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

[cyborg]

I get some that much when I get married. Porn is boring anyway. Seen it once, how many times can you watch the same thing?

[Doctor Stochastic]

The joke is a prohibition on artificial insemination. "Spare the rod and spoil the child."

[Modernman]

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

Good call.

[Modernman]

You believe it's alright for a man to have porn?! That his wife should be fine with it?

Why not? They can watch it together.

[George W. Bush]

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. When ugly and/or poor men get treated with love, and somehow marry, men will give up porn. When married women see areason to maintain their loooks after marriage, men will give up porn.

You must have spent your entire life in a convent.

Porn won't go away that easily. You don't grasp the nature of males.

However, a Christian man should be able to overcome all things through faith. So I'm not excusing it.

[billbears]

It is indeed an insidious trap. And the problem within many churches today it is not even discussed. And this is where some of the problem comes in. It's not considered by many to be a sin, much like a fib. However it is. And because it's so down the line, one doesn't realize how far it's gone until you have to finally just cry out to God because it's the end of the rope

Another site that covers this sin, among others, is Setting Captives Free. I think one has to finally decide if they are a friend to the world or a friend to God.

And from someone who's walked the road, I agree one hundred percent with you. It's not easy, but walking with Christ is much more satisfying than anything of this world

[Aeon Flux]

Mamabear- I'am sorry, miss read your post. Oh, I know many faithbased conservative folks who have great sex lives, nobody is denying that.
I live in a very liberal area that has many frustrated liberal husbands as well, maybe even more than their conservative brothers.

Good for you girl!!

A good 3-4 times a week is a great diet ;-)

I think watching or reading porn together can add to some couple's experiences, and is not unhealthy if that is their taste.

Porn is a personal choice.
If people do not like it, don't look at it.
For those who do like it, have rights to enjoy it as long as the kids are not imposed on.

[Blue Collar Christian]

"Porn is a personal choice.
If people do not like it, don't look at it.
For those who do like it, have rights to enjoy it as long as the kids are not imposed on."

First, I should say that I agree with this program in the article, that porn can wreck a Christian marriage, and that help may very well be needed and the only way to salvage a marriage.
Second, I would like to state that the smart thinking Christians that I know and love, know better than to attack the porn industry, or the consumers of pornography. However, the sin of consuming pornography by Christians is unhealthful to the Body of Christ, which is the church, and needs to be addressed robustly and frequently.

Yes, porn is a personal choice. I pray that my Christian brothers and sisters will find the strength to choose a better path.

[conservative cat]

YOu are joking, right? My husband was looking at porn the year we married, and we were having sex at least once a day.

I was there, too! Mine didn't get better, though, and his escalated to cheating. It's just as well, he didn't (and still doesn't) have the desire to stop. He now tries to hit on me behind his girlfriend's (the homewrecker in question) back.

[conservative cat]

Why did he have to sneak and lie about it? Because you didn't want to let him have it? Because you made it into an issue that you could fight over?

Because for someone with that kind-of addiction, it is partially the thrill of the secrecy- of the naughtiness. He wanted it kept secret. It was his little thrill- sneaking around getting porn and using it. No matter what was allowed in the open, he upped the ante in private.

[nickcarraway]

Where have you seen women like that in the last ten years? I see very few. Quite the opposite.

[ironmaidenPR2717]

No, I'm not offended by your description. I'm actually a levis, flannel shirt, hiking boots kind of matron (55). My husband (60) and I love each other dearly and neither of us are into any kind of prurient literature or pictures any longer.(We dealt with that long before the internet).

I did a lot of soul-searching after my mastectomy in 1992. Thankfully, I don't get my self-esteem from my body image (because that is definitely not an enticing picture), but from who I am in Christ. And I have never doubted the deep love of my husband for me or for the Lord. However, our "one fleshing" is definitely not what it used to be, especially since we don't use pornography (either viewed or imagined) to build excitement any longer.

The trouble with sexual imaginations (& this is just my opinion) is that I believe what Scripture says about the things I'm supposed to think on (Phil 4:8 "whatsoever is pure" etc.). If I would choose to allow an image in my head that is not (honoring to) my husband, that would be hateful toward him. If I would allow an image into my head that is not Christ-centered (remember, the post is entitled "Billboards Target Christians..."), that would be denying Christ.

I believe that, as Christians, we are absolutely free to have healthy, enthusiastic sex lives within those parameters. But once a person uses pornography, its difficult to erase those images and go back to passionate innocence (difficult but not impossible).

[Fledermaus]

I've heard of Christian Rock...but Christian Porn is a new one! lol, sorry, had to do it!

[Fledermaus]

The "web" has been around for decades, just on in this current form.

Back in the late 1970's and early 1980's they were BBS (bulletin board services).

Sure, you had to have expensive machines, but file downloading and information exchange were common.

[adam_az]

He specificly said WEB, as in HTTP , which was invented by Tim Berniers-Lee in 1990, which is only 13 years ago.

BBS's are not "the web."

[techwench]

i have the whole set

[Fledermaus]

Oh bull. It's still the same system invented by the Dept. of Defense with only new software.

Geez, talk about picky! Did you ever consider (of course not since you are getting your panties in a bunch about a word) that he said "web" because that's simply what it's called today?

I did. And anyone with the ability to comprehend a thought and paragraph knew the same. I've been using these boxes since 1988 and I use the new language instead of having to get questions from idiots too young to know what a BBS was.

[adam_az]

"I did. And anyone with the ability to comprehend a thought and paragraph knew the same. I've been using these boxes since 1988 and I use the new language instead of having to get questions from idiots too young to know what a BBS was."

The Web is not the Internet.

The Internet is not the Web.

"the Web" is the use of HTTP protocol over the Internet. Email is not the web. FTP is not the web. Those are other protocols that also can be encapsulated inside TCP/IP packets.

It's sure frustrating when idiots don't know the difference. ;)

[Fledermaus]

It's more frustrating when geeks think it makes a difference.

All you are talking about is newer technology, not a different concept.

So if someone wants to state they've been "on the web" since 1975 they are as technically correct as your definition. Especially when your definition will be, in a few decades, as incohrent and incorrect as you complain now.

Were geeks and programmers texting each other back in the 70's not using e-mail? No, not by today's standards. Chat? HTTP? No, no. But were they communicating via computer systems through phone lines? Yes. Was it sometimes live? Yes. Could they "leave messages"? Yes.

Then someone got smart and created a BBS to centralized services. This lead to the early versions of Prodigy and Compuserve. Compuserve was a low tech fomart designed to link professionals to a network like lawyers, accountants, doctors, tech writers, etc. Just like we now have WebMD doing the same thing with different technology. But the basic concepts haven't changed.

Even in the old days they talked of shared systems and instant information and file sharing and software sharing and keeping everything in cyberspace (too utopian, we need control over our data and privacy, it's built into our society), etc. Heck, it even turned into soft porn well before XXX sites popped.

But you just prove my point, you are just ticked when the right geek words aren't used to be specific even when it doesn't take from the theme. And you compound it saying the Internet isn't the Web and vice versa. Yeah, try telling that to 90% of people using computers.

But I applaud you for being a purist. Just too bad that it doesn't matter. Don't feel sad, I was an accountant for years. And you can believe I've glazed over my share of computer geek eyeballs trying to explain why I want a summarized POS to Host interface in a hotel.