This is a long thread, and I'm going to be honest and say that I haven't read more than the first page and a half. That said, here's my view of porn in a nutshell:
1. I love and respect my girlfriend enough to want to make love with her, rather than simply using her as a way to get sexual release. I don't want to have sex just to get off, I want to have sex to be close with her, to show her in a very intimate way that I love and adore her.
So, fantasising (and sometimes porn) gets involved if all I want is a sexual release; I don't think it's fair on anyone involved in a relationship that's supposed to be so loving and intimate to have sex simply for the sake of satisfying a biological function.
A friend of mine summed it up quite succinctly while we were both working in a shop. She said to her boyfriend "If you want to make love with me, come and get it. But if you just want to use me for a wank, there's some porn downstairs."
I think this comes down to a discrepancy between what your heart and your mind both want, and what your testicles want. (during a very chaotic period in my life about a year ago, I came up with the theory that the head can reason twenty years into the future, the heart can reason about a month into the future, and the testicles only concern themselves with the next half an hour - and the lower down your body you go, the dumber each part gets, but the louder each part shouts. Your head knows what's best for you, but uses very calm, quiet words, trying to win you over with logic. Your heart thinks it knows best, and talks a little louder, sometimes drowning out your head. Your testicles sit and gibber like the village idiot, occasionally screaming "WANT SEX NOW!" at a couple of hundred decibels.)
2. 99% of porn is bloody awful. The other 1% either knows that it's ridiculous and plays it up, or takes itself seriously as an art form and pulls it off (not an intentional pun, I assure you) perfectly. The former category includes films such as Alice in Wonderland, which is a 1970's pornographic comedy musical based on the work by Lewis Carroll -
how much more beautiful is the world now that you know about this?! It's hilarious, fun, and knows it's absolutely ridiculous - and is not afraid to take full advantage of that fact, poking fun at both itself and the porn industry in general, with some very catchy tunes. The latter category includes those wonderful old Victorian erotica novels, as well as such conteporary works as Alan Moore's "Lost Girls." Here's an interview with the author where he shares his views about porn:
Alan Moore | Interviews | SCI FI Weekly
So not all porn is destructive, degrading, objectifying or insulting!
I don't think porn is a problem to society in and of itself - but bad porn is. The best sort of porn is where everybody is empowered and enjoying themselves, and that sort of porn does exist. The problem is that it's being drowned in the bog-standard garbage that takes up 90% of the Internet.
Hope this helps.
Oh, yeah, I had a point in here somewhere - Original Poster, it's possible that your boyfriend looks at porn because (and I'm going to trigger the profanity filter here, but it's an important word with important meanings attached and I'm using it in its appropriate context) he would rather make love with you than ************ you. He wants his attention to be on his heart, rather than his testicles. That's my interpretation, anyway.