Some Wins on the Porn Front

While there is heaps of bad news out there concerning the culture wars, every once and a while we get some good news. It may not come as often as we like, but when it does come it is well worth celebrating. I want to here highlight one quite recent news item, as well as mention an ongoing good news anti-porn initiative.

The first concerns a former lingerie model. She was well on her way to moving into mega fame and fortune with Victoria’s Secret. But as a Christian, she took a stand, and decided that Christ and family comes before all the glitz, glamour and big bucks of the VS world.

Here is how one write-up puts it: “Young beauty Kylie Bisutti is quitting Victoria’s Secret at just 21 because modelling lingerie does not conform with her Christian beliefs. Bisutti won Victoria’s Secret Model Search in 2009 when she was 19, beating 10,000 other hopefuls.

“‘Victoria’s Secret was my absolutely biggest goal in life, and it was all I ever wanted career-wise, she told FOX411. ‘I actually loved it while I was there, it was so much fun and I had a blast. But the more I was modelling lingerie – and lingerie isn’t clothing – I just started becoming more uncomfortable with it because of my faith. I’m Christian, and reading the Bible more, I was becoming more convicted about it.’

“Bisutti, from Simi Valley, California, was married shortly before getting her wings, and she said that was also a factor in her decision. ‘My body should only be for my husband and it’s just a sacred thing,’ Bisutti continued. ‘I didn’t really want to be that kind of role model for younger girls because I had a lot of younger Christian girls that were looking up to me and then thinking that it was okay for them to walk around and show their bodies in lingerie to guys’.”

Wow, what a tremendous testimony – and unfortunately, perhaps a rare one. Not all Christian young people today are thinking like this. Many seem to have totally absorbed the world’s values, and would be quite happy to pursue all the money and fame that such a career would promise, while still claiming to be disciples of Christ. So well done to Kylie. She is a superstar in my eyes.

The second thing I want to mention is an ongoing good news story. It is about a growing number of porn stars who have left the business and are now telling the world what a lousy hellhole the porn industry is. One of the leaders in all this is Shelley Lubben.

Here is part of her story: “She landed in the San Fernando valley with no food and no money. ‘A “nice” man saw I was upset and told me how sorry he was.’ Still shocked and angry about being kicked out the house, so ‘that I didn’t care any more . . . I sold myself for $35.’

“Thus Shelley entered the ‘glamorous’ life of prostitution, but the money, jewelry, and gifts soon included bizarre sex with strangers who stalked her, slashed her tires, and threatened to kill her if she demurred from performing certain sex acts. One man tried to kill her with his truck, and she often had to lie her way out of frightening situations. During her eight years as a prostitute and exotic dancer, she had two miscarriages and one birth. Little Tiffany grew up living ‘with a lewd wild woman.’

“Now a single mom, ‘Jesus kept tugging at my heart,’ Shelley writes, ‘but I ignored him. I figured, God wasn’t taking care of me, so I had to do whatever I could to survive.’ Most of her prostitution money went for drugs and alcohol to blot out the trauma of her life. To avoid the rapes and arrests for prostitution, she turned to pornography because ‘it seemed safer and more legal.’

“However, even prostitution did not involve the brutal kinds of rape and degradation that she endured while ‘starring’ in pornography. Soon she was required to do very hardcore scenes. ‘[O]nly more drugs and alcohol could get me through them. . . . I sold what was left of my heart, mind and femininity to the porn industry and the woman and person in me died completely on the porn set.’ After becoming infected with herpes, I quietly left the porn industry but went back to prostitution to survive.”

She now has a full-time ministry telling the truth about the wretched porn industry, and helping women trapped in it: “As a child, Shelley had dreamed of being a preacher. Having received her bachelor’s of theology degree, she is indeed a preacher now, sharing her testimony of transformation and rescue out of drugs, porn, and prostitution ‘by the power of Jesus Christ.’ Her website says:

“Now happily married to Garrett, her husband, and the mother of three daughters, Shelley takes a message of transformation against-all-odds to prisons, TV, radio, film, conferences and rescue missions. She has been a guest on talk shows such as Dr. Phil, Michael Reagan and most recently, FOXNews. Her message is one of exposing the $57 billion porn industry for what it is—full of lies and deceit, addiction and broken lives. Shelley maintains that women who turn to the industry to make money ‘probably didn’t grow up in healthy childhoods. Almost all pornography performers were sexually assaulted as children,’ she says, but hide their broken hearts. ‘That would kill the fantasy, now wouldn’t it?’”

On her home page she provides this helpful collection of information:

Porn Industry Statistics
-36 porn stars died that we know of from HIV, suicide, homicide and drugs between 2007 and 2010.
-66% of porn performers have Herpes, a non-curable disease.
-2,396 cases of Chlamydia and 1,389 cases of Gonorrhea reported among performers since 2004.
-Over 100 straight and gay performers died from AIDS.
-26 cases of HIV reported by Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM), since 2004.
-70% of sexually transmitted infections in the porn industry occur in females according to County of Los Angeles Public Health.
-Chlamydia and Gonorrhea among performers is 10x greater than that of LA County 20-24 year olds.
-The largest group viewing online pornography is ages 12 to 17.
-More than 11 million teens regularly view porn online.
-There are 4.2 million pornographic websites, 420 million pornographic web pages, and 68 million daily search engine requests.
-50% of men and 20% of women in the church regularly view porn.
-Of 1351 pastors surveyed, 54% had viewed Internet pornography within the last year.
-Of all known child abuse domains, 48 percent are housed in the United States.
-At the 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, a gathering of the nation’s divorce lawyers, attendees revealed that 58% of their divorces were a result of a spouse looking at excessive amounts of pornography online.
-Child pornography is one of the fastest growing businesses online, and the content is becoming much worse. In 2008, Internet Watch Foundation found 1,536 individual child abuse domains.
-Worldwide pornography revenue in 2006 was $97.06 billion. Of that, approximately $13 billion was in the United States.

Her site also features the testimonies of other ex-porn stars who are now trying to alert the world to what a miserable lifestyle this is, and how porn is a huge exploiter of women. So this is some good news you will not often hear in the mainstream media: women who have rejected the porn and sleaze lifestyle, and instead want to glorify Christ and the Gospel.

Now that is good news indeed.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/confidential/victorias-secret-model-kylie-bisutti-quits-over-religious-beliefs/story-e6frf96o-1226267656320
http://www.shelleylubben.com/

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