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The cnn.com headline cried out, in larger point-size than your average headline, Inside the Christian crusade against porn!

It goes on to breathlessly ask the question that’s been on virtually no one’s mind, “Is Christian therapy for porn addicts working? Or does it confuse sin and addiction?”

The answer is a simple mash-up of the question: No, Christian therapy for porn addicts confuses sin and addiction with human nature.

The subhead on the story’s main page was equally as overwritten: Can the Christian crusade against pornography bear fruit?

Now, when one calls up images of the Christian Crusades, it isn’t morally indignant suburbanites that come to mind, it’s rapacious, invading hordes of murderous thugs. I don’t want to reveal any spoilers, but historically, the women and children the Christian crusaders of old were trying to “save” usually ended up sexually assaulted and murdered, their villages put to the torch and any surviving men impressed into service.

All in the name of God. God is great, no?

Digressing from my digression… I’m not even sure I like the label “sex addicts,” because it casts a really wide net whose interpretation is loose enough that it could be applied to almost any sexual activity beyond marital coitus for the purpose of procreation.

I was reading a recent article in Newsweek about sex addiction and thought roughly the same thing.

The Newsweek piece went on to bluster with great umbrage that they “...had big, big trouble finding non [loosely-described sex-trade users—wait till you see how loose],” Farley says. “We finally had to settle on a definition of non-sex-buyers as men who have not been to a strip club more than two times in the past year, have not purchased a lap dance, have not used pornography more than one time in the last month, and have not purchased phone sex or the services of a sex worker, escort, erotic masseuse, or prostitute.”

By that definition, no wonder they had trouble finding non-users. By throwing “using pornography” into the mix—up to two times a month!—they made their control group almost impossible to assemble. I mean, if somebody whacks-off to Field & Stream, does that necessarily make Field & Stream pornography?

When I say it’s a slippery slope, I’m not just making a weak pun.

Plus, nudie images are as abundant—and free—on the web as poorly-articulated political opinions and YouTube clips of cats playing the piano. The actual porn film industry is dying because everything they used to charge for, people can now find gratis on the web. As a newspaperman, it’s strange to find myself in any group that includes people who get laid as often as porn stars, but these are strange times we’re living in.

Moreover, erotic images date back to as long ago as man started sketching images on cave walls. No ancient society that has survived intact enough to be studied has ever been found to be free of sexually-explicit imagery.

The urge to surge is universal and timeless. Is whatever dogma-based “therapy” the Christians are wheeling out to combat the sin of Onanism—which has been around considerably longer than Christianity itself—likely to succeed?

Human nature says no.

History says no.

History does suggest, however, that the attempt to suppress one’s most primal instinct tends to lead to aberrant, amoral, animalistic behavior. Do I have to say anything more than The Catholic Church + pedophilia?

Christians, please, direct your energies to more attainable, worthy goals. According to your own Good Book, Christ never once beefed about jerking off, but you couldn’t get Him to shut up about making peace and feeding the hungry.

You don’t suppose He was trying to tell His followers something about priorities, do you?