August Ames
Until late last year, I didn’t know August Ames. One day in early December, I was checking in on the treading topics, and clicked her name. She was a porn star who met her untimely demise at the age of 23. Cause of death: suicide by asphyxiation.
In the days leading up to her death, August had stirred up controversy on the Internet for allegedly refusing to film pornography with an individual who had previously done homosexual pornography. The hate and anger that was directed at her was intense. She had been diagnosed with bipolar depression and multiple personality disorder. News reports indicate that she disclosed sexual abuse by her grandfather while she was a minor. Her mother was also bipolar. She spent time in a group home before her teenage years and shared that she had a terrible relationship with her father.
If you’ve read any of the personal stories of those who have participated on-camera in the pornography industry, August’s story doesn’t really stand out. She fits the profile.
It is well documented that the pornography industry preys on a certain demographic for talent. The average female porn star is young, with a strong history of depression and substance use disorder. In many cases, she was the victim of sexual abuse as a minor. These women are vulnerable, and are lured with the promises of easy money and fame. Their life is anything but easy.
And if they don’t fit the profile when the go into the industry, they will by time it spits them out.
August, her real name being Mercedes, was in the pornography industry for four years. During that time, roughly from age 19 until her death last year, she amassed credits in upwards of 290 scenes/films. Running the numbers, that means videos of her were released, on average, every five days for the past four years. Data from PornHub, one of the most ubiquitous free pornography sites on the web, says that her videos were viewed a mind-blowing 415 million times, or 1.43 million times per video.
After news of her death broke, a major pornography studio, Brazzers, announced that they were delaying the release of Mercedes’ latest scene until a “more appropriate time.” That’s right, they’re releasing a pornography video exploiting a deceased person.
Since news of August’s death broke, there has been a steady drip of new deaths. Most, if not all, have been confirmed as suicides. While the banner headlines proclaim that the porn industry is at a loss as to what’s causing these deaths, there’s nothing mysterious about it.
We’ve been lying to ourselves for a long time, America. We’ve been telling ourselves that porn is victimless, that everyone is a willing participant, that it’s free speech and that free porn really costs nothing.
I have trouble reconciling the degree of free consent a person can give to having their sexual encounters recorded and distributed 290 times, with countless partners. I have trouble reconciling how a commercial company can reasonably obtain consent from a person who could be put into receivership. I have trouble reconciling how someone can consent to having their videos watched, shared, and sold after their death. I have trouble reconciling the fury in recent weeks over the sexual misdeeds of celebrities and politicians and no one has said a damn thing about the single greatest driver in the dehumanization of sexuality.
Mercedes’ death is a tragedy. How many more of these broken people end their lives in anonymity?
Pornography is an affront to the dignity of the human person and civilized society.
There is zero place for pornography in a society that in any legitimate and meaningful way seeks to appreciate, respect, and empower women.
Until we’re willing to come to grips with the absolute damage that the pornography industry does to it’s participants, consumers and society at large, we will never stop this daily march of Harvey Weinsteins. We will never stop reading about teachers sexually assaulting their students. We will never stop. It will never stop.
Sex is a loving act between spouses who surrender themselves totally through self-donation.
Pornography kills.
Living in A Fantasy
I love reading the paper. I’ve written about that fact several times on this blog. Perhaps my favorite part of reading the paper is reading the in-depth reporting. Each day there are long-form articles that have been worked on extensively over a prolonged period of time. These exposés are journalism at its finest. Since October, we’ve collectively been discussing sexual harassment and assault due to this type of reporting.
The daily flow of allegations is grotesque. They’re not really all that shocking, especially in our desensitized culture. The fact is, we’ve been living in a fantasy and now just might be the time for us to start waking up.
The fantasy that has consumed us for the past 40 years is that sex has nothing to do with marriage. Birth control, the sexual revolution, garbage media, and pervasive pornography has poisoned the well. Only now are we seeing the long-term effects of this sexual binge.
We start by failing to give our children the personalized sexual education that they need. Our daughters are put on hormonal contraceptives and taught that they should use sex as power. Our sons have easy access to condoms and are taught that they should do what feels good. The Internet filters that we have are ineffective, and even places like Twitter and Instagram are filled with pornographic material. And we haven’t even made it out of high school. Add in the freedom of adulthood, and things get wild.
The thing is, the responses that we’re getting to this culture do nothing to seriously address the underlying problems. It’s like a physician telling a morbidly obese patient to exercise more. The problem isn’t the weight, it’s the depression, the broken home, and long-term unemployment. We can’t treat the symptom and hope to change the equation.
We have a society of chaos. There’s little regard for human life, no compassion, no empathy. We can’t even agree on the number of genders. The net result is that we’re hurting ourselves and darkening our souls. It’s this chaos that leads to a fantasy world where giving our daughters contraceptives is the noble and responsible choice, and men should act out whenever they choose, because they can’t help themselves.
There is such a thing as safe sex. It happens within the context of marriage for the purposes of unity and procreation. It’s the type of sex that actually has a concrete connection with love. It’s an act of supreme humility, instead of a power struggle. It’s trusting dependance. All of this context is present, even when it feels so ordinary.
If we really want a just society in which men and women are treated as equals, we need to separate sex and power. We need to put sex back into the context of the marital bond. We need to teach our daughters and sons about the truth of their sexuality, and why it should be cherished and celebrated. We need to teach our daughters that their reproductive system isn’t disordered, that their fertility is a gift. We need to teach our children about the true corrosive nature of pornography. We need to empower our sons and our daughters to love people and not use them as objects. We need to love our children enough to give them the tools and knowledge that they need to be fully alive.
If we do that, across an entire generation, maybe we can give them that utopia that we dream of.
In Memoriam
My niece, Maddux Rose, passed away yesterday. She was born in December with a genetic disorder.
I ask for your prayers for her parents and sisters.
In Memoriam Fidelium Defunctorum
Maddux Rose
Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul, and the souls of all of the faithful departed, rest in peace.
Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. Mt 12:19
Integrating the Bible in Your Life
I want to share something with you that made an outsized impact on my life last year. For me, 2017 was full of change and new circumstances. In the midst of all of that instability, I noticed that I placing my hope for happiness in the wrong places.
Self-awareness is a beautiful thing, but at first blush, it’s a challenging reality to encounter. I didn’t believe that I was looking for happiness in the wrong places, but alas, I was.
Sometime in late Summer, Alison and I had reached the point that we had been planning for our entire marriage. The table was set just how we had planned, but I still felt something was missing.
As I shaped my new daily routine, I downloaded the YouVersion app, everything changed.
YouVersion is a free Bible app. It has hundreds of translations, including a Catholic translation, the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE).
Naturally, YouVersion has the entire Bible, right there in the app, but the way in which it makes Scripture accessible is a game changer.
There is a verse of the day. A short passage that I read in the morning, and carry with me throughout the day. I like that feature. In fact, you can even set up a notification so that YouVersion can push you the verse of the day.
But there’s another aspect of the app that truly revolutionized both my prayer life and my personal life.
YouVersion has thousands of reading plans. These plans are crafted around a theme, which could be a holiday, emotion, circumstance, or even just a word. Each day, and the plans can last from a few days to a few weeks, has a devotional. The devotional is then paired with passages from the Bible that relate to the day’s theme in the reading plan.
The combination of the daily verse and the reading plans exposed me to the personal power and impact of Scripture. The Bible was no longer a book or passages that I hear at Mass on Sunday. Now, it’s specifically applicable to my life. I can complete a reading plan about finding happiness, for example, and hear what God wants to tell me about that topic.
I took this opening up of Scripture to another level by better preparing for Mass on Sunday. I’m using Mark Hart’s Ascend book to study the Readings on Saturday afternoons. Mark does a great job of providing context to the Readings in the form of historical background and other fun facts. I now find myself joyfully getting ready for Mass on Sunday morning.
The most impactful thing that happened to me in 2017 was opening the Bible and letting God speak directly to me through it. Let it have the same impact on you this year.
A Father’s Gratitude
The life of a stay-at-home dad isn’t easy. It’s much more difficult than I imagined it would be. My days are in constant motion. I get out of bed at 5 am, because if I don’t have time for myself before 7 am, I won’t see another moment until after 7 pm.
I have two small children, with a third on her way. I know that this schedule that I have cobbled together rests on shifting sands. Development curves and daily emotions threaten the delicate balance. The stability of my former life is a distant memory.
I take opportunities during the day to remove myself from the moment. I see the joy that my children bring to me, and the awesome experience of watching them grow. I know that they won’t be small for long, and soon enough they’ll be less excited to play with me. It makes me appreciate the days we share together.
The best weapon I have in my daily deluge is gratitude. My children bring tremendous good into the world. When I recognize the beauty and value of my children, I can’t help but smile.
Big Finishes Don’t Require Big Starts
I used to think that the running story line in Forrest Gump was absurd. One day Forrest starts running. He runs to the end of his driveway, city limits, county line, state line, and eventually to the coast. Then he does it again. No plan, no idea, just a singular goal. December 18th, 2016 changed that for me.
December 18th was the first day of my current exercise streak. Every day since December 18th, I’ve exercised and closed my Apple Watch Activity Rings. It hasn’t been easy. There’s been heavy rain, freezing cold, tight schedules, and days where I felt crummy.
This is, by far, the longest health streak that I’ve kept. Not the first that I’ve attempted, but my most successful. I think it’s because I didn’t over think it. I didn’t develop a detailed plan rife with opportunities to fail. I just did the work. Did I close my rings today, yes or no? Now to translate that simple strategy into other areas of my life.
The Impact of a Great Confession
Each time I move to a new place, there are two people that I need to find. The first is a great barber and the second is a great confessor. Finding these two critical people in my life is never easy.
There’s something particularly terrifying about my first encounter with a new confessor. Maybe you feel the same way. We’re both getting to know each other and I don’t know the style of the priest who’s sitting on the other side of the screen. Regardless of who he is, he stands in the place of Christ. My anxiety is almost always wrong. In fact, I’ve only had one “bad” confession in my 20 years of receiving the Sacrament. I’m treated with kindness, gentleness, and a profound sense of understanding.
That’s what happened a few weeks ago. I queued up after Mass and saw the priest enter the confessional. I thought that it was going to be a really tough sacrament, but something profound happened. It was a confession unlike any other I’ve experienced, and one that I won’t soon forget.
After confessing my sins, he asked me two questions. Are you repentant? Are you willing to do better with God’s help?
Those simple questions knocked me down and not because they’re the basic requirements for absolution. I’ve never had a priest ask me those two questions so directly. Without thinking, and without rehearsal, I gave an enthusiastic yes.
I go to Confession often, and I’m haunted by the idea that I might just be looking for a car wash, that I go just to get clean without the intention of conversion. I don’t think that any of us can have such an intimate, personal, confidential encounter with God and walk away unchanged.
Confession is the ultimate do over. It isn’t supposed to be easy and it certainly isn’t supposed to be a caning. Jesus went through an incomprehensible period of torture and humiliation: a process designed to not just break a man, but to annihilate him. How does He ask that I make it up to Him? A small act of penance and a commitment to do better.
How unfathomable is His love and mercy. How inscrutable is the mind of God that He would endure all of that and, in the face of my rejection of His love, He’d welcome me back with such a low bar: a prayer and a promise.
I shrink when I think about the power of that kind of love. How loved would Alison feel if I loved her with a single pure drop of that love? How secure would my children feel if every interaction I had with them started from that spirit of love?
There lies the true beauty of Confession. I meet Jesus in the Sacrament and come back to life. Pure love touches me personally, ready to completely transform my life, if only I let it.
On Hiatus
Four years ago, I started this project. My transition out of the workforce was on the horizon, and I wanted something to work on while Benedict was sleeping. What followed evolved into a body of work consisting of 750 individual blog posts and two full-length books. Catholic Husband has perfectly chronicled the struggles, challenges, and successes of my life over these years. These posts have followed my life as I moved through the early seasons of marriage. I’ve been a newlywed, a new dad, and now, a (more) mature father of two.
Catholic Husband has become more than just these posts. Through my tinkering with the website, I’ve learned the importance of white space, typography, and the underpinnings of what makes great design. It led me to take on web design clients and create a sustainable and profitable business. Those opportunities may not have presented themselves had I not undertaken this journey.
As with all things, there are seasons. Just as I started this project with the goal of filling my time with meaningful work and connecting with people, I now look at the next chapter of my life. A new job for Alison, a new adventure for my growing family, and new passions. I’ve decided that this is the perfect time for me to take a hiatus from Catholic Husband.
Over the past year, I’ve become keenly interested in the field of clinical healthcare ethics. This interest comes in part from my degree in philosophy and in part from hearing the daily stories that Alison brings home. I want to do more technical writing, more reading, and more research. I want to explore the meta questions in bioethics.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be launching a new blog. With the limited time that I have to devote to my clients and projects, it’s become clear that in order to be a good dad and to maintain our household, I’d have to pare down my commitments. Against this backdrop, I’ve come to the difficult conclusion that Catholic Husband will need to move to the back burner.
While I suspect that at some point down the road, I’ll find a place on my calendar for Catholic Husband, that day is not today. In the meantime, I’ll keep the site running its wealth of information available at its current home.
Thank you so much for joining me in this journey. All of the lessons that I’ve learned about myself, about marriage, about writing, and about web design will continue to influence my work.
Until we meet again.
Make 2017 A Change Year
I love this last week of the year. There’s a feeling of hope and anticipation for the New Year. We’re eager for this grand reset, and we even start believing that we can change our lives for the better.
Each year around this time I start thinking about my 2017 goals. I’m sure that you’re the same. It’s easy, and important, to focus on the usual ones. Eat better, exercise more, learn a new language, read a ton of books. I need to work on being a better me, but for 2017, I want to improve myself for others.
It’s easy to forget that my first vocation, my first job, is to be the husband that I can be. I need to improve my communication and increase my acts of service. I need to go the extra mile. I need to be spontaneous. If I give everything that I’ve got, there will be a peace and harmony in my house unlike any other.
I know that this is an area where I need improvement. It’s my goal for 2017 to reach for that ideal. I hope that you’ll join me.
Redacting In-Law
Marriage is full of misunderstanding. While in our circle of friends and in media we bemoan the lack of freedom and small annoyances of our spouses, the truth is something quite different. The reality of two people, from two different backgrounds, coming together to form something new is beautiful. Marriage is completely freeing and completely wonderful, even if it doesn’t feel like that sometimes. In-laws are also misunderstood.
Everything that your spouse is as a person can be traced to their parents and their family. They made your spouse who they are, for better or worse. An easy target for derision, they’ve taken on nicknames like “monster in-law.” Today, I’d want to propose something different. I want to break down the title and remove the barrier. Let’s redact “in-law.”
The strength of the family is built not just on the spouses or their children. The wider and deeper the family network is permitted to grow, the stronger the support system. In-law creates an “us vs. them” mentality that sows unnecessary division. As you grow deeper in your marriage, I hope that you’ll grow deeper in your relationship with your spouse’s parents and their siblings. The richness of a shared relationship will not just benefit you, but it’ll also benefit your marriage. The more harmony you can foster in a world gone mad, the healthier your family will be.
“In-law” creates another quandary when your family starts to grow. To your children, your parents and your spouse’s parents are equal. They have no baggage in their relationship. When you taken on the “in-law” terminology and all of its subtleties, you can prejudice their relationship with their grandparents. Even worse, you could sour it altogether. This goes further when the relationships between your children and your spouse’s siblings is taken into account.
It can be very difficult, and frankly a bit awkward, to forge relationships with your in-laws, but a great way to start is by changing your language. They aren’t your mother-in-law, your father-in-law, or your brother-in-law. They’re your mom, your dad, your brother, and your sister.
Language matters.