Email This StoryNew Web site devoted to curbing porn addiction
Feb. 27, 2007
By MELISSA LIMMER
Staff writer
A pair of dark eyes stares students down as they walk across campus and even as they surf Facebook.
"It's not what you think..." is the message accompanying the eyes.
These advertisements direct students to the counseling center's new Web site, titled "bare truth."
The site depicts the saturation of pornography in today's media, its negative effects and how to overcome an addiction to pornography.
Dr. Jim Marsh, director of Baylor's counseling center, said the idea for creating the Web site began in 2005 when Todd Lake was chaplain.
"Our goal is just to raise the level of awareness about this issue on campus," Marsh said.
"We are trying to (advertise) in a way to invite people to read the material. It can't make anyone change, but it will give people something to think about."
Besides raising general awareness, Marsh said the site invites people to rethink looking at pornography and provides resources for help in an anonymous setting.
Marsh said the pornography issue is one that doesn't just affect Baylor students.
"The bigger issue is that our entire culture is saturated with sensuality, whether that be college students or people out of college," he said.
"The problem is everywhere."
The site was funded by a grant from McLennan County's abstinence program, McCAP.
The $5,000 grant covered the costs to create and market the site around campus.
Glenn Ballenger, director of resource production at McCAP, said Baylor contacted them and "raised to us that porn was an issue we need to start addressing."
The grant also allowed the counseling center to hire a George W. Truett Theological Seminary student to do the research and create the site.
Dan Bellamy, now a youth minster at First Baptist Church in Atlanta, Texas, took the job and spent the next year and a half creating the site.
He said creating the site was a learning process.
"I feel like I got a better understanding (of the pornography problem)," Bellamy said.
He said more men than women are affected by the issue.
However, he said he discovered more women than he expected view pornography.
"Research backs up that this is a problem," Bellamy said.
He said pornography has become an issue in today's society because many people have adopted the attitude, "If it feels good, do it."
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