And that, most aficionados agree, was when the genre really took off. People can get pretty touchy about it. It's not surprising, then, that when religion entered the dispute, the heat flared exponentially. The books in and of themselves may not be pornography but the sex scenes can be called nothing less. That declaration outraged many other participants.
Pornography focuses on sex without love and sometimes with violence or degradation.
Romance focuses on love and character growth. Few are surprised, though, that some men still feel threatened by women's interest in romances. Others reacting to Wakabayashi's compromise with her husband pointed out that a man who is against his wife reading romances might very well be shooting himself in the foot. Research backs up the anecdotal evidence about romances' effects on the marriage bed. But Stacey Helms, another conservative Christian at AAR, recoiled from that idea.