George Stephanopoulos’ Wife Talks Openly About Watching Pornography with Their Children
Pornography is depraved, destructive and definitely not intended for children, but actress and author Ali Wentworth would nevertheless watch it with her teenage daughters.
“You can’t stop them, you certainly can’t stop them,” the wife of ABC’s “Good Morning America” host George Stephanopoulos said in an interview with hosts Debra Messing and Mandana Dayani on Thursday’s episode of “The Dissenters” podcast.
“If they look at porn, I would look at the porn with them that one time and go, ‘They’re performing.’ … I’d sit there with them like you’re in school and go, ‘This is what’s going on,'” Wentworth said when asked about what to do about kids who watch pornography.
Most sensible parents would simply turn it off because what’s happening on screen is not meant for others — especially children — to gawk at even in a “teachable moment” setting.
But while Wentworth made other astute points about the problems of modern parenting — such as dealing with the unrealistic expectations and problems with social media — the 55-year-old actress and mother of daughters Elliott, 17, and Harper, 15, seemingly conceded that when it comes to pornography, kids are going to watch anyway.
“I think to block and say ‘no’ piques their curiosity,” she said, apparently instead opting to use the occasion of people having sex onscreen as a lesson for kids (not the best parenting strategy but certainly a popular one among elites).
This poisonous mindset is unthinkable for activities such as illegal drug use, but when it comes to something just as destructive and addictive — pornography — there’s no use prohibiting it because they’ll do it anyway.
“The bigger issue is our boys have such an easy access to porn and then they start thinking, ‘This is sex,'” Wentworth said, admitting that pornography shows “a kind of dream version of a woman” with actresses’ physical appearance and how they respond to the activity in the scene.
“You could also say people use this in the privacy of their own home, that’s how they pleasure themselves and people pleasure themselves in all kinds of ways, but this is a performance, this is not real,” she continued, stopping short of saying that pornography is objectively wrong despite her diatribe against it.
This kind of mix between quasi-morality and worldly attitude is nothing new to Wentworth, who previously had no qualms about revealing the intimate details of her married life.
In her memoir “Go Ask Ali: Half-Baked Advice (And Free Lemonade),” and during interviews while promoting the book on “Good Morning America” with her husband, she shared with the world that they had a very active sex life, according to US Weekly.
The way Wentworth treated marital relations had it half-right with the understanding that sex is good and healthy within marriage, but her joking about it in her book or on national television shattered the intimacy shared in the act, turning it into fodder for cheap laughs to the embarrassment of their daughters.
It isn’t that parents shouldn’t talk openly to their children about topics such as sex and pornography, but having proper boundaries such as not watching porn with them even if it is for their “education” is also important.
In fact, it might not even be lawful for an adult to willingly view pornography in the presence of minor children — and certainly there are better ways to teach about how wrong something is other than engaging in it.
“Instead of ‘watching porn’ with your teen kids, why not read the bible together, Liberal Lady?” podcast host and political commentator Wayne Dupree tweeted Monday.
Instead of “watching porn” with your teen kids, why not read the bible together, Liberal Lady?https://t.co/EOjsWzLQ6T
— ✭ Wayne Dupree ✭ (@WayneDupreeShow) July 20, 2020
Dupree was right on with prescribing the Bible for the family. Although Wentworth made solid secular arguments against pornography, her tacit acceptance of it in society demonstrates the problem with approaching the topic without the moral underpinnings of a religious worldview.
Many will agree that pornography is damaging to women and might even concede that it is harmful to the viewer, but few go as far as saying it should be something wholly condemned.
Instead, the hedonistic left will often accuse Christians of treating sex as dirty or taboo — and yet it is the faithful who are the guardians of the sacred aspect while the godless turn sex into transactional filth, or at least tolerate it when others do.
The antidote to the objectification of women and unrealistic expectations of men is the same as it has been for millennia: the Bible and faith in Jesus Christ.
God’s plan for sex is a fruitful, faithful, intimate encounter between two fully committed spouses, and anything less is a cheap counterfeit — and kids don’t need to watch pornography to be taught that.
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