It was early evening on August 28 when I arrived at the Tate Student Center’s Georgia Hall without a ticket or hope of attending a sold-out debate.
    Prolific porn actor and seedy personality Ron Jeremy was set to face off against Craig Gross, the founder of a Christian ministry called xxxchruch.com.
    The debate, sponsored by the University Union, was about pornography and its effects on individuals who view or participate in it.
    The gathering crowd of students outside the Hall was abuzz when I descended the stair adjacent to the Georgia Hall almost an hour before the scheduled 7:30 starting time.
    I found this excitement prophylactic—the energetic horde shielded my anxious mind from the knowledge that I was trying to spend the evening with the greasy star or producer of nearly 1,800 “adult films.”
    My attention quickly turned to how I was actually going to enter without a ticket. Thinking as fast as possible, I spotted one of the doors to the hall ajar.
    My mind was racing, my palms sweating. A fitful desire penetrated my gut. This was my chance to participate in the sordid affair! I moved with haste through the door, expecting to be stopped-dead any moment in my ecstatic limp by some zealous volunteer or an angry student jealous of my good fortune. Harrowingly, I made my entry.
    The Georgia Hall is a large room, capable of seating hundreds of folks. Besides myself there were only three other people inside so far. Two were workers or volunteers, and the other fellow was Josh D. Weiss, the esteemed photographer for the Red & Black, a student paper at the university. It is no secret that most of the editors of that paper find The GuardDawg to be a dreadful enterprise (we’ve had our share of disagreements, you see). I approached Mr. Weiss at the front of the room and introduced myself. I tried my best to pretend I was supposed to be there. Apparently it has become fashionable among the R&B crowd to treat me with a certain level of quiet suspicion (it’s understandably difficult to speak when you’re defaming someone in your head).
    When I confirmed what he must have expected by my presence — that I was there on business for THE GEORGIA GUARDDAWG — he looked as though he might throw-up. Fearing this ghastly possibility, I fled to a seat on the fifth row.
About this time, students began streaming inside the hall. As they took their seats, I fell into conversation with a number of students around me. They recounted the baffling study in mob-psychology still occurring outside.
    Josh Holley, a freshman from Buford, tried to purchase a ticket from the people in line. “A lot of people had my back, but no one would give me a ticket,” Holley said. “I had strict competition with people offering their season [football] tickets to get in.” Holley said he finally bought a ticket for twenty dollars, but several students were offering thirty and forty dollars. (Tickets were available for free at the Tate Center only one day before, and I didn’t care in that moment of frenzy to explain my furtive entry to those who had forked over twenty dollars.)
    Shortly after 7:30 p.m. a young lady with University Union announced, “Welcome to the XXX Ron Jeremy–Craig Gross pornography debate.” The announcement enthralled the large crowd, which exploded into applause and howls of the most elemental passion.
    She went on to briefly describe the structure of the debate. Concerning the question-and-answer period she said with a rueful grimace, “One question please. No one needs to know about your personal fantasies.”
    To the delight of the audience, she next introduced the evening’s guests: first the Christian minister Craig Gross and then celebrity exploitationist Ron Jeremy. Mr. Gross is a clean-shaven former youth pastor with a long thin face and black hair. Mr. Jeremy, much to the contrary, is everything you might imagine a 1970s male porn star would look like: greasy tangled hair, which he slicked back revealing a high forehead and pointed nose. He is short and overweight with a nasty little mustache. He was clad in a T-shirt and draw-string sweat pants (easy to remove quickly in case of libidinal emergency, I presumed).
    Mr. Jeremy insisted that Mr. Gross give his opening statement first since “he’s on the attack.” The pastor, a resident of Grand Rapids, Michigan, opened by informing the crowd that he didn’t want to take away their right to look at porn: “you will find no legislation on our website.” He added, “I believe Jesus loves Ron Jeremy as much as any pastor.”
Mr. Gross’s ministry, the XXXChurch, is a noble and unique undertaking in many respects. According to xxxchruch.com the ministry “mixes the seedy with the sacred in an effort to raise the often taboo subject of pornography as a problem that needed to be dealt with.” Since its inception the website has had over seventy million visitors. Mr. Gross has immersed himself in the porn industry and labors to help female porn stars who wish to leave it.
    Mr. Jeremy, while trumpeting the virtues of liberated female sexuality and entrepreneurial spirit, was at pains to answer his counterpart’s charge that many lesser known porn stars are at the mercy of those who control their salaries. The industry, of course, doesn’t like its employees finding work elsewhere, and its profits can take precedence over the health of individual women, Mr. Gross said.
    He believes porn creates unrealistic fantasies about what sex should look like. It desensitizes those who view it and coarsens relationships. Women whose boyfriends view porn “can’t compete with it.” Mr. Gross, in an effort to reveal the “truth” about the porn industry, rattled off a list of porn film titles. This was one of several highly uncomfortable moments in the debate. The titles disgusted and amused the throng of college-goers.
    Undoubtedly Mr. Gross is correct in much of his assessment of pornography, but he was many times too timid in his remarks to sway the audience. In an apparent effort to dispel Christianity’s image as intolerant, he compromised what should have been an easy victory for his argument against porn. Instead of beginning with his own philosophy’s assumptions about the “holy” nature of sex, the responsibilities of the creator-creature relationship, and the scripture he believes is sacred, he piled statistics upon statistics.
    The numbers are surely damning, but also unsurprising. Furthermore, it’s in human nature to answer such arguments with “well, a lot of people have an addiction or problem, but I obviously don’t.” In other words, Mr. Gross skirted the issue, failed to explain what is fundamentally awry with pornography.
    It will require a philosophy deeply rooted in human experience, intimately acquainted with the complexities of depraved human nature, and unwavering in its basic principles to counter Mr. Jeremy’s arguments because pornography appeals to human appetites on so many levels. Justifying its existence through the bizarre filter of moral equalizing and relativism is easy in modern Western society. Ultimately Mr. Gross failed to undermine his opponent’s arguments in the most basic manner.
    The pastor went on to explain that the average age a person first sees porn in the U.S. is eleven years old. Citing the Attorney General’s 2002 Final Report on Pornography, he said that most viewers of porn are males between the ages of twelve and sixteen. He added that porn generates seven billion dollars annually in revenue.
    Mr. Jeremy, who holds two bachelor’s degrees from Queen’s College, countered by saying his opponent was taking a minority of problems in the industry and blowing them out of proportion. He pointed out that he has cooperated with federal officials to track down child pornographers and that most pornography is not targeted at children.
    Mr. Jeremy also stated that pornography empowers the women who participate in it. The very idea seems fallacious on a number of levels. What does it mean to be empowered? At what cost to the individual and societydoes this empowerment emerge? Profiting off the basest of human practices and encouraging others to participate seems more degrading than empowering.
    I think these are the reasons that help explain why even the most ardent feminists are still split on the question. Avery White, a fifth year senior majoring in Women’s Studies, said in a short interview, “The most dominant and institutionally rooted argument is that pornography is a manifestation of patriarchy through which women are subjugated commodities.”
But, Ms. White added, “’Liberal feminists’ will usually make known their disapproval of pornography but hold that a woman has the right to do whatever she pleases with her body.”
    Mr. Gross’ most powerful argument, implicit in his remarks, was that viewing pornography is always a regressive proclivity—regressive in the sense that as time passes the viewer craves it in increasing amounts and more extreme forms. This is demonstrated most powerfully in the emergence of the revolting “fetish” industry within porn.
    This should have spurred listeners to ask questions: Why are people compelled to look at porn? Why is guilt almost universally associated with viewing porn? What is the purpose of the sexual relationship beyond satisfying our never-ending primal desires?
    Mr. Jeremy’s flamboyant style and crude humor captured the audience’s attention. I couldn’t help but think he might be compensating for an underdeveloped vocabulary. The idea that porn creates “unrealistic fantasies” is “dumb-ass pathetic,” he said. “It’s a really hokey argument… Porn enhances sex life… [and] doesn’t compete with it.”
    At one point Mr. Jeremy asked the members of the crowd if they had viewed porn on a regular basis with a boyfriend or girlfriend. A large number of students raised their hands. When asked whether they had viewed porn recreationally, an overwhelming majority raised their hands. I was stunned at this reaction for several reasons.
    The evening wasn’t exactly an exchange of logic and reason. Neither was it wholly without merit. I even found portions of the vulgar debate to be refreshing. The nearly two hours of debate were at times amusing and repellent, but I am still undecided whether attending it was worth the health hazard of being in the same room with Ron Jeremy.