A recent New York Times report showed that women are beginning to comprise a large percentage of the people who frequent pornographic sites on the Internet. Common wisdom has held that men are the prime consumers of smut, but an Internet research company has found that women, primarily those between 18 and 34 years of age, made up 42 percent of the visitors to such sites in January.

One woman, who said she hopes to produce and direct her own pornographic films, told the Times this was a question of "empowering" women.

Isn't it interesting how the world can take the very thing that saps humanity of its real power and call it empowerment? Or, as Isaiah said, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20.)

Pornography, which today is being forced upon people in ways never before contemplated, is destroying countless lives, addicting minds and robbing people of uplifting passions and feelings. It causes people to view one another as objects for their own selfish pleasure, not as humans worthy of respect and basic dignities. It makes them weak and subject to the flesh.

By contrast, the true gospel of Jesus Christ builds moral and inner strength in every man and woman by acquainting them with the eternal truth that they are sons and daughters of an all-powerful God, and heirs to all that He has. It rescues the finest qualities deep down inside each individual and teaches people how to communicate with the Father.

The most empowering act of all time was the atonement of Jesus Christ, which gives all humans the opportunity to return into the presence of a loving God. Throughout His life, the Savior taught by example, and the example He gave was always as one concerned about others, not His own pleasure.

The prophet Joseph F. Smith made note of this. "The test . . . of our soul's greatness is rather to be sought in our ability to comfort and console, our ability to help others, rather than in our ability to help ourselves and crowd others down in the struggle of life. If the reader will stop a moment to reflect upon the healing qualities of Christ's life, he will understand that Christ was a master in the art of healing. . . . What a comfort His life is to those in sorrow! How instinctively our thoughts turn to Him! How prone we are to go to him for consolation! He is truly the great Healer of the afflictions of others" (Juvenile Instructor, March 1903, Vol. 38, pp. 178-179).

Greatness, then, requires unselfish love as well as humility, two things completely at odds with pornography and the aims of its purveyors.

Many modern prophets have spoken eloquently on the destructive power of filthy pictures and movies. Speaking to BYU students nearly 30 years ago, during an age that, by comparison, seems much more innocent, President Spencer W. Kimball gave this stern warning:

"Each person must keep himself clean and free from lusts. He must shun ugly, polluted thoughts and acts as he would an enemy. Pornography and erotic stories and pictures are worse than polluted food. Shun them. The body has power to rid itself of sickening food. That person who entertains filthy stories or pornographic pictures and literature records them in his marvelous human computer, the brain, which can't forget this filth. Once recorded, it will always remain there, subject to recall" (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, Bookcraft, p. 283).

There is little wonder why Satan would wield this evil tool in the latter days, a time when, as the Apostle Paul said, "men shall be lovers of their own selves . . . without natural affection . . . lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God" (2 Timothy 3:2-3).

There also is little wonder why Satan would want to trap women in pornography's grasp as well as men.

But there is no excuse for a Latter-Day Saint to fall for the lie that such filth leads to empowerment of any kind.