Posted on 06/18/2014 4:54:34 PM PDT by Morgana
“What do you do for a living, Donny?”
“I’m a porn producer!”
Whenever I had an exchange like this with one of my pastor-father’s parishioners, the initial response was usually laughter. But then I would make it clear that I was serious, and then neatly cut off the coming lecture with a question of my own.
Although raised in a Christian home, I abandoned my faith to become a porn producer, a decision fueled by an intense hatred for the Church. For many years I confused God with the people who claimed to represent Him. This may seem like a simple realization for many, but it took me a long time and a whole lot of love from an unusual Christian missionary group to recognize it.
When I was growing up, “Jesus” was a list of rules and regulations. “Following Jesus” meant I couldn’t go to the movies, watch television or spend the night with friends because their parents might allow such “sinful activities.” Since I never really knew Him, I lumped Jesus in with the judgmental hypocrites I met each Sunday morning. The things I’d witnessed in the churches my dad pastored sowed seeds of bitterness within me, particularly during my teenage years.
The biggest mistake my parents made was to speak openly to each other about what went on behind the scenes in their churches. My little ears were eager to soak up such information. When my young mind discovered Brother So-and-So, that role model of Sunday services, was really up to disgusting activities in his private life, the results were a lack of faith and a large dose of cynicism toward all things relating to God.
‘Honey, I’m a Pornographer’
At the beginning of my senior year of high school I met the Christian girl who was to become my wife. During the four years we dated and early in our marriage, I tried to be the man of God she deserved. Yet all the while, I secretly battled thoughts—which came more and more frequently—that everything I’d been taught about Christ was a lie. Without a real foundation in Jesus, it was easy to reach a very dark place. I’d stay up long after my wife was in bed, get up before she awoke and come home on my lunch hour to view porn on the Internet. In 1997, there was an explosion of pornographic Web sites, and becoming involved with them on a business level was much easier than I thought it would be.
Since I no longer needed to hide what I was doing, my income exploded. The very first month I could be open about selling porn, I grossed $50,350. Now there was no way I’d stop.
My college major was computer science, a topic that didn’t interest my wife, so when I started Pauling Technology Consulting, she didn’t ask many questions. I began secretly recruiting girls to pose for photos that I then sold to my favorite sites. I started my own network of Web sites and eventually increased my customer base to include well-known companies such as Playboy. Those first three years I hid what I was doing from the woman who loved me, keeping business as constrained as possible to avoid being “found out.”
I’d always intended to keep things “strictly professional,” but after two years I slipped up and slept with a model. I loved my wife very much and felt enormous guilt for cheating on her. I swore that if it ever happened again, I’d come clean with her about everything. Through it all, I continued attending church, going to prayer meetings and pretending to be the man she deserved—just like the hypocrites I’d always detested.
A year later, I once again cheated on my wife. I kept that promise to myself and called her from a hotel room in Phoenix, Arizona, where I’d been attending a porn convention. That conversation ended my marriage. Donny Pauling anxious This photo was taken in the house where I shot porn just two days after I got out of the business, by JR Mahon from XXXChurch. JR shot this photo because I was trying hard to talk a girl OUT of porn - a girl I'd recruited just a few weeks before.
Easy Money, And Lots Of It
Too insecure to stay alone for long, I quickly found a girlfriend. She was eight years younger than me and a member of what I’ve come to label “the porn generation”—raised in a society where kids are allowed to go to elementary school in “porn star” T-shirts, as if being one were cool; where Paris Hilton can build a career on an explicit sex video; and where parents sit in the living room watching soft porn on network TV, believing it must be okay since the actors have their clothes on. Coming from this mentality, my new girlfriend didn’t just accept my career—she was eager to help.
Since I no longer needed to hide what I was doing, my income exploded. The very first month I could be open about selling porn, I grossed $50,350. Now there was no way I’d stop.
I lived for the opportunities to meet people from one of my father’s churches so we could have the “catch up” conversation—that dialogue where we asked what the other was up to.
After I told them how I made a living, I loved the chance to expose their hypocrisy. “Before you say whatever it is you want to say, let me ask you a question. Don’t answer out loud, because I don’t want to hear you lie to me: ‘Have you ever consumed porn?’ Because the law of supply and demand says I couldn’t be doing this without people like you!
“Now, what was it you wanted to say to me?”
Jesus Loves Porn Stars
My rage toward Christianity was met head-on the year I encountered a missionary group called XXXChurch.com, led by youth pastor Craig Gross, at a porn convention in Las Vegas. They weren’t outside picketing. They weren’t telling us we were on our way to hell—with graphic descriptions of how badly we would burn once we got there. The XXXChurch members were inside, manning their own booth.
This group did crazy things—like doing make-up for the girls who were paid by the porn companies to walk around practically nude. The XXXChurch team told the girls they were beautiful and that there was nothing they could ever do to make God love them any less, that He had more for them. And if the girls needed anyone to talk to, members of the XXXChurch group assured them that they were there to listen. The people at the booth handed out free Bibles with covers that read “Jesus Loves Porn Stars” and on the back added, “That might go against what you’ve heard about Jesus, but it’s true: He loves porn stars as much as He loves pastors . . .” Image XXXChurch's loving approach is what changed my mind, over the course of four years, about Christians. Here is a member of XXXChurch doing makeup for a girl in the porn industry. XXXChurch
For four years I spewed verbal venom at this group. For four years they consistently responded with love. I started thinking, “If I were a Christian, this is the type of Christian I’d want to be.” As the hatred was taken away, I could no longer justify my involvement in the porn industry, and I quit producing it the same day Playboy offered me an additional $4,000-a-day contract to shoot a new reality series for them.
I surrendered my life to God two weeks later. It hasn’t been easy. In fact, at times it’s been one of the hardest roads I’ve had to follow. But the peace inside has been amazing. I’ve learned God really can use all things for good. He’s since put me in front of more than 6 million people, all over the world, sharing a story of His grace and forgiveness, and exposing what really goes on behind the scenes in the porn industry.
Continuing this work, I plan to share with you a side of porn you may never before have considered. In coming articles, I’ll share the stories of people whose lives have been forever changed by the work they did for me. I’ll hold nothing back. Many of these stories may make you hate me, and that’s quite okay. But I also hope the message rings clear that the law of Supply and Demand does indeed require a demand. “Demand” comes from any of us who consume pornography.
I promise to give you tools to combat this drug–and that really is what it is–using various resources, including anecdotal stories, scientific research, and numerous tools that are available which can protect your family.
______________________________________________
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No need to go on a porn quest. Good heavens I find it in half the ads for whatever they are selling these days.
I absolutely agree with you! For a while I had a minstry at a Christian homeless shelter....need I say more about some of the women I helped?
Dare I ask. Who was worse, the homeless or the people in your church about you helping them?
Should have been: ....some of the women I tried to help?
I read the excuse. And it is an excuse. Doing makeup is helping them work not preventing them from it.
“Here Johnny Jihadi, this is a new AK 47. Now I trust you arent going to shoot any infidels for Allah because Jesus loves you no matter what”
Here Billy Addict, here is a clean needle and new shiny meth pipe. Jesus loves you no matter what you do!”
Same thing.
“But yes, there are some of those kind of Christians in the church too....LOL They tend not to mess with me...LOL “
You know what? They don’t have to help, maybe their calling is elsewhere but they should stay out of your way.
Dumb kid headed for a very painful epiphany.
I read the article and my take on it is this. These are ex porn workers going to where current porn workers are working. While they are there they are talking to them about God. Sound a little un-orthodox? I can understand how you would feel that way. This is the sex industry after all. How else are they to reach these people? However being that these are former workers they are used to the atmosphere. The ex workers can reach them. Trust me sending in a fundie pastor would not work on so many levels. He would be thrown out after condemning them to hell which would happen in 30 seconds or less upon entering the building. Do you get what I am saying?
An ex porn working doing another hair though? Talking to her while she’s doing her hair? Yes that will work. It takes time to get through. It takes time and the patience of Job. They are earning the current workers trust and this is very important.
They do. And basically, they’re kindhearted, just not streetwise in any way and don’t understand the ways of the world which makes some of them judgmental.
How long is a girl in the business? A couple years tops right? How many leave because of this vs. how many go on to even more degrading aspects because someone helped them look better for the job? You are enabling them and you are making the porn guys rich. And NOW they don’t need to pay a makeup girl besides. So where is the benefit?
The idea of going into the lions den I fully support. We just disagree on how to deal with the lion.
the response should be:
“that’s nice, dear. please leave now”
and escort him from the premises
same should be done for any liberal you come across. banish them
Me either. Good story.
FYI, Jennifer Knapp is now a homosexual and embraced heretical teaching that God is ok with that.
I know, very sad, but it doesn’t take away the music she wrote.
Most of her first three or four albums are almost entirely about guilt.
She disappeared for a number of years, I mean fell of the map where nobody knew what she was doing, only to come out as a lesbian.
Again, very sad.
I still find her music to be extraordinary.
On the other side of this spectrum, the Violent Femmes wrote and produced some of the most raw music you could hear.
BTW, music that I like.
They resurfaced as “Born-Again”, at least their lead singer was, Gordon Gano. On a side note I don’t think he actually wrote the lyrics to their songs.
In Search of Christian Music That Doesn’t Suck
By Tom Hawking on Feb 5, 2013 12:00pm
http://flavorwire.com/369061/in-search-of-christian-music-that-doesnt-suck
snip
Gordon Gano’s faith was something of an issue for the early part of Violent Femmes’ career — atheist bassist Brian Ritchie and drummer Victor DeLorenzo were uncomfortable with including overtly Christian songs on the band’s records, and their classic teen-angst debut was entirely devoid of such tracks.
Amen.
Yes...it's "hetero"...the new "sin".
Thank you for the “amen”
In fact since I’m on a roll tonight I’m gonna add this:
Would it kill some of these preachers to preach the ills of porn in their sermons? No I don’t mean ol’ Jimmah Sway-gart saying “Lawrd I have sinned” but really preaching how much it hurts women, the family and society?
You know they could put together a very good one just after they did that pro life one, but hey I’m dreaming again.
“same should be done for any liberal you come across. banish them”
No no dear, with them I’m not sure if I need a crucifix or a silver bullet.
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