supposed tragedy of porn addiction home to viewers by introducing two couples whose marriages have struggled with the issue. In each case, what was often most striking was not what was said or done by the couples – but what was not. Not a single person mentioned had discussed sex with his or her fiancé prior to marriage, nor was there any suggestion that either couple had a plan for dealing with conflict resolution, jealousy, or insecurity. The presumption throughout was that an Ozzie and Harriett fantasy would and should become their reality and that any deviation from such a thing was a sure sign of moral failure.

First up – and most sensational – was Grammy award winning gospel singer Kirk Franklin, an intensely handsome man who confessed his “X-rated secret” to the audience and was rewarded with wild applause when he assured them that he had been porn free for five years.

The program’s promo voiceovers were spot on when they indicted Franklin for hiding “a life of hypocrisy from his family, friends, and fans for years,” given that the man slut would regularly leave the stage after singing songs of chaste spirituality and return to his hotel room, where he would gleefully bang groupies, watch explicit videos, and jack off to photos in adult magazines. Ultimately, he married his beautiful wife Tammy in the hopes that it would cure his obsession with porn.

Oprah was understandably merciless with the wealthy singer when it came to condemning his aggressively hypocritical behavior. She was also surprisingly sympathetic to the notion that young boys and men often become attracted to erotic materials as they become sexually self-aware. Franklin warned that assuming such a thing is healthy and natural is part of the “danger” presented by porn, and hinted that his own exposure to it had driven him to engage in inappropriate behavior, even as a child. The fact that the publicly penitent gospel sensation refused to divulge the supposedly heinous things that he did with neighborhood children after he had viewed his uncle’s magazine collection made it difficult for objective viewers to determine whether his alleged disgust with himself was appropriate, however. After all, playing “doctor” with age peers is a common childish game that provides many with valuable information about the human body – whereas molesting the locals is generally and appropriately frowned upon, regardless of the perp’s age.

Once married to the beautiful Tammy, he was “crazy enough to try to bring it (porn) into the marriage” in the hopes that he could share his interest in erotic materials with his wife. He was met with a categorical refusal, although she admitted on camera that she was occasionally willing to dress up in sexy garments for him. Faced with a wife who condemned his only form of reading material, he began to view it in private, riddled with guilt over the fact that he would sometimes fantasize about it during their sexual encounters. After four children and a secret porn habit that he increasingly felt kept him from putting his wife “on a pedestal” where she “belonged,” he vowed to be done with porn, and threw all of his magazines into a dumpster. He hit “rock bottom” when he drove back to the dumpster in the middle of the night in order to retrieve the discarded publications. At his request, his wife kept an eagle eye on him, even calling him while he was on the road to make sure he was not seeking companionship in the pages of a trashy magazine. Although “clean” now, for a time porn relapses continued to threaten their marriage.

Josh and Rebecca, another married couple, shared their own tale of marital woe. Unlike Franklin, Josh prefers to procure his porn online, once spending eight hours downloading and sorting explicit content that he insists barely inspires any sexual pleasure anymore. A secret until his wife found porn URLs in the browser’s history, Rebecca informed him immediately that she disapproved of his interests and felt “hurt” by them. Like the Franklins before, Josh continued to view porn, and now Rebecca is seriously considering divorce. When confronted by such a prospect, Josh admitted that the number one thing keeping him in the relationship has been his need to purchase a computer on which to view more porn. He has been without porn for two weeks now and confesses that it is a “struggle” but that he is “recovering.”

Although much was said by both couples about pornography and how it was perceived, sometimes for good reason, as being an out-of-control obsession, very little was said about how well the individual partners had communicated their experiences with, interests in, or attitudes about sex with one another. The persistent assumption throughout the program was that all would be ideal within these marriages if only the men could control their insane cravings for porn. The discomfort each woman felt with erotic material was presented as right and proper, as was their decision to demand zero tolerance behavior from their husbands. Negotiation or compromise was never presented as an option, nor was there any discussion of the fact that many couples are able to find a healthy balance between fantasy and reality sex.

Ironically, the closest thing to a voice of reason came from Rob Weiss, who was presented as an expert on sexual addiction and the founder the Sexual Recovery Institute of Los Angeles. Although he engaged in what seemed like astonishingly unprofessional on-the-fly pop diagnoses of the two men (and, in fact, all “porn addicts”) by diagnosing them as unable to bond emotionally with others, he did caution Winfrey and others from concluding that all who enjoy pornography are addicted to it. In fact, according to Weiss, the vast majority of people who enjoy pornography are not addicted. Only a small number, he estimates as much as 15 percent, have a problem.

What no one except for Josh, who will likely be divorced before too long, had the courage or perception to point out was that the behavior both men are tormented by is a “compulsion.” Had their obsession been sports, computer games, collecting stamps, playing chess, working on the car, or keeping a garden, chances are good that their wives might still have complained – but without the feeling of moral superiority or the need to confront their own issues surrounding sexuality and personal self-image and importance. In each case, the object of obsession can take on enormous importance and provide comforting reassurance. While it satisfies our culture’s bi-polar relationship with sexuality to insist that the evil of porn viewing is the fact it “burns” images into the minds of men, the truth is probably closer to Franklin’s confession of seeking “companionship” from those images – and Weiss’ unwitting admission that society encourages those who enjoy erotic materials to engage in secrecy and “shame,” thus making open and honest dialogue about any number of things, sex being only one of them, nearly impossible.

If the fact that nearly half of Americans, including those dedicated to a life of spirituality, confess an interest in erotic materials, perhaps it is not that such an interest is sinful and “dirty,” but healthy and normal. Perhaps it would be easier to assist those men and women who truly have reached a point where their interest in sex and their obsession with accessing sexual materials is out of balance with their need for real life intimacy if we could rid culture of the message that sex is filthy except maybe when you do it during a marriage and ideally with the intent of causing a pregnancy. Perhaps the truth isn’t that millions of marriages are threatened by pornography but that they are threatened by the inability of their members to be honest with one another – or even themselves — about desires, pleasures, values, and fantasies. Perhaps if men and women could more freely acknowledge and share information about these things, greater intimacy and understanding would result and, in some cases, less of a need to explore their fulfillment outside of the relationship – or even an increased enjoyment and intimacy by exploring them together, either by actually living those fantasies or merely enjoying them from the safety of their own home.

Even Weiss, who is surely benefiting financially from the persecution of those whose interest in porn upsets their partners, admits that “porn addiction” is not about sex at all but, rather, about becoming absorbed by a transcendent experience where the user loses their sense of time and place, ultimately losing themselves however temporarily in a sense of well-being.

Ultimately what fuels the witch hunt hysteria that is the “porn addiction epidemic” is the fundamental belief that pleasure is wrong, especially if it involves someone other than one’s committed partner, even virtually, even in one’s mind, even for a moment. Such a twisted philosophy discourages honest communication and drives a bigger wedge between the sexes than any pornographic video, website, or photo set ever could.