Billboards Target Christian Porn Addicts

ABC 7 News ^ | Thursday February 12, 2004

[nickcarraway]

DALLAS (AP) - Chocolates are always nice, and a diamond necklace would be delightful. But a Dallas-based ministry thinks it has a better idea for Valentine's Day.

"Her gift for Valentines? Stop looking at porn," proclaim billboards put up by NetAccountability, a nonprofit software company that aims to help Christians confront the "secret sin" of pornography.

If national surveys are any indication, it is a personal battle waged by millions of Christians.

Almost 18 percent of people who called themselves born-again Christians admitted visiting Internet porn sites, according to a 2000 survey of 1,031 adults by the evangelical group Focus on the Family. In a 2002 Pastors.com survey, more than 50 percent of responding pastors reported viewing pornography in the previous year.

"It's definitely the church's dirty little secret," said Mike Foster, co-founder of the anti-porn site XXXChurch.com, which hosts online support groups for Christians trying to kick the habit.

NetAccountability co-founders Brandon Cotter and Scott Covington, both in their early 30s, left jobs in the technology field to start the ministry 2 1/2 years ago.

Since then, NetAccountability has sold more than 5,000 copies of software the pair developed that lets a partner monitor the Web sites visited by the recovering porn user. The software sells for $49 a year.

The billboards have been going up in Dallas over the past few days.

"I've seen pornography impact guys all around me," Cotter said. "I've seen it tear up marriages, guys losing their jobs, all over the board. In a lot of cases, they were Christian guys going to church, with otherwise `normal lives.'"

Bernie Anderson, a pastor at Seventh-Day Adventist churches in the Dallas area, said an addiction to sexually explicit images threatened his marriage and his ministry.

"It was like a double life," said Anderson, 33.

For 20 years, he found himself drawn to pornographic Web sites, movies and magazines, he said. He would get up at night, telling his wife he needed to study, and would surf the Internet for porn. Later, he would spend hours accessing porn sites from the computer in his church office.

"You go take a shower, clean up and say you'll never do it again. Yet the next day, you fall right back into it," he said.

Last summer, the guilt and shame finally became too much for him to bear, he said. The father of three confessed his compulsion to a pastor friend and enrolled in an exhaustive five-day workshop offered by a Christian counselor.

Anderson learned how his habit kept him from true intimacy in his relationship with his wife, he said. Recently, he celebrated "100 days sober" from porn, he said.

He said: "The most powerful thing about it is that it's a secret. Nobody knows but you, so you're just kind of fighting yourself."

---

On the Net:

Pure Restoration: www.purerestoration.com

Christian porn site: www.xxxchurch.com

[nickcarraway]

huh?

[nickcarraway]

I have a cunning plan...

[Dinsdale]

Hate to break it to ya but the Chester from your church started at church. He was already a chester then. That degree of warp is started in childhood. Bundy too.

BTW don't leave your kids anywhere near his parents.

[LibKill]

Baldric, am I mistaken, or are the words "I have a cunning plan" marching on this conversation with ill-conceived confidence?

[nickcarraway]

As cunning as a fox who is professor of cunning at Oxford University?

[geopyg]

Well, at least the billboard wasn't asking us to give up Free Repu.... quiet - here comes my wife now - back to work!

[HiTech RedNeck]

(Bad, very bad, sick joke)

[who knows what evil?]

When women commit to satisfying their men on demand, men will give up porn. When women quit withholding sex and avoiding sex, men will quit porn.

There are a number of Christian women who need to pay a little more attention to 1 Corinthians 7, verses 3 and 4. WAY too many of them are taught that "sex is dirty".

[Aeon Flux]

Evil- It is very hard for women.

There is such a mixed message between Whore/Madonna many women find themselves in that "rock" and *ahem* "hard place".

Make the woman in your life feel good about her sexuality.

This Valentine's Day find her porn that is made for women!!

[adam_az]

Did you know Ted Bundy started on his road of murder, madness and mayhem by looking at & becoming addicted to porn.

Did you know that Ted Bundy ate food and drank water before he committed his crimes? A clear connection!!!!!

Hint: Correlation is not causation.

[adam_az]

It's what God wants: a Holy People.

If God didn't intend for man to masturbate, He would not have made our arms the perfect length for reaching our genitalia.

[adam_az]

As cunning as a fox who is professor of cunning at Oxford University?

You are truly a cunning linguist. ;)

[Evil Inc]

Make the woman in your life feel good about her sexuality

This is the modern womans problem, always asking the impossible. I keeeeed, I keeeeed.

Girl on girl sex is quite popular with both sexes. Will that do?

[NCPAC]

Calling Jimmy Swaggert!

Would someone please define porn - and not in a manner that comes nowhere near to being a definition? What, exactly, is it that this group is targeting? Pics of men and women together sexually? Jeez,....how many here have honeymoon (or other occasion) pictures that would at least qualify as "soft" porn by some standards?

[AdequateMan]

If a man and a woman are "one flesh" often enough, porn is unnecessary and redundant. Women these days are saddled with the responsibilities of household, children, and now career. The women's "liberation" movement has created a group of harried, exhausted women. They are too tired for sex. Sexuality is dying as well. Women these days are also too tired in many cases to flirt, and too self-indulgent to bother. Not all of them, however, have decided to go the route of the feminists. Some of them still make time for their husbands. If you're a woman and your husband has a pornography habit that you would consider an addiction, simply ask why there is all of this unused sexuality in your husband. Why is it being wasted on porn? I'm tired of hearing from Christians about porn addiction. Every one I've ever seen complaining about it is an uptight matronly shrew. You know- no makeup, skirt down to the floor with cutesy collars up to the neck. If you're offended by this description, chances are it's you. Here's a newsflash: MEN HATE THAT. We hate ankle length skirts and Christmas sweaters with gingerbread men on them. Okay? We hate the lacy peter pan collars and nighties with buttons up to the collarbones. Hate them. We hate when your pretty long hair is bundled up as tight as a guitar string in a bun. We hate seeing you hang out in sweats WE could fit in. If porn is a problem, read Dr. Laura's book on the care and feeding of husbands. Chances are, with kids and career and college, something had to be put on the back burner and it was probably your husband. Stop griping about him and do something.
PS the book is hilarious. And sad too. Read it.

[Aeon Flux]

Evil- Actually, there is a market of very erotic soft porn that is made by and geared for women.
Let your woman know that it is okay, wonderful, healthy and human to be sexual.

And Mamabear- I am sorry, I feel for you girl!!!

[cyborg]

eeeewwwww...LOL