America is in the middle of an epidemic, one that's worse than swine flu, worse than E. coli, and one that's far worse than Glenn Beck.

People are getting addicted to Internet pornography.

And it's the worst kind of danger for American history, morality, community and oh by the way our children.

Not really. But that's what they'd like us to believe.

Case in point is a Sept. 19 article in The Norwich Bulletin about an unnamed man who feared losing his job over his Internet porn habit. It was a salacious piece that seemed genuinely worried for the man's sanity. Yet beneath the surface was a subtext of condemnation and moral panic.

But really. Is porn bad for you? Well, maybe.

Dennis D. Waskul, author of Self-Games and Body-Play: Personhood in Online Chat and Cybersex, and professor of sociology at Minnesota State University, cuts to the chase.

"Our debate on the role of pornography skirts the real discussion we should be having," he says. "It's not porn that people find so troublesome; it's sex."

Jinkies!

Anti-pornography groups and documentaries like Chyng Sun and Miguel Picker's The Price of Pleasure claim there's a link between domestic violence and porn.

Problem is, the science just isn't there.

"This is about culture, not science," he says. "The two are often at odds with one another."

That doesn't stop some from declaring a national crisis. The Bulletin cites the late Stanford professor Al Cooper as saying that porn is a "public health hazard exploding."

But are we in the middle of a health crisis?

It's not clear, says Mark, a licensed therapist and marital counselor in eastern Connecticut, who requested his last name not be used.

"These individuals [with addictions to Internet pornography] generally have an underlying pathology, which leads them to practice self-damaging behaviors," he says.

The Bulletin goes one step further by attempting to show porn is a leading cause of divorce.

"Many times, marriages crumble," it says.

The article draws from a 2002 survey that found "two-thirds of the divorce lawyers ... [say] excessive interest in online porn contributed to more than half of the divorces they handled that year."

Correlation, however, does not show cause and effect.

Pornography may even be helpful to rocky marriages.

"Mutually pleasurable sexual relations within a long-term relationship are vital," Mark says. "Often couples are unaware of how to achieve that."

Katy Zvolerin agrees.

She's the spokeswoman for PHE, the company that owns Adam and Eve, the online sex product supplier.

"Seeing things on the screen can spark imagination," she says. "It can make an open, honest discussion easier."

Pornography has been around as long as people. Charcoal renderings of sex acts decorate cave walls throughout Europe. Union generals complained to President Lincoln about the porn soldiers carried with them. The Marquis de Sade's works were among the most popular black market items in France in the 18th century. Today, phone companies profit from 900-numbers, the postal service delivers brown-paper packages and the internet porn industry flourishes.

One thing's clear: Sex means business in America.

The difference between then and now is delivery.

"Technology has always been in bed with sex," Waskul says. "Everything from secure transactions to streaming video was pioneered by [the porn industry]."

Moreover, Waskul believes that pornography is merely one of the myriad ways we talk about sex.

"We are not going to like all the ways sex is narrated," he says. "But there is value in that too; the value in being able to draw a line. And because the Internet has so democratized porn, this [might be] a very good thing, too.

Meaning there's more than Deep Throat to chose from.

Effex Media's marketing research found that "adult movie watchers are selective," says Alexandra, an Effex employee who requested her surname not be made public. "If a couple is watching a movie they feel is too hardcore, they will turn it off and buy another one they like."

Waskul adds: "I think any reasonable person would conclude that maybe some of this stuff is not so good and maybe some of this stuff is not so bad."

Given that almost half of all Internet searches are pornography-related, it appears many Americans agree.