By: Shane James O’Neill
3 min. read
Emma Thompson
Emma Thomson. Sounds like Emma Watson, but different Brit and different Harry Potter Character. Emma Thompson is regarded as one of the greatest British actresses in history, playing in films such as Harry Potter, Love Actually, Nanny McPhee, Stranger Than Fiction, and Saving Mr. Banks.
Emma Thompson has played in over 40 films, she has received two Academy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards.
She’s also a Dame. Yeah, I wasn’t very sure what that meant either. It’s like a knighthood except for women. It’s granted by royalty for extraordinary service. In this instance, Emma Thompson received damehood for her work in the area of drama.
But then Emma Thompson is also a mother, or, rather, a mum. And just like any mother, she’s had to process the world her children are growing up in, with its constant message of easy, loose sex and abusive relationships, as well as the hyper-sexuality in all things media and marketing.
But how has she gone about that?
Emma Thompson the Mom
When Emma Thompson was a young mother she created a guide for her daughter when it came to sexual encounters. Of course, she didn’t use explicit language, consider the age of her daughter, but she did work to guide her daughter away from compromising settings.
Now that her daughter is older, Emma Thompson has tried hard to communicate to her daughter that sex isn’t something that should be approached lightly, nor does sex need to be a regular part of her daughter’s life.
She worked hard to equip her daughter with a different view of sex, a view that highlights how important sex is and the meaning it carries.
Emma Thompson and Porn
Since becoming a mom, Emma Thompson has taken note of the pervasive and damaging impact porn has.
Specifically, Emma Thompson describes porn as “internet slime” and fights against the influence of pornography. She finds herself further alarmed by porn as she realized there is no safety-net on what is allowed to be viewed. Both the viewer and the participants are taken advantage of when it comes to porn. As she puts it, “There is no jurisdiction or protection.”
With porn, anyone can post anything. And people have no idea what they’re watching nor what it is doing to their brains and relationships.
This is something we’ve seen to be all too real lately, as PornHub continues to refuse to monitor their video uploads for underage and trafficked “actors and actresses”.
Learning from Emma Thompson
It’s beautiful to see a mother’s love lead her to care about others, the way Emma’s love has. What began as a concern for her own daughter has become a concern for those who are exploited by viewing porn and by participating in porn. Those individuals may not be her children but they are worth caring for nonetheless.
The best way to fight something ugly is to bring its face into the light. Evil can seduce us only until we see it, then we find ourselves either terrified by its horror and we run, or we find that we’re merely looking into a mirror. Even if it is a mirror, we still have the choice to flee and to let Jesus reshape our image.
Let’s choose to be reshaped. I think we could all do with some transformation. There is a person we all long to be and that person is not a silent, hidden predator. Let’s join, in our own ways, with Emma Thompson and fight for those who do not know how to fight for themselves.
Let’s protect instead of prey.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW PROTECTOR INITIATIVE!
Sign up to continue receiving our weekly-blog series on celebrities who fight porn!
Shane James O’Neill is the Editorial Director for Proven Men Ministries. He is currently working on a graduate degree in apologetics at Liberty University’s Rawling School of Divinity.