Rev Grant Storms deserves our collective disdain for so many reasons--he's viciously anti-gay, he's opposed to sexual intercourse being performed in the middle of public streets, he clips his sunglasses to the collar of his t-shirt like a douchebag, etc.--but today I want to focus on his allegedly brand spanking new (no pun intended) discovery of pornography. For those of you who don't know, Pastor Storms was recently caught masturbating in a public park in New Orleans a short distance from where children were playing. Storms, known for his yearly protests of something called the Southern Decadence Festival and homosexuality in general, has admitted to having his pants unzipped and one hand firmly tucked inside said pants, but he claims he was not jerking it. He's a homophobe, after all, not a pedophile. He recently held a press conference at which he outed himself as a hypocrite and claimed that he felt awful about all those past Souther Decadence Festival protests. That's all fine and good, but I was a bit confused about another one of his startling revelations:
Wait. For someone who claims he wasn't jacking off in his van in the middle of the afternoon within the view of children, he sure is quick to bring up pornography. What, did thinking about some pornography he'd been perusing a mere hour earlier inspire him to park in front of a playground and air out his balls for awhile? If he was just taking a piss in a Coke bottle, why is he revealing his pornography addiction to the world? Storms, you were whacking it. C'mon! That God-breathed scripture you claim instructs all of God's followers to persecute gays and lesbians also tells ya not to lie, if I'm remembering my Sunday schooling accurately.
Also: YOU'RE USING PORNOGRAPHY WRONG. You don't watch an internet porn clip, ruminate on it for awhile, drive to Quizno's and enjoy an oven-toasted sub sandwich, stop by the post office to mail some letters--still ruminating, mind you--park your car in front of a playground full of toddlers, and start vigorously abusing yourself. You watch the porn clip AND YOU JERK OFF! RIGHT THERE! Who watches Riley Mason or Ashley Blue or Kelly Wells (I'm making these names up obviously...) blow a roomful of masked men with clean-shaven balls and then goes about his day unsure of when and where the urge to masturbate will strike him? Maybe that's what Storms means when he says he has a "problem with pornography." He never learned that pornography is just for rubbing one out. Pornography isn't legitimate entertainment. It isn't an acceptable way to spend a relaxing weekend at home. You watch porno when your wife is out of the house running errands. And you watch it quick because who knows when she's gonna come bursting through that door, calling you to unload the groceries.
And why are the deeply religious always the ones with the pornography problem? Why do they seem to be ones who get nabbed for public indecency or sex with male prostitutes? It might be because the media loves to expose pompously outspoken religious leaders for the hypocritical assholes that they are--I know I do--or, maybe, they're the only one's doing it. Maybe they possess such a skewed vision of sex and pornography because all they've ever heard and, in turn, peddled to people hungry for answers from a god they can't fully understand themselves is "lust is bad, lust will lead to elicit sex, and elicit sex will send you straight to Hell." To them, sex is pretty much the worst thing ever and when they see a picture of a naked lady or a stag film for the first time, they kind of go, "wait a minute...these are naked people...doing it?" and lose their minds.
Whatever it is, Grant Storms is a scumbag, but at least he realizes it. Maybe next time you'll wait to whack off when you get home, Pastor Grant.
