This is a repost from a blog belonging to a friend of mine. I rarely get into morals on my blog, but this is something that I think is really important and I was excited to read it and find an organization that’s approaching the problem in such a thoughtful way.

My friend Cam has started a cause called Fight the New Drug (FTND). That “New Drug” is pornography, and their approach parallels the fight against tobacco.

This is about changing the messaging. For example, if smoking is a way to rebel against authority, then parents and medical experts saying Don’t smoke!only reinforces the rebellion. But if smoking is succumbing to executives at Big Tobacco, then smoking isn’t a form of rebellion at all, it’s a form of conformity. What rebellious kid wants to conform to Big Tobacco executives? That’s the message of The Truth campaign.

Fight the New Drug

Imagine a similar change of messaging around pornography: Pornography isn’t glamorous, it isn’t sexy. Love and romance without pornography is glamorous and sexy. By making the negative externalities of pornography more visible, it would become less appealing. While organizations like CP80and Lighted Candle Society fight the supply-side of pornography, FTND fights the demand-side.

I’m very excited about this approach.

Mary Eberstadt at Stanford’s Hoover Institution calls pornography the “new tobacco” and said:

Yesterday, smoking was considered unremarkable in a moral sense, whereas pornography was widely considered disgusting and wrong — including even by people who consumed it. Today, as a general rule, just the reverse is true. Now it is pornography that is widely (though not universally) said to be value-free, whereas smoking is widely considered disgusting and wrong — including even by many smokers.

Can we change minds again?

Columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez said:

…I’ve been flashing back to something Traci Lords once said: “I have to thank Ed Meese for saving my life.” At 18, her career as a porn star ended in a federal raid. How many Tracis are on a computer near you today? And who else is porn harming? It’s a question that our society — which in its rhetoric and culture says it cares about women and children and lives and love — needs to grapple with. If Eberstadt’s comparison is right, the time [is] coming. The shrugs will cease. Yet I hope the turnaround comes, not because the government has made porn highly inconvenient, but because we have decided we want something better. (Smoking Is Out, Porn Is In.)

Seth Godin said you can’t fight an ideavirus (”pornography is okay”) by “challenging the medium in which it spreads.” Instead, you must counter “one ideavirus with another one.”

You don’t counter racism by making the act of uttering racist statements against the law. You do it by spreading an idea (racism is hateful, wrong and stupid) that keeps the racist from expressing his ideas because all his friends will shun him if he does. (“Thinking about this war”.)

Here is some of the FTND messaging, paraphrased:

1. Educate people about the negative effects of pornography and let them choose their pornography involvement for themselves. We do not contest the legality to produce pornographic material.

2. Just because it’s legal to smoke cigarettes, doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Similarly, porn can have devastating effects on you and your loved ones.

3. Although pornography consumption can lead to powerful addictive behaviors, we don’t contest people’s right to view it.

4. People need to be educated about the negative effects of pornography on individuals, families and businesses.

5. We fight against the demand for pornography. Through education, we believe people will no longer want to use porn and those with addictive behavior will seek help from professionals.

6. People addicted to porn often feel they have no options. We’re letting people know that they have a choice.

7. We want to infuse more sexiness into the world. Two committed people together — that is sexy. A lonely, addicted person sitting in front of a computer is not sexy.

Please make a $10 donation to FTND to become a “fighter”. Ten dollars from 1,000 people is better than $10,000 from 1 person. The money will be used to develop messaging campaigns to fight the demand for pornography. This will be a grass-roots movement to make pornography unpopular.

I’ve put in my $10 and I’m hoping many, many more friends will as well.

And, like my friend Richard, I have also made my donation.

This post is sponsored by my recent reflection on just how much I am missing/going to miss my Utah friends since, by the end of the summer, they will have all left me for cities east of the Rockies.

Once upon a time, people would have classified me as “nice”. I was actually kind of a pushover. I remember many times doing whatever I could to make people like me. In fact, that lasted right through high school. I had so many insecurities all the time. My main concern was my social life and how to get people to like me. This is probably also why I never dated…but that’s an entire post of its own.

Sad, but true. And even though I had a great group of friends in high school, I never quite felt like I fit in. I was always trying way too hard. In fact, I would venture to say the same for most of my college life. I found the friends I wanted and tried to make myself one of them. The ironic thing is, I think had I just figured out who I was and been myself, I probably would have had the same friends, it just would have been a lot easier.

And the I grew up (about three years ago…some of us mature at a slower rate than others).

It’s not that I don’t care what people think about me anymore. I do. Or, I should say, I care about what the people I care about think. Did you follow that? But it’s not about whether they like me as much as it is whether I’m a good person.

One of my favorite things about who I am today is that I am okay with people not liking me…as long as it’s based in reality. Not everyone is going to like me. And I am not going to like everyone. And do you know something? There’s nothing wrong with that.

Yes, I’m sometimes too honest with people, but I don’t intend to be mean. So, if someone wants a friend who is going to always say exactly what he or she wants to hear, I’m not your girl. I’m not going to rip a hole in you on a daily basis, but if I think you are being immature and you ask for my opinion (ask being the operative word) I’m going to give it to you…okay, and sometimes when you don’t ask. The same thing goes if I think you are being irrational, rude, mean, caddy, selfish, stubborn, or obnoxious. And I expect the same thing from my friends. I am also going to tell you when I think you are being too hard on yourself, you are doing a great job, you look great (I don’t generally say the opposite of this one, but I don’t lie, either), or I admire something you’ve done. And you will always know that I am being sincere. And I’m not going to agree with you just because we’re friends.

What I’ve discovered is that my friends are kind of self-selecting. Those of us who appreciate “hard truth” and can handle disagreements that don’t resolve (not arguments, but literally having differing opinions) tend to find each other and we can stick together because there is a certain level of trust and understanding. One of my favorite things is when a friend tells me something that I know is hard for them because they know it will hurt me, but they do it anyway because they know that it will help me (this is very different than saying something hurtful that is totally unnecessary). If you can’t be honest with your friends, what’s the point?

Now to my point…if you are always living in fear that you are being left out or that this person doesn’t like you as much as she likes this person, you are wasting a lot of time and energy (and are probably being treated like a doormat). Just figure out who you are and be genuine and you will find the right friends for you. I don’t think everyone should be or needs to be like me, but I know that my close friends will be like me (to an extent…although I’m glad not everyone is quite as blunt as I am).

And if you feel like you are having to make too much effort (some effort is always necessary in friendship) to get someone to like you, you probably are and they probably won’t, so let it go. It’s much easier to figure out who you are and find friends that fit, than it is to find friends and try to make you fit.

Lastly, I’ve discovered (yes, because no one else has ever written about this before) that generally, the people you like also like you. And the ones you don’t like, generally don’t like you either. Weird, I know. So why is it so hard for people to be okay with that?

I flew back to snow. Snow. It’s April TOMORROW! What the hell is this? I can’t believe I’m actually considering staying here TWO MORE YEARS.

In case any of you wanted to start making a list of all the ways California is better than Utah, you can start with the weather.

*I’m sure some of you are thinking, “If you hate it so much, why don’t you move?”…the answer, “Because I made some poor choices and ended up needing to move home with my dad…and he chose to move here from California about four years ago.” So there you go. I know that some of you love it here. I won’t argue with you. I just don’t feel the same.