TRIGGERnometry - Should Porn Be Banned? - Lila Rose

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

Lila Rose is the President and Founder of LiveAction, a pro-life non-profit organisation. She speaks internationally on family and cultural issues and is well known for her investigative reporting on the abortion industry. She is the host of the Lila Rose Podcast and the author of ‘Fighting for Life: Becoming a Force for Change in a Wounded World’ - available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400219876/ SPONSOR: Go to https://www.givesendgo.com and raise money for anything important to you. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I think porn should be banned. And I think sex work, as they call it, of course, should be illegal. It's the pragmatist to me, Lila, that just thinks, if you force this underground, you're going to create prohibition 2.0. There's upload videos of young girls rapes and boys rapes on Pornhub all over the place. And it takes sometimes months or years to take it down because Pornhub's legal. And there's all this burden of proof now on the victim to show that this was me. This was me as a child. I didn't consent.

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interviews with none of those irritating adverts, and they'll be released 24 hours early just for you. We'll have exclusive bonus interviews that only you get to hear. Click the link on the podcast description or find the link on your podcast listening app to join us. Support us and help change the way we have conversations and make the world saner. Lila, I saw this incredible clip of you doing a debate about relationships between men and women, which is one of the things we want to talk to you about. And I have a bit of a reputation for, quote, unquote, destroying people with facts and logic.

And what I love to do is use the logic that people present in order to challenge their own argument. And that's what you did with this guy. We'll play a clip of it. I might have multiple family. You never know. I might like family more than you, so much I have five. Do you think that's a good thing to have multiple families?

I think it's good if there's one dad and there's not a bunch of step-parents involved and the dad can be the hero. and those five families live a 10x better life and they would have otherwise. That's my mom I do. But you don't think that it will be ultimately an opportunity for jealousy or disharmony amongst two different families?

Women are always going to be jealous. What's changed about that? I'm not jealous in my marriage. I'm not jealous in my marriage. I don't care about your marriage. I'm talking about mine. Well, my life is going to be, so I don't answer to you. And you would want that for your daughters? Yeah. Yeah, I live my life unapologetically on my terms. But I guess I'm asking you. if you're comfortable answering, obviously.

But are you wanting to be a role model for your kids? Is that part of your own? A thousand percent. A father should show up in every way for his children. I think I'll be better than most fathers, regardless of how many children I have. I might have 100. But you think part of being a real model,

it's okay for your kids not to know even your relationship status with their own mom? They will know the relationship status with me and their mother. But you have other relationships with other women too. What does that have to do with anything? I'm just wondering if you think that's a problem. I'm just saying, like, if I want to, I will. But you don't think that's a problem for your daughter

to know. know that about their dad, that he has multiple mistresses? That's up to my daughter, man. Why don't you just commit to one, and she used to be faithful to her? I'm just not wired that way. I spent my whole 20s trying to fix myself. I thought something was wrong with me. You have self-control.

You work out, you do business. You can possess your own power, and do you direct it the way you want to direct it? It's just not how I am. It's not how I am. You think that might be a limited mindset? I think it's none of your business, but I don't want you to think I'm triggered by you. I'm not. I saw somebody say that and I think that's interesting.

I think you're annoying, but I'm not triggered. You know what I'm saying? No, you are. You're annoying in like this goody two shoes type way and that's fine. I'm going to live my life on my terms unapologetically, like truly. So you can ask me this 85 different ways. At the end of the day, I'm going to walk out of here the same man. Essentially what we're seeing in the world right now is there's a lot of these influencers

who are telling men and women some moronies. things about relationships between men and women. And you expose that beautifully. Tell us a little bit about what your thinking was and kind of how you see this whole thing. Sure. Well, first of all, it's interesting that the people that I think are some of these influencers giving moronic, as you call it, advice, often they themselves don't seem to come from very happy situations. I think that when you're referring to the clip, the gentleman there, you know, he says, I can't fix myself. Like, he's basically a victim of himself in his relationships where he has to be promiscuous. He can't commit to one woman. And he even admitted when I talked to him that

it seems like something that he doesn't have control over. He's just a slave to his passions, basically. And it just, does someone want to live like that? You know, to be a slave to your appetites? Is that really going to bring happiness in the end? And it seems like, you know, you look at the statistics, the research on this, people that do not, you know, people that have multiple families, people that divorce, people have broken relationships, all in all are less satisfied and less happy, according to all the data, than people that are in monogamous, long-term committed relationships. And so you look at just the sheer data and the large body of it that shows what brings human happiness in relationships. And it's not what those people are preaching,

many of them anyways. And that in itself, you know, along with just real-world examples, you know, of people that my parents have been married 40-plus years and they've struggled and loved each other through it. And I look at them as this beautiful example of what I aspire to in my marriage. And my marriage. And that's what we need to have as models again, as opposed to, I think, you know, the influencer culture of just do what you feel. And one of the most interesting things about people like that guy, and I don't know him, I'm not picking on him particularly. It's a phenomenon we see across, particularly the online world, is it kind of like, you know, I do feel men are lost. I do feel that they've been demonized for quite a long time by certain elements of the culture.

And young men in particular, and we have young men that work for us. And I, listening to their take on what's going on is quite interesting. But one of the things that is happening is a lot of young men are being told that, you know, you must take control. You must, and these are not bad things, actually. Men should take control of themselves and their emotions. But with what your conversation with that guy revealed is that it's very one-sided. It's like, yeah, take control, be in charge, but when it comes to some other things, when it comes to the way you relate to women, when it comes to what are you doing to build relationships, it's encouraging men to be completely out of control of the very things that historically society has trained men to be in control of

because that's how society needs to be for it to work. Right. It's control over your economic future, you know, be disciplined, save money, work hard, be an entrepreneur. It's control over your physical body to be healthy and fit and strong, but there's no control over your sexual appetites, which can make or break someone's future. Right. I mean, you look at the abortion rate, You know, the fact that out of abortions today, nine out of ten women having abortions are unmarried. You know, these are abortion that's happening because people are having sex outside of marriage and they're having sex with lots of different people and they're not ready to commit and not ready to raise that child. And so you have this abortion crisis and, you know, you look at pornography and porn addictions.

People can't be monogamous and stay with one woman and love one woman. And all of that is because people are not directing their sexual passion. If you can't do that as a society, the society is going to crumble. social data shows that. The thing that I find really worrying, Lila, is you see some of these influences, and we all know who we're talking about, naming names. And they put forward this narrative that it's not just about, you know, men being better, which I'm all for, but it's about pushing women down.

Women are something to be conquered and dominated over, and that is your role as a man. And to me, that seems the most toxic of narratives. I think it's a reaction to modern feminism, of course. You know, it's this, you know, women are now, in many ways, outperforming men in, you know, in corporate jobs, there's sort of affirmative action for women. So they, more women graduate college today. So I think there's an anger among men who see women as being given the special status over them in the Western world. And the reaction of, you know, ultimately I think it's a very, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, um, It's a wrong reaction, but you can understand the reaction when you look at modern feminism,

which is training many women to see men as less than to hate men even, to reject men. We don't need men. Men are not necessary for our happiness anymore. When I think the foundation of any society needs to be a strong family to raise the future children, and children need a mother and a father who love each other and have respect with one another and are married and committed to each other. But that vision is lost for many people. And so you have men now disaffected, unhappy, broke it, feeling upset with women, feeling they can't even find a woman.

And there's a lot of, I think, divisiveness that has entered into the relationship between men and women that's becoming more mainstream today, which is, again, yes, a result of modern feminism, but also men are just struggling. They're disaffected. They're looking for how do we root ourselves? How do we succeed economically? How do we find relationships? And where are the teachers for those men? then they're attracted to these online influencers. And the online influencers come in because there is a fatherhood vacuum.

Exactly. And a lot of these poor boys, when I talk for many years in poor areas of London, a lot of the boys and a lot of the girls that I taught, dads weren't around. You are more likely today than in any other decade to be raised in a single parent household, particularly a single mother household in the United States. And so the amount of children being raised without fathers in the home is unprecedented today. And what does that bring? For young women, I think it brings special problems.

Certainly for all men and women, girls and boys, it brings more drug addiction, more incarceration, less, worse economic and educational outcomes. But it also brings more likeness to divorce, more likeness to cohabitate, less likelihood to marriage in the future for those children. So you're building these cycles of brokenness. And you talk about the cycles of brokenness. I suppose the question is, particularly the economic reality that you and Francis were just discussing, which is, historically speaking, women want today across and up. They want the man to make as much money as them or more, and be kind of more successful in some other ways. They want someone to be on their level or more.

And yet in a society that increasingly is, you know, shaped in a different way, that seems like quite a difficult problem to resolve. Yes, I've heard that many times, you know, women want the wealthier man, you know, the more successful or powerful man. And, you know, I look at, and this is anecdotal, yes, but I look at, you know, women who were raised by good fathers, you know, or maybe they weren't, but they went through work to really be at peace with men and the masculine. And I think that it's less about I want a wealthy man or I want a powerful man. And it's more about, I want a good man. And I know that that's not a popular narrative today, you know, especially in certain online spaces where it's like no women are out for money, they're out for security. That's not what I'm saying.

Yeah. That's not what I'm saying. I think your point is accurate in that women will prioritize a man who's kind and a man is going to be a good father. And these are all important things. But cross-culturally, all the evidence is that women look for a man who can provide. Yes. And I'm not saying they don't want a man who can provide. But I think there is, anyways, I've seen a narrative that they want, it's not a, it's not,

just enough for him to provide as you know and work hard it's that they want him to be this kind of top one percent super wealthy you know super wealthy super handsome and that's what they want and i don't think that's most women certainly that's some women i'm not saying there aren't women who are you know gold digging yeah we're in l-a yeah but um but i think there's a lot of you know the people that i think are seeking health in their relationships right and are seeking health for themselves you know they have a positive view of the masculine a positive view of the feminine they want to build a family They want a faithful monogamous marriage. Those people are not so much looking for, you know, wealth and perfect, you know, physical perfection and their partner.

They're looking for qualities like trustworthiness, hard work, loyalty. And that is what we should be, I think, celebrating and promoting, you know. And unfortunately, sometimes I think those are underplayed and more the dynamic of you've got to be rich, you know, you've got to be successful. That's the way you're going to succeed with women or whatever it is. more promoted instead. And I think that's not doing anybody any favors. No, I completely agree. And that narrative is definitely out there, which is women are all gold digging hoars and blah, blah, blah. That is out there. And people are saying that stuff, which isn't true of the vast majority of women. And the feminist narrative is out there that men are all rapist and toxic.

So there's obviously two very negative narratives about men and women that are both false. Yes. This is what I always say. Any ideology that is designed to drive men and women apart is bad, whether it's feminism or this red pill stuff or whatever. Definitely true. However, the kind of if you go down from the top 1%, the top 1% of gold diggers, the top 1% of super wealthy men, at the end, you're still left with a society in which women increasingly graduate from college at higher rates, make more money than men until they become mothers, etc. And that is still a structural issue that gets in the way. I think you're right, that it is it certainly it certainly doesn't help that man who says, I want to succeed and do my best,

and then he feels he's being disfavored, not because of his qualities or his work, but because of being male to that woman next to him, whether it's in the job process, application process, or, you know, applying to a university. And I think that's very harmful. I don't think there should be sexism, you know, even affirmative action, sexism is sexism in the end in the university application process, in jobs. And I think the bigger point underlying that is, what are we telling women? What is the message to women about what your fulfillment as a woman looks like? And because of feminism, we have been instructed, and I think also materialism,

quite frankly, materialistic Western culture, that our success is in how we, how successful we are, materially speaking. You know, how much money we make, how far we go, how many degrees we get. yes, education is wonderful, but to what end are you being educated, right? Are you being educated for healthier life and your relationships or so that you can just be this successful person? And women now, instead of being valued for, yes, you are a whole person, but in society, you have that special gift of being able to bring life into the world as a woman. And that should be valued and cherished. And yes, put up on a pedestal that we can bring life and families need special protections, mothers, fathers need special protections,

and special support in societies, okay, so now women encourage that your femininity, your womanhood, bringing an ability to be a mother is worth cherishing, worth valuing. But that's not the message at large. The message at large is go be a girl boss, you know, the Cheryl Sandberg message of lean in, go sit in the corporate boardroom, that's where you're going to fulfill your feminine power, compete with men in the workplace. And I think that, yes, nobody should close off those doors to women. You know, there shouldn't be shut to women. But I think the greatest superpower of a woman that makes her different from a man is her ability to be a mother. And that's what we should be celebrating in a society and we should be fostering. What's the message for women today? When it

comes to their ability to mother, largely speaking, your reproductive rights. I mean, think about that. Women's Rights, National Organization for Women in America, one of the leading pro-women's organizations as they claim, their top plank is not, let's help women be fully mothers and then also educated and be able to be fulfilled in their life holistically. Let's fight rape. Let's fight abuse. Their top plank is let's have ensure that you can have an abortion and that it's tax funded and that it's supported by society and that there's every restriction is removed. So when women are told your empowerment is reproductive rights, aka abortion, which is is killing a child, and typically abortion is encouraged so that you can go to school if you're

pregnant, you can get the job and not be set back in your career. What is that message to women? The very antithesis of what it means uniquely to be a woman, your ability to mother, is being denigrated and saying that motherhood ability you have is actually a threat to you competing with men and a threat to you being successful. There was this famous speech at the Golden Globes just a couple years ago. I don't know if you saw Michelle Williams, an actor, and she's clutching her prize, her statue, and she's thanking the abortion that she had as a young woman for the success that she had in her entertainment career. She's saying, if I hadn't had the right to choose, I would not be on the stage basically holding this prize. I mean, that's the image of womanhood

in the Western world. You need abortion and you don't need men in order to be successful, and that's your empowerment. It is no wonder there is so much division between men and women. and so much unhappiness. Look, what you're saying is incredibly powerful, and that, I'll be honest with you, this is a subject which I'm still not completely decided over if I'm being honest, but that is absolutely horrendous

and an awful, awful thing to say. Especially as well when you look at falling birth. Francis, I'm sorry to interrupt. It kind of makes sense, though. Do you know what, like, in some ways, because what you're saying, it makes sense because if the purpose of a woman is to be successful. And compete with men, to be better than men.

And to be better than men. And if what we, if a baby prevent, my wife has a baby, she's not very successful in her career right now because she's with our son, right? Then yes, then she is right to thank her abortion for her success. If that's the frame in which we operate. The baby is now the aggressor, the potential child or the actual child, pregnant with that baby, to your success as a woman, to your empowerment and fulfillment as a woman.

And so the very thing that is unique about you from different from men, your ability to, our reproduction systems are different. That's our primary difference, right? I mean, it is our biological DNA difference is our reproductive systems. And those systems uniquely different in how they affect us, I can bring a life into the world through my body. It's amazing. I can gestate. I can then lactate. That requires commitment of at least next. months and beyond. And that requires, does society organize itself to prioritize reproduction and value it or does it reject it on the altar of economic success, careerism, material good? And that's what our society has chosen so far at large.

Sorry, mate. No, no, it's fine. It's fine. And what that breeds in women, I think, is a real sadness because what they've been taught to... believe is that this career will make you happy. And I think what they realize as they hit mid to late 30s, even early 40s is, I've kind of been sold a lot. I mean, women, yes, absolutely. I think there's a lot of, when we talked about disaffected men, a lot of disaffected women who are unhappy, who are single, who are childless. You know, if you go on Reddit and look at sort of the threads about fertility and declining fertility and egg freezing. There's these horror stories of women. You know, they lost their

fertility window. They were working. They were studying so hard. They can't find, you know, a man. You know, they're in their late 30s. And just the, the abject misery, many of them feel that their life they feel is passing them by and there's nothing they can do about it. It's not just women, though, I would say. It's both women and men who, when they wake up one morning and they realize, where am I at? You know, I'm not. I'm not. married. I have no children. And you know, you shouldn't get married and have children just because, you know, statistical research tells you it it'll be happier. Like, you have to go into it to want to serve and love your spouse, you know, serve and love your children. But those acts of service and

love to another human being is a purpose bigger than yourself. And if you don't have that in your intimate life, you are going to be unhappy. You're going to be adrift. People are made for relationship. We're human beings. You know, as mammals, were made for relationship, but we have spirits and we're made for connection. If we don't have that, if we're just have ourselves and we're living for ourselves or, you know, we have maybe just sexual connection without the deeper connection, we're not going to be happy. And, you know, we talked about data, but I'm sure it's been mentioned on your show before. Everyone seems to mention it. We know about it, but the Harvard Happiness Study. You know, this study over a hundred

years, two cohorts of men, removing, you know, economic differences and educational opportunities, removing those to look at them as the same, meaning you have your less wealthy cohort, you're more wealthy and educated cohort. And they discovered that at the end of the day, for both groups, the happiest healthiest men were the ones that ended up choosing long-term marriages and staying married. And you found misery, bankruptcy, lack of health in both groups of men, even the ones that were wealthy and from good educational backgrounds versus not. and you found better outcomes for both groups of men,

including the more, you know, the poorer group, the less educated group when they married and when they stayed married and built families. 100 years of research on that, and there's so much other data to that too. Again, we're made for connection. We're made for long-term committed relationship. Do you think, and this is going to set me sounding like a big old lefty,

but do you think part of this is the fact that we live in a consumerist society where every type of relationship is transactional? Now, if every type of relationship is transactional, doesn't that mean that we're going to view sex as transactional? We're going to view relationships as transactional. What can I get? Because that seems to be the very basis of our society. I think that's a great point. I mean, we are, you know, you can blame, some people like to blame capitalism for it.

I would just say it's you can have a capitalistic society but still values that see the human person as more important than material things or material success. But yeah, I think people today, you know, we're, we don't think, I mean, I think technology helps, you know, hurts this too, our connection with each other. We're always trying to produce something. You know, it's always about production, producing work product, producing, you know, likes on the internet, producing success. And so we're not in the present moment with each other. And the pace of life is so fast. There's not really time to, is there even time to fall in love? Is there even time to have a baby?

Take the time off of work to have the baby. Take the time off of work to raise the baby. We don't make time for human relationships today the way we used to. And I think media plays a part because in media, what is celebrated is, you know, success and wealth and physical beauty and these things as opposed to experience of just being with people because you can't really see that in media. You know, you can see, I guess, snapshots on Instagram of people, you know, having beautiful times with their family, maybe having breakfast.

but watching someone else do that is different than living it. Yeah, and also as well, it's this idealized view that we have of relationships, and we tend to be a society that avoids discomfort, and every relationship has its ups and its downs. And it's also, there are going to be times where you don't get on that well. And instead of thinking to yourself, right, let's move on to the next one, which you're incentivized to do in our culture, it's about sticking and working in it. It's a great point.

Yeah, if you just run when it gets hard, you'll never find, I think, the happiness and the purpose that you want. Because life is going to be hard one way or another. You know, even if you choose to live for yourself, live for your career, you know, the Michelle Williams hold the golden statue and have the abortion to succeed. There will still be hardship. You know, you'll feel loneliness. There'll be the stresses of your work. It's what hard do you choose? And, you know, I look at my parents' marriage. I mentioned that. And I look at the couples that I admire who still. stick with each other through difficult times and work at the relationship. It's not idealized. Like, it's not going to take work. Communication takes time. Your relationship is not a, it's not something of utility. It takes some, it takes your time that you can't just plug in and plug out. It's saying you've got to, sometimes it's going to disrupt your work week. Sometimes it's going to be the thing that you have to invest significant time into and do that regularly and have just leisure time with the person, you know, just be with them. If you're If you can't make space for that in your life and prioritize it,

then I don't think you're going to find the happiness that you want. We'll be back with our guests in a minute. But first, do you remember the Canadian trucker protest in 2022, where thousands of Canadians came out to protest COVID restrictions and vaccine mandates? Now, these protests lasted for weeks, and the people out on the streets needed funds, as any grassroots protests would. So people set up online crowdfunding campaigns,

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Starting a campaign on GIFSendGo is easy and intuitive. Go to givsendgo.com today. That's GIFSendgo. go.com to start raising money for whatever is important to you. And now, back to the interview. And there's also, we've started to be this culture, which I find morally repugnant, that celebrates divorce. I've seen, like, you know, divorce parties, divorce cakes. And look, sometimes marriages aren't good. Sometimes, you know, there's things like abuse or there's a breakdown of a relationship. But that's nothing to be celebrated. You know, the two of the top reasons for

divorce as number one, I just wasn't committed. Lack of commitment, meaning something else became the priority more than the relationship, which it's easy to do in today's world. Your work, you know, your other pursuits or feeling of self-fulfillment outside of the relationship, they're stopping me from this thing that I want to do. And the second thing is pornography because people are, you know, pornography is everywhere. It's ubiquitous. Everywhere you look. Only fans is just balloon in the last few years. Now, like, every young girl is thinking, not every, but many, is this a career option for me? It's like being an Instagram influencer was a few years ago. Now, should I consider an only fans account? You know, I've had people on the internet,

when are you going to do only fans? I mean, it's just like everyone's, I mean, it's ridiculous, obviously, but it's- We don't get that. No, you don't get that. But it's every, it's just now it's part of this, the mindset of, like, women do it. Women do it everywhere. You know, I've been on a lot of podcasts talking to different people in the porn. industry, I don't even like to call it that because it's a sexual exploitation industry, but the amount of sheer porn use, you know, porn is the most searched for thing on the web. Child assault material, or they say child porn, is increased in its searches every single year over the last decade. It's incredible. And yes, it's breaking down marriages, but what else

is it doing? I mean, it's polluting male-female relationships more than any other force, I would say today. And why would you say that, Lila? Why would you say that it's polluting male and female relationship? Because it's teaching objectification as the first, as the first glance of how you see someone. Instead of seeing someone as a person holistically I'm going to engage with, you're training yourself to see someone as a sex object. And when you see people as sex objects, certainly you're not training yourself to be in a healthy relationship. Because when you are in a healthy relationship, you see someone as a full person, body, mind, and soul, and you care for them, you're willing to sacrifice for them. They're not an object for your sexual gratification.

Do you think the point that you've just made, and we'll stick with porn, but I just want to make a parallel there, because you talk about it teaches objectification, I kind of feel like social media is basically that for everything else, too, where we've become avatars of ourselves. You are the latest three tweets that you've posted instead of the fully rounded human being that other people don't really get to see. And so we are looking at each other in every lens now through a very tiny sliver of our personalities, very often the one that we want to portray to the world. And we've kind of become very superficial, not just sexual, all our connections have become

quite superficial as a result. I mean, it's an interesting point. I think it's certainly true for, I mean, it's. especially for generations, I think about Gen Ziers, you know, one beneath us, I think, are younger brothers and sisters who just grew up. They didn't have a world. Like, I didn't have an iPhone when I was 13. Yeah. Every Jens Heard did. So that's all that they know. And, you know, they're more likely to, you know, text than talk. You know, they're more likely to Snapchat than talk or meet in person. And yeah, what does that do to how you see people at a very deep level?

I'm sure it's not healthy. pornography is an additional, you know, unique evil. Because you can see someone's Twitter or their Instagram and, yeah, maybe not see them fully, but you learn about them and you can have, maybe that can contribute something positive to the relationship. Oh, you had a new baby. You know, oh, I learned about what you thought about this latest current event. Interesting. Let's engage and have a coffee about it. With pornography, you're violating yourself and the other person because you're using them for sexual gratification when human beings are not objects for sexual gratification. And you've spoken to a lot of people in the porn industry, you've been in debates with them.

What have you learned about this particular industry? It's an interesting question. Well, first of all, beyond talking to people, in part because my pro-life is connected to some of investigative work I've done on trafficking, human trafficking, how that connects with abortion. A lot of trafficking victims have abortions. They're pressured to have them by their pimps. I mean, there's a whole world of abuse and exploitation that's connected here. I mean, it makes sense.

If you abuse sex, new life comes into the picture inevitably, new human lives because sex brings life. Even with contraception, it has a failure rate. 50%, by the way, of women who have abortions are using contraception the month they got pregnant. 50%. of women of abortions. So you see this connection between new life being destroyed because we exploit people sexually. Louise Perry, I think she was on your podcast, who's phenomenal. She had a piece out recently calling you attention to the fact that under brothels, you look at, you excavate

brothels from like the Roman Empire and you're going to find the common thing that you can find are the bodies of male infants, the skeletons of male infants, the remains, because the female infants can be used for sex trade, but the male infants would just be murdered upon being born. So you find this connection age old between infanticide, between abortion and sexual exploitation. But all that to say, you know, when I talk to people in the porn industry, I think there's certainly a disconnect between, there's certainly a defense of abortion. I found that very common because we need abortion. It's our back of contraception. But I also find a lack of, I think, just self-worth. I mean, that's the most tragic thing is that I am good for money. I am good for money by selling myself sexually. And money is something that is this prize that I need to pursue in large amounts of money. I'm talking to successful, usually, you know, people making lots of money. And these material things, this car that I bought, the standard of life that I have, is worth it to me to sell my body. And I find that for some that I talk to, you know, singing,

girls involved in, you know, sexual exploitation and pornography, many of them express the desire to want to have a relationship with a man and be married and even have children one day. And they're sort of torn because they know what they're doing may prevent that. But what they're doing is so financially lucrative. So they're going to keep doing it. And so I've talked with a lot of only fans, creator, girls who say they want to be married, but they feel like that this is how they're making money. And so they can't kind of, they can't make the sacrifice today of I'm not, I'm going to reject this

profession because it's going to hurt, you know, this trade because it's going to hurt my potential to be in a loving marriage and have kids one day. But it's, again, the short term, it kind of negate back to, I think, even, you know, sexual ethics. It's preventing short term gratification. It's saying no to short term gratification for long term love. And in that moment, you see it play out. I'm getting money for this thing that I'm doing, right? But I want the long-term thing, but I'm not willing to sacrifice today to get the long-term thing that I want. This is going to sound very crude. Do you know what I find interesting? And I think it comes back to what you were talking about right at the beginning about the idea of like women being empowered

by taking control. And the reason I said, this is going to sound very crude, but it is, you know, true if we were talking about other animals. A lot of the women you're talking about are very beautiful women who could probably secure a similar material lifestyle by finding a partner who's very successful financially and being with them and having kids as they probably eventually won. So it seems like at least I'm exploring this with you. I'm thinking out loud and this is always a bad idea on the internet, but we'll try, right? It's almost like it's about I want to make the money here. Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah. Because they could just marry somebody who. who will make that money because they're likely to be able to secure someone who could do that, right? And it seems to me like it's not just about materialism, it's also about what we call empowerment now, which is people ripping themselves apart from each other instead of seeking to bond together and build things together. I mean, it's a good point. I mean, I think there's also an idea there of bodily autonomy of I have this body I can do whatever I want with. And that's very much, I think we've been infected with that, especially women in this country, to say you have this radical bodily autonomy to the point that if you're pregnant, you can kill another body inside your body.

And, you know, the bodily autonomy argument with pornography is I can do whatever I want with my body as long as I'm calling the shots, as long as I'm consenting to even this degrading sexual act. And what's wrong with that argument, why? I'm not degraded. What's wrong with that argument? Because look, look, a kind of deliberate perspective of which I'm broadly in sympathy, with is people are allowed to do whatever the hell they want to do within the law, right? I mean, that's what the law is for. It's to demarcate what we can do and what we can't do. Well, all rights have responsibilities. So my right to certain freedoms will always come with responsibilities. And the law should be founded on human rights, on ideas of rights and ideas of responsibilities. As a person in this country, I have the right to choose to marry and choose to have children. No one can

stop me from that. But then I have the responsibility. in a marriage to my partner, certain responsibilities. I think I owe them loyalty. I owe them fidelity. I owe them my kindness, my presence. And if I conceive a child, and whether I'm married or not, and I conceive a child, I have a responsibility as a parent, even if I didn't consent to the act, act with my body of conception happening, I consented to sex, having sex. And if I conceive a child, I have a responsibility now to that child, even if I don't want it. But the bodily autonomy argument says, I have endless rights with no responsibility. And yes, you have an amount of autonomy to the point where someone else has rights that you may have responsibility to. On abortion, I agree with you. That's a much more complicated

thing. But in terms of the sex industry, what is the argument for a woman who wants to go and have sex for money to not do that? One more thing before on abortion, I just want to say. And then I do want to answer that. I don't think abortion is complicated. I think it's actually very simple. Because it's a question of, is it always wrong to kill an innocent person, an innocent human? Is it always wrong to kill an innocent human? And I don't know, would you agree it's always wrong to kill an innocent human? Yes. Okay, I think we can agree. And most people do agree. I would say 95% of people I talk to agree, which is nice. All right, well, abortion ends the life of an innocent human. And I can prove that to you. You don't need to. It's the pre-born, you know,

fetus, embryo is a human. Of course. Clearly, they're alive. Abortion is an act that kills them. And they're innocent. They've committed no wrong. So therefore, abortion, because it kills an innocent human, is always wrong. So all the nuance that we've invented around abortion, all the arguments, all the rationalizations

and justifications fall apart when you look at plainly what is right and wrong and what that human life is. There are human life. So, but I wanted to set that because I think abortion, it's unpopular to talk about. People don't like to talk about it. Or if they do, they want to talk about it in the framework of women's rights and empowerment. They don't want to talk about what it is, that it kills it human life. They don't want to talk about the morality that that's always wrong.

We have no problem talking about it. We've had people from both sides who are as Strident as you are. So we... I consider it logical. It's not an extreme one way or the other. I just say extreme. I said strident. Yeah.

It's a different thing. You're passionate about it, which I'm not. I completely respect. Totally. But come back to me with to the other argument, which is about why women are and aren't allowed to have sex for money, essentially. Yeah, I think it's because we have a responsibility and society at large. I think porn should be banned. And I think sex work, as they call it, of course, should be illegal. And first of all, it's because sex is designed to bring life into the world. And even with contraception, like I said, it often does. And so you need to morality calls us to have responsibility along with rights when it comes to sex. And our responsibility

with sex is that we are ready and prepared, you know, as ready as we can be, no one's fully ready to be a parent, but we are willing to accept the responsibility of a new life that we may create. And responsibility would say that we should be having sex in scenarios, in circumstances, that are primed for that life to be able to live and flourish. And that's why we're just to be able to live and flourish. That's not a one-night stand. That's not a hookup. That's not a porn scene. That's ideally, that's a loving marriage that we've freely chosen where we can raise those

children together. And so when you look at the morality, when you look at the morality of sex and sexual ethics, you know, the purpose of sex, what's it designed for? New life and connection between two people. It tells us a lot about how we should behave. And so to your question about, you know, why women shouldn't sell themselves. because what is sex designed for? Sex is designed for a connection between you and another person that I think should be lifelong. It bonds you emotionally. I think it bonds you spiritually. And there's a lot of

science that shows that. But it also can bring life into the world. So your right to choose to have sex with someone comes with the responsibility that you're choosing that in the context of committing to them and loving them, not just letting them use you or you using them for a moment of pleasure. Okay, and I agree with all of that. The one thing that I would like to talk to about the porn industry, before we go on to the banning thing, because that's why I think things get a lot more complicated, if I'm honest, is the addiction element to porn, whereby you see a lot of men just get hooked on this dopamine cycle, where they are constantly going on to new clip after new clip, and you just see, and when you talk to these men, you just see that they become hooked on it

in the way that it's almost drug-like. Yeah, I mean, exactly. It is drug-like for a lot of men and some women, too. I mean, there's a lot of female porn users now increasingly, which is uncommon maybe a decade ago, but it's so everywhere, and it's so encouraged even or treated as such a casual thing that women are encouraged to explore it too

and girls are encouraged to explore it too, but it's highly addictive. and that makes it all the more dangerous. But I think it also tells you something about the nature of sex. Sex is very powerful. It's very beautiful. And if we keep treating it as cheap as a society as something you can literally sell for a subscription of $5 online

for your account, your own defense account, we're going to keep making misery for ourselves, leaving a path of misery for ourselves. Okay, so let's get into banning porn. And this is where I think we're going to have a disagreement because... He's a massive fan. I'm a massive fan. I want to watch it every day, mate.

Oh, gosh. All day, every day. Someone's going to clip that. We're joking. We're joking. I believe you're joking. Yeah. Yeah.

When it comes to banning porn, this is the issue. There are lots of things in the world that I disagree with that I think are damaging. But I think banning them drives them underground and it just creates, it encourages a black market. Where a black market happens, that's where you have criminal gangs start to operate because you're not allowing reputable or the free market to get involved, and you create something that is far, far darker and more dangerous for everybody involved. What say you to that? You can certainly make that argument about many things, like, you know, sexual assault material. I mean, that's certainly black market, because thankfully that's still illegal, right? But just because

something, there may be a black market for something, if it were to be made illegal, then therefore it should be made legal. I don't think is a compelling case. But hang on a second, most men wouldn't be interested in sexual assault material. But I would say most men would enjoy pornography. I don't know that that's true. Some of the most highly, maybe not child sexual assault material, very young children, but some of the most highly viewed pornography, like on Pornhub, is of, you know, mock rape scenes of maybe just barely of age girls. Well, I don't know about the... So it's definitely a very popular, some of the most popular pornography,

especially for addicts that need to get more and more intense pornography, is violent pornography. Well, interestingly, the statistics show that it's actually more women that are interested in that type of content than men, for reasons that historically makes sense. What statistic have you seen for that? I don't remember where... Because I've seen that men, it's a highly popular pornography for men, maybe for women too. But those two things are not mutually exclusive. Something can be very popular with men and more popular with women.

For reasons that from a legal, evolutionary perspective, would make sense to me, given how human beings have evolved and the nature of war in our past and so on, right? I hear you, yeah. But I think the point I'm making still stands that when you're dealing with something highly addictive and in order for it to be continually sort of satisfactory for the addict, it needs to be more and more intense,

you see more and more violent and depraved and degrading pornography. Okay, and I take your argument. But surely we can use that argument for alcohol. Where I come from in the UK, we have a horrible, horrible relationship with alcohol. You know, you look at the destruction it causes, the assaults, the murders,

deaths when people get behind the wheel in, they're drunk, assaults, all of these things. And you can use the same addiction. There's a lot of alcohol addicts in my country, a lot of people with alcohol addiction. I think the difference there is porn, I believe, is intrinsically evil. Having a glass of wine, you know, not drinking to access can be a good even. You know, it can be a beautiful thing to do in a, you know, at a wedding or on a date or, you know, whatever it might be.

So I think there's a fundamental difference between the thing, you know, porn on alcohol. I don't think there's a way to do good porn. There's not a way to sexual objectify someone in a good way or to be sexually objectified in a good way. But do you think by making it illegal, it's then going to drive it underground and you're going to make that industry worse? I don't think it has to be that way. I think, in fact, if we make it illegal, you know, laws have a power to instruct.

A few decades ago, people didn't wear seatbelts and no one thought twice about it. Then it became the law to wear a seatbelt. And there were campaigns explaining you should wear seatbelts. And now you kind of feel uncomfortable if you forget your seatbelt on because you're feeling like you're certainly the seatbelt for your child. It's like, oh, you know, God forbid. And so I do think the law is instructive and that's one of its powers. And so for us to say, yeah, of sexually objectifying someone, looking at pictures of someone

to, you know, have a sexual experience is. is not just immoral, but you shouldn't be able to do that. If you're on the web searching, it's illegal to create these images and be putting them up there. And, you know, I think it might be a step too far to ban people who look at it, you know, because that would be very hard to, how would you practically actually make that law enforced, right? It's very hard to enforce. But certainly pornographers who are profiting off of this, I think who are exploiting people. I don't think that should be legal.

The problem with that argument, Lila, and I'm not unsympathetic to it genuinely, is that the seatbelt analogy is not a good one because the sexual drive, particularly in men, but I mean, we evolved to reproduce, right? So the sexual drive in men in particular is so strong that no one is a dick, no one evolved to not wear a seatbelt, right? So you're going to have men seeking out sexual experiences in any which way they can. I mean, I promise you, I was a teenage boy once. You know, that there's been lots of comedy routines about men and how they think about these things. That that thing is going to drive men. It's what drives human beings. So they're going to seek that out.

And when we look at things like prohibition in this country, over some something far less addictive and far less important to people as alcohol. That does not end well, I think is the point that Francis has made. I understand the point, but I think it's to say the answer to a teenage boy having a strong sex drive is that we should permit pornographers to have prolific amounts of porn online and that should be perfectly legal. I don't think is a sound argument. I think it shouldn't be legal for pornographers to be plastering pornography all over the internet for teen boys to stumble upon and then ultimately many of them enter a cycle of addiction and unhappiness. You know, it's not making their relationship stronger, these boys. It's not making

them better workers. It's not making them better people. Does that mean that some men won't go out of their way to find porn that's been illegally created? Well, of course, you know, some men who have such, you know, maybe a brokenness and, you know, such an intense overriding sex drive might commit horrible acts like rape, but of course we don't legalize rape. You know, we say it's always wrong, we're going to stop it. Do some bad things still happen, yes. But I don't think the fact that the bad thing may happen still is a reason to continue to support it economically as a society, allow an industry, it's a multi-billion dollar industry, to allow it to just operate without any force stopping it.

I think the reason, and we're pushing back in a kind of... No, please do. I appreciate it. We're exploring the argument. This is what we do with all of our guests. It's a good trigonometry conversation. It is. I feel that.

And as you mentioned before we started, we recently had A. Lauren who's from the sex industry. So we want to explore every issue from different angles with people and challenge what they're saying. One of the issues that I think the reason we're having this disagreement, if it is disagreement, is we're talking about the practicality. You were talking about from morality. And this is my experience of people who are conservative generally. They have a very strong moral core and their sense of moral outrage about things that they find offensive. Sometimes overrides the practical reality of things. I mean, for example, the war on drugs, in my experience, doesn't work and causes a lot of harm, a lot of harm. Does that mean, you know, I've got a 16-year-old,

16-month son that you meant, does that mean I want him to be, you know, smoking weed when he's 12? No. But would you make the harder drugs illegal, illegal, excuse me? Which ones? Cocaine, which should cocaine be illegal? Heroin. Not for me, no. So you are for, I think, But the point here is you are for... Some restrictions. Some restrictions. And so, you know, back to pornography for a moment. Again, I agree with you that some people will look at pornography.

But I don't think it's a good argument to say that because some people will still look at pornography, we should allow... Because what I'm advocating for is banning pornographers from creating. Ban only fans. You know, ban, you know, John Stegliano. I remember him coming to my classroom at UCLA as a student talking about how proud he was to be. a pornographer and you know my free speech professor who was really into porn is kind of gross but he was so excited to have this famous pornographer and john was saying yeah the supreme court you know stopping basically child porn makers but they still allow me and i was just like why do they

allow you to do what you're doing it's disgusting that should be illegal you know looking at porn i'm not saying that that should be illegal i think that's impossible to enforce i agree with you but people creating it profiting from it i don't think there's any good reason to make their own webcam videos. I don't, I don't think any individual or couple or corporate structure should be allowed to be making pornography and profiting off of it. Where I'm in agreement with you, Lila, actually is I think that every single one of those websites should have, should not allow anyone who is under the age of 18 to view that content. And I think that that needs to be very strictly enforced. How? Well, there needs to be, I mean, I'm not one of these.

tech people. I know I look like one, but I'm really not. But there needs to be some kind of child lock. And look, you know, they need to do everything in their power to make sure that the people accessing that content are over the age of 18. But think about it this way. If you are a, if you're Pornhub, and this is happening right now, yeah, Pornhub's making billions of dollars. I think Pornhub are disgusting. Can I just say? But there's, that's who we're talking about. I'm talking about ban the pornographers. Pornhub is case in point, right? Pornhub should not be Pornhub are not pornographers. They're a platform where people can share their...

I consider that a pornographer. I mean, they're publishing porn. I mean, you also want to ban the couple making their own videos. So it's not just that you want to ban pornography. I think it, yeah. You want to ban people that create and distribute pornography. Yes. I want to ban that whole system, right?

And Pornhub is essential today to that system. And Pornhub has surprisingly, you know, it's not a surprise, is very, you know, slow, reticent about strong controls of underage viewers of their product, right? Of course. Because they want it. They want that market. And they're also very reticent to have any sort of meaningful system to stop underage pornography from being uploaded to their child sexual assault material ultimately from being

uploaded to their site. But we are still allowing them to operate with impunity. So you have this additional problem by allowing pornography to be published and created that you always along the edges have, it's not just a consenting couple, happily making pornography in their bedroom, you know, this sort of myth of that. You have young girls, young boys,

who are sexually exploited, many of who were sexually exploited from a very young age, who are now part of a system of pornography by people who are exploiting them, and now they're part of pornography on Pornhub. You know, there's upload videos of young girls' rapes and boys' rapes on Pornhub all over the place, And it takes sometimes months or years to take it down because porn's legal.

Hornhub's legal. And there's all this burden of proof now on the victim to show that this was me, this was me as a child. I didn't consent. Take it down. If the whole system wasn't allowed to exist in the first place, you're protecting so many victims. And this is the other side that needs to be talked about, protecting so many potential victims. You see, I mean, look, I think a lot of what you're saying, I really do. agree with. I think that the whole child's exploitation when it comes to sex is abhorrent, it's

vile. And if what you're saying is true, and you're not the first person I've heard saying this about Porn Hub, they need to be investigated. And if they are not doing everything in their power to protect children, then, quite frankly, they need to be shut down, because that is vile. It's vile. My issue is, with your argument, and I'm somebody, by the way, who's installed a porn blocker on their phone, I don't watch it, because I think it's... toxic and it's bad. It's bad. My issue is not the morality of it, which I'm in agreement with you actually, if I'm being brutally honest. It's the pragmatist in me, Lila, that just thinks if you force this underground, you're going to create prohibition 2.0. We saw what

happened when they banned alcohol. You had the rise of Al Capone, et cetera, the organized gangs. I just think as unpleasant as it is, we need to be pragmatic, regulate it, essentially. stringently as possible, block kids from using it, and accept unfortunately that it's here to stay. That is my position. Yeah, I just, I don't buy the argument that you can successfully regulate exploitation material of adults or minors, and that there's a way to do it in a pragmatic or certainly moral way. And I think that it's all bad. It's all proven toxic to the user.

It's all harmful to the creator. You know, it's all often includes, you know, really abusive corporations like Pornhub that are immoral all the way through. And so allowing them any sort of breathing room in everyday society, you know, an economic power by saying you can operate. You can operate. Just make sure the minor, there's no minors. Just make sure, you know, you're using, you know, an ID or whatever it is. It's not going to be enough, first of all. And then second of all, the problem isn't just that minors are exploited.

It's that adults are exploited too and exploiting other adults. So I think, yes, of course there will be some people who will still look at porn. There will be some people who still create porn. But they will have much less power. And I think they will make much less money. And it will be much less socially acceptable than it is today. I was going to move on, but I've just remembered something from a former guest of us. She's an evolutionary psychologist called Dan Fleishman.

One of the things that I remember her talking about is, and this is very, I mean, I was going to say it's counterintuitive, but maybe it isn't. Societies that allow porn have lower levels of sexual violence, which... Yeah. I'm curious. I'd want to see her data on that and where she got that data.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure she's someone who researches these things, and she's a very smart person and not ideological about it. it. That kind of makes sense to me because the pent-up frustrations of men who don't have access to sex, of whom, as we discussed earlier, there are many, many, many, I can see how those would spill out in nasty ways. In many ways, we're seeing it now. I mean, incels and some of the things that they have been involved with. Well, insoles have access to endless porn. Yes. So I think I would want to see her research.

I don't buy it. The research I've seen actually, and the studies I've seen actually prove opposite. Okay. That the more you train yourself to sexually objectify someone, the more difficult it is for you to interact healthfully with people in real life. And I think it logically makes sense on a logical level.

It certainly makes sense from the stories of those who are porn addicted, that they struggle in their real relationships. It makes sense from the countless stories of people, especially girls in relationships with men or boys that are young. These are teen relationships, some of them are older, but who are porn trained to think about sex in terms of pornography. And so they're asked to do degrading strange acts. They're compared to these ideas that their partner has in their head

from their porn experience and exposure. So I think I would have to look at what she's actually referring to, but look at American society today. We have more porn than we've ever had. You know, porn is at an all-time high. Do we think we're healthier sexually because of it? Do you think there's less rape today than 50 years ago? Is there not?

Is there? I'm asking, is there less rape here? I don't know. Well, it would be interesting to look at that. I don't imagine that, I mean, there has been a lot of, the concept of sexual assault has evolved over time, which has been a good thing because in the past, men have been able to get away with things they shouldn't have been able to get away with. I do wonder whether we have more sexual violence in our society. I suspect not than 50 or 100 years ago.

I mean, I'll be honest, I didn't come here saying in 1950, this study was done on rape and we know how much happened. I mean, looking at it from my anecdotal position, and I don't know that research exists, by the way, that we have those sort of surveys or how we would have that data. And sorry, just to pause there. I'm not sure about in the US,

but certainly until horrifically late on, there was marital rape was legal in the UK. I'm not sure what when the year was, but it was comparatively late. So that's what I meant when I was talking about, the evolution. I don't think it's a, it's logical to say,

you know, we somehow are stopping marital rape by allowing ubiquitous court porn. I don't think it makes sense there. Yeah, I don't think that's what we're saying. Anyway. Okay. Well, I think,

ultimately, the argument of your other guest, I would disagree with. Understood. I want to see her data, the data and sort of them, You know, the study I've seen on this shows opposite that the more you allow sexual objectification of other people, especially in it to an addictive degree, the more you're going to see at minimum sexual dysfunction and at maximum sexual abuse. It's been great to have this conversation about this. I know, I mean it.

Yeah, it's been important. It's been great for us coming off as porn advocates and defenders on the internet. You know, this is what we tried to do with all of these contentious issues. It's just to go, let's poke here, let's prod there. let's find out what's going on here. And we talk to people from every position in order to kind of start to get to the truth. So I really appreciate you kind of playing along and giving us your strong views on it. And then people will come away from it thinking whatever they think. In the last few minutes before we wrap up and move on to our questions from our audience, I wanted to think a little bit more positively about relations between men and women and the stuff that we started out talking about, which is one of the things that I, my wife was saying to me,

she was like, you really sound very conservative every time you talk about family. And I was like, A, that's true. B, what the hell? Liberals have families. Liberals have kids. Well, interestingly, it's many, I think it's the wealthier, more educated, even identifying as liberal that operate by what you could call conservative values. They get married. Many don't even cohabitate before marriage. They get married. They stay married. They have children. So, you know, what's called conservative values today are basically healthy, you know, values of monogamy, fidelity, family life, things that should not belong to one political group. That's my point, which is like, how the hell did this idea come about that family, having kids,

staying together, working through difficult things, as you were saying, in a relationship, which every couple has to do. Why did that become a political issue, and then why did it become a one-side issue? Well, it's because you see much more defense on the left of things like polyamory, of things that are sexually deviant, that have been historically seen as very sexually deviant, of things like, you know, cohabitation or, you know, marriage is not, marriage is just a piece of paper, marriage is not really this sacred bond that requires lifelong commitment. So you see, I think, you know, from the political side, you see politically speaking more of that language, more of those

ideas on the left, despite some of those very people espousing those ideas themselves being married and monogamous and all these things. It's like they're saying other people should experiment with polyamory, you know. Other children should have three dads and no mother, you know. Other families can have, be modern and operate this way, but mine is going to be more traditional. This is my private choice over here and it's working for me, but other people surely it will work to go a different path. And I think that just shows, you know, a superiority complex that is, you know, harmful. They're kind of exporting harmful ideas for others while secretly living the traditions themselves. There's a guy called Rob Henderson, who we've had on the show.

I don't know if you're familiar with him. He came up with the concept of luxury beliefs. Yes. And this is what you're talking about. The people who vote left and live right, essentially. Yeah. So how do we move forward in the society that we are in? Because for me, Louise and I have this conversation often.

She's like, if I was a billionaire, what I would do is I would pay families to post wholesome content of them having breakfast with their little kids around the table. And actually, until Nikolai got to an age where he was starting, you got to a point where you could recognize. him in the street. I used to post stuff with me and him all the time because I want people to see what it's like to have that, to have the joy that you and I have as parents. It's amazing. What can we do to break the cycle? Because the cycle is bad. I don't like where we are as a society. And the fact that it's become a political football, that's crazy to me. That's crazy. I agree. It's crazy. I like her idea, you know, encourage people to post positive pictures. Even more meaningfully, though, I would say we should encourage people to get married and stay married because it's hard to have that

happy life with your child when you're a single mom struggling or you're a single dad struggling or whatever it is. You know, the children fare best and people fare best in lifelong committed marriages. They're economically better off. Their health is better. The children's outcome are better on every level, you know, in every category. So how do we as a society encourage marriage? Well, first of all, we can't constantly define it away it out of existence. Marriage is whatever two, three, four consenting and results want it to be. Marriage is one man and one woman who can bring life into the world, you know, I mean, they may not be able to in the end, but that's the design of how life brings into the world, takes a father and takes a mother. And that's the optimal way for a

child to be raised who are committed to each other publicly for life. And that's what we should be celebrating. I think, you know, public policy, we could do, you know, cash benefits for married couples who have kids, you know, give them money to encourage, you know, not just a tax benefit, tax credit, but you should get, you know, there are some policies actually right now about giving actual, you know, cash payments to families out kids. And I think that could be a, you got a billion bucks, a billion dollars. That could be a positive way to encourage them to build up families. Yeah. I love what Dolly Parton does, where if she's got a foundation where if you sign up and you've got a kid, I think, under the age of nine, then she will send you a book a month. Very sweet.

Yeah, so you can read with your kid. Completely free, completely free, which to me, what a beautiful thing. The other thing I think we need to do is ban abortion. It's kind of a no-brainer. I mean, don't kill innocent people. These are children. when Rovi Wade was overruled and some of these states had trigger laws to enact abortion bans, right? Now that's being all contested. It's a big fight. But there were all of these people complaining online

about how now this is going to change my dating habits. Now if I can't access abortion, maybe I'm not going to sleep with the guy on the first date or maybe I'm not going to see sex as something as casual, basically. I might get pregnant and I might not be able to have an abortion. Now this is a big responsibility I'll have. So abortion has always been the back door contraceptive in our society. That's how it's used. Eliminate that and say you can't kill children and you can't have this backdoor contraceptive. We need to change our sexual behavior. If we can change our sexual behavior to see other people with respect instead of a sexual object to put sex back into lifelong, committed relationship into marriage, you know, not make premarital sex normal or glorified, you know,

is making it fun and glamorized, you know, in a TV show, you know, cut that, cut that out, and instead say, sex is amazing, it's designed for lifelong love. Let's celebrate that instead. You're going to do a lot for male-female relationships to be healthier, and you're going to make marriage and families stronger by many, many, many degrees. All right. Well, as you know, our last question is always the same, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about, that we should be as a society? And you can't say abortion because we've talked about it quite a lot now. We talked about some very important things. I mean, one thing we didn't talk about, it is talked about. So I'm not going to say it's not being talked about at all today. But the role of, I think, having a purpose outside of yourself, particularly of faith, the couples that stay married the longest, the couples that have the lowest rates of divorce are couples that have that purpose outside of themselves. Many of them are, they're practicing their religious devotion. You know, they're practicing a faith. They're

going to, you know, church or they're going to a religious service once a week. They're doing that as part of a family life. There's something bigger holding them together than just a promise they made to each other. There's a promise they made to God. And I do think that, you know, we kind of tend to say, there's secular over here and there's religious over here. Let's keep them apart. When really I think we're made to be religious as human beings. We're made to be, you can say spiritual if you don't like the word religious. We're made to have, want to have a connection with our creator. And so I think we should be remembering that the way that that happens best, according to the data, according to the research, is when we recognize that there is a third

party in a marriage, that it's not just a commitment and promise I made to someone else, but that this is before God and, of course, the community, and that we need both God and the community for a strong marriage. Perfect. All right. Thank you so much. Head on over to locals where we ask your questions and continue the conversation. Yeah, what's not being talked about enough is that contraception is bad. What are we talking about here? We're talking about condoms, the pill. We're talking about all of it.

Even condoms? All of it, yeah. Okay. Because any kind of...