25 JUNE 2014

TESTIMONY OF A FORMER PORN PRODUCER – 01

Confessions of an ex-porn producer

http://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/yes-i-was-a-playboy-pornographer.-and-i-loved-telling-christians-what-i-did

By Donny Pauling,
June 15, 2014

“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.

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.

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 . . .”

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.

As I travel to speak, I’m often asked by parents and those who wish to protect themselves if there is any particular computer/mobile device software I recommend.  It is my opinion that Covenant Eyes offers the very best software on the market, and does a fantastic job keeping it updated.  Because the quality of their work demands a full time staff to keep it updated, they do have a small monthly fee.  However, if you use my reference code, they’ll give you the first month free to try it.  Click here to check it out.

What if it was your daughter in that porn scene?

http://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/what-if-it-was-your-daughter-in-that-porn-scene

By Donny Pauling, June 25, 2014

Last week I told you about how I produced porn for nine years, before converting and leaving the industry.  The response was overwhelmingly positive.  The harshest criticism I received was from a reader who in his Facebook comments said that XXXChurch, the group of Christians that helped me leave the industry, is great, but that I sounded like I’d gone from selling pornography to selling myself.  His criticism is well received.  Honestly, it’s a difficult path to walk between being entertaining, and sharing the message I am convinced God wants me to share.

After my decision to leave the industry went public, the invitations to speak were overwhelming. This was due largely to the popularity of XXXChurch and the sensational aspect of my exit from the industry.  For quite a while I felt like a rock star. 

Having been raised in churches in which 100 attendees comprised a large crowd, the churches I was invited to speak at were larger than any I could ever have imagined, ranging from hundreds of people to one church that had more than 20,000 members.  Both secular and Christian televisions shows interviewed me.  ABC Nightly News featured my story.  Alongside Craig Gross, I debated Ron Jeremy at both Ohio State and Yale University, the latter of which was featured on Nightline ABC.  I was even recognized at airports a time or two. I was labeled a “Christian Celebrity” on several occasions.  Honestly, I loved such recognition.

Fortunately, I have people in my life who are not afraid to speak truth to me.  One of them is my ex-wife, the mother of my son.  She has always been close to God, and leaned on Him more than ever when I destroyed our family with my deceptions and life of porn production.  Where once her words would have been wasted, after I’d given my life to Him, she felt I was finally in a place where I was able to hear her pain.  The numerous conversations we had were quite humbling, and she was never afraid to call me out and make me realize that the way God has been using this story of His grace in action has absolutely nothing to do with the fat, balding guy through whose mouth the words happen to emerge.

This time last year I was invited to speak at a Protestant church in New Mexico.   It is common for Protestant churches to allow guest speakers to address the entire congregation on Sunday mornings when the number of attendees is at its highest.  Due to the nature of the topic in discussion, most churches caution their members for several weeks in advance that they should not bring any children under the age of 12 into the main sanctuary on the day in which I speak.  The entire service generally takes on a more serious tone. 

This church allowed their children to lead the worship service before sending them to Children’s Church.  I watched these beautiful, bright-eyed, hopeful little people sing their hearts out.  As children often do, they brought tears of happiness to many eyes, mine included.  In fact, their innocence had struck me in a way I couldn’t describe; as they sang I had to turn towards the walls because I was embarrassed to be seen literally weeping, yet not being able to put into words exactly why I’d been so affected.  I am of the opinion that my tears had a lot to do with their innocence juxtaposed against the message I was about to deliver.

Later, as I was standing in front of the parents of these children, I paused for a moment of silence before beginning.  I was afraid of their potential reaction to what I was about to say, but I also had a point to make.

“Your children are beautiful.  It won’t be long until they’re 18 and can make decisions on their own.  How would you feel if, on a Sunday morning, I walked up to you before service and congratulated you on the scene your little girl performed for me the day before, in which I’d paired her up with a few men for my latest pornographic production?  Legal adult or not, and regardless of whether she’s ‘an adult making her own decisions,’ I guarantee you wouldn’t be okay with it, and you’d undoubtedly hate me.

So if it’s not okay to watch porn when it’s your little girl in the starring role, why’s it okay when it’s someone else’s?   They’re all someone’s little girl, and they’re all daughters of The King, which literally makes them princesses.  No princess is supposed to be treated like that.”

We forget the human aspect of pornography.  We forget that the lives it destroys are those of someone’s little boy or little girl.  I’d go further in the aforementioned example to ask you this: if your teenage son or daughter had a habit of sunbathing in your back yard, and if he or she liked to be noticed while doing so, would that in any way make you comfortable with a creepy neighbor peering through knot holes in your fence to gaze upon your child?  I’d be willing to bet you wouldn’t be okay with such behavior, regardless of the willingness of your teen to allow it.  Yet so many of us in the church do exactly that on an even larger scale:  we look at the sons and daughters of others from behind our computer screens, doing things much more serious than sunbathing.

I’d like to propose to you that we start fighting for those who are unable or unwilling to fight for themselves.  When it comes to pornography, one way we do so is to stop looking at porn and to encourage all of those we know and love to follow suit.

Next week I plan to make porn even more human by sharing with you the story of a girl named Mindy; an incredible, vibrant soul whose life was destroyed by the work I enticed her into doing.  Because of the fact that I played a huge role in destroying her life, it is a very difficult story to share, but I hope you find it impactful.  If you will, please pray for me in this coming week that God’s words are written.

As I travel to speak, I’m often asked by parents and those who wish to protect themselves if there is any particular computer/mobile device software I recommend.  It is my opinion that Covenant Eyes offers the very best software on the market, and does a fantastic job keeping it updated.  Because the quality of their work demands a full time staff to keep it updated, they do have a small monthly fee.  However, if you use my reference code, they’ll give you the first month free to try it.  Click here to check it out or go to CovenantEyes.com and use promo code donnypauling.  

Categories: Uncategorized