text: are romance novels sinful?   some thoughts:  "pornography is a sin"   porn is not mentioned in the bible. remember, photography did not exist when the book was written. most fundamentalists, however, base their objection to pornography on two biblical references.   in genesis 3:7, adam and eve committed the first sin, and, says the bible, they suddenly realized they were naked and tried to cover themselves. fundamentalists point to this as proof that nudity is bad. this, of course, makes no sense since adam and eve were naked before they ever sinned by eating of the "fruit of the tree." god created humans naked, and they lived naked until they sinned. some want to claim, however, that nudity became a sin after "the fall." and, in fact, in leviticus 18 we find a whole chapter dedicated to why the people of israel should not see their family members nude (though the actual words used indicate this means having sex with them, not just seeing them naked). however, in chapter 19, verse 27, we also are told not to cut the hair over our ears, or even to trim our beards, and earlier in the same book we're told not to eat pork or birds (uh oh, no more fried chicken!).   why do fundamentalists pick out those parts of leviticus that they want to be sins and ignore the rest? good question. leviticus was not meant for you and me. it was meant for ancient israel. its rules were designed to rid a nomadic population of their diseases, not as a rulebook for all humans. but, interestingly enough, even if we decided to apply all the rules of leviticus to our lives, if we never cut the hair over our ears and never ate pork or turkey again, and never saw any of our family members naked, the book never says it's a sin to see a non-family member naked. in fact, nowhere in the bible do we read that nudity, by its very nature, is wrong.   nudity, according to the fundamentalist however, causes people to lust, which according to matthew 5:28 is a sin. and pornography, that is, images or stories of people engaged in sexual activity, is specifically designed to make people lust, so its existence must, by default, be a sin according to these people. the bible, itself, however, would have to be considered pornography by this definition. in song of solomon 7:7-8, solomon describes how satisfying the breasts of his lover are, and then tells how he longs to take hold of them and how he wants to climb onto the woman. and in ezekiel 23:1-20 we read of two women with insatiable sexual appetites, and we are told of how men with penises the size of donkeys' would pour out horse-like quantities of, well, their "issue" upon these women's breasts. if viewing pornography is a sin, then reading the bible would also a sin considering how much pornography is in it. point out these verses to your fundamentalist friends and see how much they sweat.   you can read more about the pornography in the bible at: http://elroy.net/ehr/vchip.html