People who are sincerely seeking freedom from sexual sin usually have a vague idea that there is something under the surface that needs to be dealt with—a kind of root sin that lies underneath all of their other sin. And they are right. But they are usually very surprised when they find out what it is. Pastor Steve Gallagher talks about the subject of pride and how this relates to a man’s struggle with sexual sin.

Jim: Pastor Steve, in your book At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry, you point out that two of the root issues behind sexual sin are selfishness and pride. How are selfishness and pride related to each other?

Pastor Steve: Let me start by talking about selfishness for a minute. We all basically know instinctively what a selfish person is like. It's someone who's just all about himself and focused on what he wants, without regard to how it may affect other people. That would be a selfish person. But I want to dig a little bit deeper. I got to thinking about, "OK, how did that word come about⁠—the word 'selfish?'" And I started thinking about some other words with the suffix "-ish" on the end, like "amateurish." We understand that when someone is acting amateurish, it means that they're acting like an amateur⁠—acting foolishly. We understand that it means that they are acting like a fool would act. So then, thinking of it like that, what does selfish mean? It means someone who is wrapped up in his own self-life.

Now, how does pride tie in with the self-life? I've done some real thinking on this, and I'm not sure how perfectly right I am, but I've really tried to think on the subject on a deep level. And the best way I could think of to correlate pride with selfishness (or the self-life) is to think of it like this: pride is the perspective of the self. So you have the self-life, which is just another way of describing the carnal nature—our fallen nature, who we are as a person. It's understood in Scripture that who we are as a person is tied up with our fallen nature. So that fallen man—our lower nature, as some would call it—his perspective on life, the way he looks at other people, and the way he looks at God are all coming from the perspective of "What's in it for me?" And so his first primary concern is to protect himself and to exalt himself. So that's the best way I can think of to correlate pride with the self-life.

Jim: Now, can you show us how selfishness and pride connect to the problem of habitual sexual sin?

Pastor Steve: Well, I can get it down to a bare-bones, simple formula: the more self, the stronger the self-life, the more that sexual sin or sexual addiction can thrive. That's because the stronger the self-life is, the more the person is wrapped up in what he wants and the stronger that drive becomes. But as a contrast, think of a totally selfless person—like maybe some saint of old. They are constantly going through life giving themselves away. There is no way that habitual sin is going to find a home in a person like that, because they aren't totally wrapped up in self. They are thinking about other people.

Jim: Does the Residential Program completely destroy this life of pride—the "self-life" that you're talking about?

Pastor Steve: Well, I don't know, but I can tell you that I've been in this fifty years, and my self-life hasn't been totally destroyed! But the Lord has certainly put a good-sized dent in it. And you know, for a guy coming into the Residential Program, he's been living for himself for years. That is just the way it is. I'm not trying to run him down; it's just the reality that if he's been addicted to sex, then he's been living for self. And everyone around him has had to suffer for it.

So what we try to do is get the sexual addict focused in a completely different way. We get him focused on the Lord; we show him what a joyful life it is—those of us on staff who have been have broken out of that rut and the joy that we have as believers. We want the guy in the Residential Program to get a sight of that and to have something rise up in his heart that says, "I want that kind of life—the joy-filled life where I don't need to go running after every kind of sexual desire!" If he can get to that place, he will fight to have that kind of life. And of course, the Lord wants to dismantle our self-life. But we have to cooperate with Him; it doesn't just happen automatically. It's two of us in that yoke, and the Lord is doing the primary work, but we have to be going along with him.

Jim: In your books, you reveal that there are seven different types of pride that can coexist inside a man: unapproachable pride, self-exalting pride, and others. How did you make this discovery?

Pastor Steve: That happened in 1990, right when I had first begun the Residential Program. I was trying to think on a deeper level—but from a spiritual perspective—and answer the question, "What is pride?" So I started breaking it down, looking at my own life and at how people affect me and at my reactions. I just kind of came up with those seven things, which are in my book At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry. Since that time, I've been able to look at it on a deeper level, and that comes out in my new book, i: the root of sin exposed, where I was really able to repackage it and look at it in a much deeper way.

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Jim: In one part of i: the root of sin exposed, you dramatically retell the story of how pride started at Satan’s fall. How does that story relate to someone in sexual sin?

Pastor Steve: There are things expressed in Scripture about what happened to Lucifer—like in Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28 and other places. So you start putting the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle, and you have this somewhat fractured picture, and then you start tying it all together. As best I could, I told the story about what happened to Satan, or Lucifer, in my book—how he fell and how he took others with him.

That was how pride all began. Human beings are moral beings, just like angels are. The difference is that the angels had a set probationary period. Those who went along with Satan fell and became demons and those whose withstood his temptations and stayed faithful to the Lord remained as angels. That came and went. And then, all these thousands of years since, they've played out their roles. But with humans, it's different, because our entire existence on earth is a probationary period.

So for a guy who has gotten involved in sexual sin, basically what he has done is to pattern his choices and his lifestyle after the thinking of demons. He has dug himself into a deep spiritual pit, and now he must walk himself out of that pit by changing the way that he does life—changing his behavior. And over time, little by little, he's coming out of that pit, coming into the bright life that the Lord has planned for him.

What is the way out? What is the opposite of following the enemy of our souls? It's following the Lord. It's doing all that we possibly can to fight for a life in God. And as we do that, it opens the way for the Holy Spirit to work that wonderful process of sanctification in our inner man. Little by little, we change and we become more godly—I almost want to say "God-ish." We are going to become more full of the Spirit of the Lord rather than full of pride.

People who are sincerely seeking freedom from sexual sin usually have a vague idea that there is something under the surface that needs to be dealt with--a kind of root sin that lies underneath all of their other sins. And they are right. But they are usually very surprised when they find out what it is. In this show we’re going to look at how pride relates to a man’s struggle with sin, give you an inside look at how we help men in our Residential Program identify and deal with pride, and then offer hope that there really is freedom from the root…and the fruit.

Sexual sin is always trying to entice us. It reminds of us of the pleasure that we experienced the last time we gave in to it. But you know what it never tells us?

It never tells us about the price that we will have to pay. It never tells us about the shame and the guilt. It never tells us that we are methodically forging the chains that will bind us. It never reminds us that we are committing a slow spiritual suicide.

In this video, Pastor Steve Gallagher brings truth from God’s Word to show us the indescribably steep price that we will pay if we continue to give our hearts to sexual addiction.

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Pastor Ed Buch shares counsel to Christian men who wrestle with homosexual attraction within their heterosexual marriage.

Interviewer: Pastor Ed, how common is it for married men to struggle with same-sex attraction?

Pastor Ed: Well, I don't think that I would necessarily say it is a common problem, but it certainly wouldn't be considered uncommon either. If I had to peg a percentage, I would say probably less than ten percent of those that we see in counseling are married men who have a homosexual orientation. But there is a larger group of men out there who maybe don't have that orientation but who have certainly crossed boundaries in viewing pornography or even engaging in sexual activity with other men. But they still wouldn't describe that as their primary orientation. Across the board, married men are engaging more and more in homosexual activities and pornography, for sure.

Interviewer: So you've seen that a man could start looking for porn and end up drawn toward homosexuality unintentionally?

Pastor Ed: Absolutely. That's kind of true of sin in general, but sexual sin, specifically, will take anyone—man or woman—across lines that they imagined they would never cross and even told themselves they would never cross. More and more, with homosexuality becoming so commonplace in our culture, we see that it's very common for men to at least have enough curiosity to cross those lines.

Interviewer: Just to get this out of the way, can we say that any sexual activity outside marriage is sexual sin and a violation of Scripture?

Pastor Ed: Certainly, yes, we can say that. We probably need to say that more and more, because obviously our culture is redefining sin—especially sexual sin. So yeah, it probably pays to just say it up front: sexual activity outside of marriage is scripturally forbidden. Obviously, for Christians, our definition of sin is going to come right out of the pages of the Bible. Christianity cannot take its definition of sin from what our culture decides is acceptable and normal. Christianity depends on the Word of God, and the Bible gives us God's standards amazingly clearly in some ways that our culture has managed to somehow blur in the minds of people. But let me hasten to add that those boundaries in Scripture are really not intended to deny us some pleasure or good in our lives. They're there for our protection, and they keep us within the boundaries where God can reach us and bless us and lead us into eternal life with him.

Interviewer: How do you counsel a married man who has committed homosexual sin? Is it different from counseling a man in heterosexual sin?

Pastor Ed: There really isn't much difference in our counsel. The answer for sexual sin is the same, regardless of whether it's heterosexual or homosexual sin that we're dealing with. All sin is rooted in the heart. Like every other sin, sexual sin flows out of a person's love of self, his love of pleasure, his love of his life in this world. Sexual sin is simply the fruit of a very self-centered lifestyle, so, in general, our counsel will focus on the issues of pride and selfishness that are dominating this man's life.

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Individually, counseling men in sexual sin may mean dealing with one man's self-protective pride or another man's spiritual pride or perfectionism. With another guy, maybe it's his know-it-all pride. We may need to address other manifestations of that "self-life," like bitterness or unforgiveness or anger. Maybe there are things like hopelessness or unbelief mixed right in there as well. When it comes to the counseling we provide, we deal almost exclusively with the underlying heart issues, and the sexual sin—that thing on the surface level—will actually need very little attention in the counseling process.‍

Interviewer: But if a man is married while he's committing homosexual sin, isn't that situation more complicated?‍

Pastor Ed: It depends on what you mean by the word "situation." His sin problem is not any more complicated. I wouldn't say that helping him overcome the sexual sin is more complicated because of marriage and children. But obviously, with a wife and possibly children involved, there are almost certainly more ripple effects from his sin—more damage, more heartache, more spiritual and emotional wreckage across his life. So from the perspective of dealing with consequences and the work of reconciliation, the situation is going to be a little more complicated, for sure.

And for a married man dealing with homosexual activity or even a homosexual orientation, there's that added aspect of building a godly marriage with his wife. That is almost certainly going to be the most complicated of all of his issues. Our experience is that when both the husband and wife come into counseling at Pure Life, they both tend to come in with the belief that somehow, if the husband goes through some counseling, his homosexual attraction will change and become a heterosexual orientation. I could say, maybe, that in a small number of rare cases that happens. The Lord may actually deliver someone out of a homosexual orientation and into a heterosexual orientation. But that's very uncommon at best. What almost always happens is that the man is still dealing with that same-sex attraction at some level but has got to learn how to allow the Lord to teach him to love his wife and remain faithful to her in every way—including emotionally and sexually.‍

Interviewer: What hope would you offer the married man who struggles with same-sex attraction? Can he have freedom, forgiveness and a fulfilling marriage?‍

Pastor Ed: The best hope I have to offer is to say that there really is freedom from sin through Jesus Christ. We have literally hundreds of people completing our counseling programs every year who would give that same testimony—that Jesus came into their lives in a very real way and forgave them, transformed them and led them into freedom from sexual sin and all sorts of other underlying issues. With the love of Christ at work in our lives, we discover that we truly can enjoy a faithful and fulfilling marriage with our wife. Even if we still have a homosexual orientation, there is so much more to marriage than the sexual aspect. So we learn to develop and accent those other things, especially the emotional connection, for example. And honestly, that's my personal testimony. The Lord gave my wife and I new marriage, and believe me, we're both very fulfilled in our relationship.

Homosexuality— this is THE issue that most churches are facing today. In today's show, we discuss with Steve Gallagher how pastors can show loving concern for those dealing with homosexuality without compromising biblical truth. Then, Pastor Ed Buch shares how he counsels the married man who struggles with Same-Sex Attraction. We'll wrap it up with a wonderful testimony of a man who found freedom in Jesus after decades of bondage.

Sexual sin promises people many things. Pleasure. Fulfillment. Satisfaction. Happiness.

But sexual sin is a liar. Not only does pornography fail to give us lasting pleasure and happiness, it destroys our lives. It destroys our ability to have fulfilling relationships. It destroys our relationship with God.

And one of the most devastating effects of porn is that it deceives US. We begin to believe lies about other people, ourselves, and even about God.

This video will help you to understand how sin works to deceive you, and how to find your way back into the freedom of God’s truth.

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Self-pity is an awful monster that wants to eat away the life inside you. It's a monster, because it comes portrayed as a comfort to assist you thru difficult, unfair situations in life. But in reality, what it actually does is tighten the rope around your neck a little tighter, draining out all life and happiness and vibrancy. The inner gnawing that self-pity brings continues to churn and burn inside you, and it will eventually destroy you if you don't get it out of your life!

I know all this, because my life was dominated by self-pity from the day I was born, I do believe. I was almost choked by it before God helped me to see what it was, how wrong it was. When others around me experienced joy or blessings, I could not be happy with them. Indeed, no matter what good things I did experience, I always found something I considered unfair or uncaring, taking these things as ground to accuse God and others of being unjust and not giving me what I felt I deserved.

But God showed me that my attitude was wrong. As I begged God to change my heart and to show me what is true about the issue of self-pity, He opened my eyes to see how wicked my accusations toward Him really are. I slowly learned, and am still learning, to fight against the lie of self-pity—because it is a lie—with the truth of God's goodness and righteousness in all He is and does. “Thou art good, and doest good.” (Psalm 119:68) In those moments when self-pity came begging for a pity party, I learned to quote verses about God's goodness and rightness, many times having to literally force myself to quote them, because of this monster's natural fierce aversion to truth. As my mind was renewed and I began to see that God truly is good, I started learning to be happy with those who experienced blessings and happiness, even when the blessings they were given are some that I long for and don't have.

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In my fight to be free from this, I studied the life of Joseph. Where was self-pity in his story? I see from his life, actions, and attitude an inner strength. In every circumstance he faced, very unfair situations, he faithfully obeyed God's law of uprightness. When he was treated unjustly, he cheered the people around him. Even in prison, he served others. He was a trustworthy man. From what I see in his life, he was an inspired, full of life man, even in prison, because it was said of him “anything that was done, he was the doer of it”. He continually sought to encourage the hearts of the people around him.

Now, if anyone had a reason, according to our human way of thinking, to pity himself, it was Joseph. But he didn't! He glorified God thru every circumstance he was in. And I believe that's the difference, and the choice we must make. Will we glorify God, or will we become sour, dried up bits of humanity that stifle the party everywhere we go?

Romans 9:14 says, “Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid!” I believe when we allow self-pity in our hearts, we are unknowingly, or knowingly, accusing God. Accusing him of not treating us kindly, of not giving us what we want and what we think is good for us, and so many other things. But later in Romans 9, God says that He ordered the events to be what would glorify His name, and that His name might be declared throughout all the Earth. That shows me that God is doing what will bring the most glory to Himself! What right do I have to accuse God of anything because he's not letting me have what I want?! Life is not about what makes me happy! It's about God and what makes Him happy!

We have no right to self-pity.

You can overcome self-pity first of all by looking away from yourself, into your precious Redeemer’s face, and ask Him how you can know Him and glorify Him in the painful or difficult or even unfair situations you find yourself in. Then, you must yield your stubborn heart and allow yourself, or force yourself, if need be, to acknowledge the goodness of God, and go forward, with your focus on God and how you can love Him thru loving the people around you. Learn to look for ways to bless and do good to others, no matter how insistently your mind and feelings scream that you need the blessings they already have! And of course, cry out to God to change your heart and way of thinking.

Men in sexual sin desperately need the discipline of the Lord. He has to reprove us, to correct us, and even, at times, sorely chastise us. In today’s program, members of the Pure Life Staff discuss their insights into this often overlooked, but clearly biblical truth: God disciplines His children whom He loves for our own good.

For the struggling Christian, overcoming sexual and deliverance from pornography often seems impossible. But no matter how deep you are in sexual sin, no one is too far from the outstretched arm of the Lord!

Pastor Steve Gallagher was deeply enslaved to pornography and other forms of sexual sin in 1980, but he can tell you from his own testimony that God can help ANYONE overcome.

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“Boy Erased,” a 2018 film that has garnered worldwide acclaim, is the story of a teenage homosexual who is sent to a “conversion camp” to overcome his same sex attractions.

Set aside the fact that this film was written and produced from an entirely pro-gay bias. And feel free to dismiss the film’s exaggerated claim that “77,000 people are currently being held in conversion therapy across America.”

Still, the basic message of the movie is, in fact, correct: conversion therapy does not work and probably does more harm than good.

Born this Way?

To understand the issue however requires a brief look at the great debate that began in the early 1980s between activists from the homosexual community and those from the ex-gay movement.

The homosexual community staunchly contended (and still does) that God created them the way they are, and therefore their behavior cannot be considered sinful. Ex-gay psychologists countered that homosexual desires develop as a direct result of poor parent-child relationships in early childhood. The solution to their same sex attractions is to be found in years of “Christian” psychotherapy.

The problem with debates over lightening rod issues is that winning often becomes more important than truth. The fact of the matter is that some people have homosexual leanings from their earliest memory, and to say it isn’t so is just plain dishonest. However, it is also true that many others do not start off their lives with a same-sex attraction; it develops because of external factors along the way.

Personally, I reject the “one-size-fits-all” approach both sides employed in that debate. I believe people become involved in homosexuality through different means.

Before political correctness banned such talk in the secular realm of psychology, it was accepted as fact that many young boys became homosexual in large part because they were raised in the stereotypical family where there is a strong mother and a weak or absentee father. The absence of a good male role model seems to create a certain need inside some little boys in their formative years, which may lead them to seek acceptance through sexual activity with men later on. Although it may begin in a misguided attempt to gain approval and/or attention from other males, it quickly becomes intertwined with the adolescent’s budding sex drive. At some point during puberty, the two cravings can become fused into an integrated inner compulsion. The more this burgeoning homosexual lust is entertained and acted upon, the more it becomes ingrained in the young man’s psyche. These thought patterns become even more deeply entrenched as he surrounds himself with other homosexuals.

I have also heard from many men who said that they had had no same sex attractions until they were molested as boys. Such experiences can ignite a homosexual lust, which is further inflamed by pornography, fantasy and other similar encounters as they grow older. Likewise, many lesbians developed revulsion to the thought of intimacy with men because of having been molested as children.

Then there are those straight men who have told me that viewing pornography led them into bisexual activity. Years of watching men have sex on film ignited a newfound lust inside them for males. Engaging in such encounters was effortless in the easy-sex-culture of the homosexual community.

So this is why I don’t believe the “one-size-fits-all” approach is right. And for homosexual activists to claim that “God made them that way,” is also a dishonest argument. Yes, there are undoubtedly many who felt more inclined toward the same sex from earliest childhood but certainly not all.

Did God create them that way? No, God created the human race sinless and perfect. And the account of Creation in the book of Genesis makes it clear that marriage was to be between a man and a woman. It was the introduction of sin in the Garden of Eden that brought forth all sorts of deviant desires. There’s not a person alive who doesn’t have inherent lust for some particular form of sin. The fact that some individuals have a bent toward homosexual sin shouldn’t surprise us.

The Case for Biblical Conversion

So… back to the debate over conversion therapy. Ex-gay psychologists claim that, through proper counseling, a person’s same sex desires will be replaced with an attraction for the opposite sex. Gay activists claim that convincing a person to question his or her “self-identity” is emotionally damaging.

Again, I must disagree with both of these premises.

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My answer to proponents of conversion therapy is that a person’s flesh—or fallen nature—will never change. I have said many times that if I ever get to the place where I am no longer walking in the Spirit, I will immediately revert back to my old sin patterns—yes, the very same ones that I have been free from for 35 years. My flesh is still attracted to those things, but what has changed is the Spirit of God living within me, empowering me to live above those desires.

As the apostle Paul exhorted: “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you…” (Romans 6:11-14) That perfectly describes my testimony of victory. It’s not that I don’t face temptations; the difference is that I don’t give in to those temptations.

As to the gay activists who tell their supporters to maintain their “self-identity,” I would say that the self-life is what the Bible calls the flesh. To identify oneself with any kind of sin is dangerous and unwise.

The bottom line is that the need isn’t to be converted from homosexuality to heterosexuality; the need is to be converted from a life of habitual sin to a life of godliness.

And here is where the misguided use of the word “conversion” comes in. If a person has always had a predisposition toward the same sex, no amount of therapy is going to change that. And I agree with gay activists who claim that teaching people this while hanging over their heads a threat of divine judgment if they don’t “convert,” only causes unnecessary fear, shame and emotional pain.

A person’s inherent sexual attraction has no bearing on his eternal destiny. Whether he is disposed toward the opposite sex or same sex does not determine what he will face on Judgment Day. The way he lived his life will be the only thing that matters.

Every human being is “born into sin” and therefore must be redeemed through the atoning work of Christ at Calvary. That redemption only comes about through conversion: not conversion from homosexual tendencies into heterosexual tendencies, but from a life of rebellion to God’s authority into a life of obedience.

In spite of what our culture tells us, a person’s sex life is not the most important thing in life. Our time on earth has been granted to us as an opportunity to enter into a loving, saving relationship with God.

So, if you find yourself ministering to someone who struggles with same sex attractions, my advice is to share with him or her your own testimony of redemption. God promises to all sincere believers freedom from the power of sin. That freedom does not come through therapy; it comes at the Cross through repentance and faith. The same God who set you free from the power of sin can set anyone free. So, let’s proclaim the power of the Gospel to all who have ears to hear!

My first exposure to pornography came as a defenseless child, less than 10 years old. I innocently rode my two-wheeler down to the neighborhood candy store where I always spent my weekly allowance, and there it was. It was in the early years of Playboy magazine leading the way for a whole new genre of “adult entertainment,” and the magazine was prominently positioned.

Something went into me that day that I could not shake. I came back a day later, and rifled through the pages, filled with both shame and overwhelming excitement. The images were indelibly implanted in my mind. Like Adam and Eve, a whole new world opened up to me. Little did I know that I had been bitten by a vicious serpent, and its deadly venom had entered my soul.

Although this poison is not deadly in one dose, the serpent is relentless. By his repeated and progressive attacks, the serpent’s victim becomes increasingly unable to resist. Satan is a patient predator. He studies and understands his victim. He doesn’t present his corrupted view of reality all at once, but rather step by step, lie by lie, as he sees the target ready to accept the next dose.

Through my teen and early adult years, pornography—and its relentless companion masturbation—became a regular part of my life, progressively drawing me deeper into magazines, adult movies, strip clubs, you name it. I was raised in a church-going family but that did nothing to abate my habit. Satan had convinced me that these practices were just a harmless way to satisfy a single man’s natural desires. After all, he assured me, it’s a “victimless” crime…it hurts no one. “Have fun, be merry, for tomorrow you may die,” became my mantra.

By the time I married at age 32, pornography and masturbation were firmly entrenched in my heart, and had completely distorted my views of women, sex and marriage. I thought I loved my wife but, the truth was, I entered marriage overcome by a “what’s in it for me” attitude.

It says in Genesis 3:1 that “the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field,” and, sure enough, Satan’s lies took a new turn on his now-married prey. It did not take much for him to persuade me that pornography would be a wonderful way to enrich and add excitement to our sex life. My new wife was hesitant but acquiesced to my pressure.

The excitement lasted for a while, but soon our relationship began to unravel as I expected her to do and be what my pornographic inside-world had convinced me was the way to a happy and fulfilling “love” life. It did not take long for her to harden and pull back, feeling used and unloved in ways that went far beyond the bedroom. The fact was, the world that Satan had led me to - pornography and masturbation - had utterly destroyed my capacity to love my wife. We were divorced in four short years.

I married again, five or so years later. The result was the same. Disillusioned and unaware of what I had become, I then fell prey to the most sinister of all of Satan’s lies, self-pity. He assured me, “You deserve better than this. God has let you down.” Over and over again, this message convinced me that I had a right to indulge in my sexual sin.

The serpent now went in for the kill. The stronghold in my heart that I had yielded to him, this harmless and “victimless” pornography, led me down roads I never thought I would travel as I yielded to sexual sin of all kinds. Sex became medication to me, but a drug whose potency became less and less effective, as I needed more and more to dull the pain of what had become my life. Weekends would go by where I would spend $5,000 or more on my sin and end up deeper in depression and despair. Any hope I once held of lasting joy and happiness, or even a normal life, had evaporated.

Satan’s poison of lies and false promises had disabled me, leaving me in a spiritual and emotional trance that took complete control over my life. I had completely lost touch with reality, with Truth. I had become literally insane. It was clear now that the ultimate victim of pornography was me, and that I had forfeited all the promises that could have been mine in Christ.

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Until Jesus intervened.

I know now why He had to allow me to go so far, to go down so many dark alleys, and for so long. I was finally backed into a corner, desperate and totally out of options when He extended His hand to me, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) His offer to me was to come into the Pure Life Ministries Residential Program where He would reveal Himself, and correct the lies about myself, about life, and about Him.

It was at Pure Life Ministries that He opened His Word to me and gave me hope. When the serpent came at Jesus with His lies in the desert, offering Him food after forty days of fasting, Jesus rebuked him with God’s Word, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4) For the first time in my life, I began to feast on God’s Word.

The Lord spoke clearly to me through Romans 6:16, “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?” I had presented myself to Satan and became his slave, and now, Jesus wanted to know if I would present myself to Him and receive His righteousness.

You see, there is an antidote to the serpent’s deadly venom of lies, and it is the Truth—repeated and steady doses of the Truth. I have become a lover of God’s Word.

Once a cesspool of pornographic images and imaginations, my mind is now clear and free. I am married now eight years and learning to love a woman sacrificially and unconditionally.  All that I had lost has been restored, and so much more.

To anyone taken captive by Satan and led into the world that I had become enslaved in, I offer the hope and truth of my testimony from Psalm 103:1-5:

Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

This PLM audio article recounts the dark history of the adult entertainment industry in the late 20th century and exposes its connections to the criminal underworld.

There were many people who contributed to the explosive emergence of X-rated movies in the ’70s—such as Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, John Holmes, and Linda Lovelace, to name a few—but the most important players were the gangsters lurking behind the scenes out of the public’s eye.

Members of the Mafia had been making a modest income by producing stag films for at least ten years when, in 1971, some associates of the Columbo organization (one of five Mafia families in New York City) hit the jackpot after producing an enormously successful X-rated comedy. Filmed mostly in a motel on Biscayne Blvd. in North Miami, the movie cost less than $25,000 to produce, but within a couple of years the mob had raked in a staggering $50 million in profit.

This windfall attracted other Mafioso, such as Robert DiBernardo (a “capo” in the Gambino organization), who presented himself more like a Wall Street broker than a smut-peddling thug. He began Star Distributors, which became the main supplier of pornography in New York City. He was also responsible for bringing all of the pornographers under the control of the mob. Another key player was Michael Zaffarano, who was the main contact between the mob and the porn industry. He often mediated disputes between various Mafia families over the production of X-rated movies.

By the mid-eighties, most of the porn industry had moved to Southern California. According to testimony before the Meese Commission by Captain James Doherty of the L.A.P.D., almost 90% of adult films were produced in Los Angeles. Chief Daryl Gates went on to say that at least 85% of the porn industry was controlled by organized crime.

As the sales of porno movies continued to skyrocket, the F.B.I. decided to investigate. Early in 1977, they launched the largest undercover operation in their history—known as MiPorn (Miami Pornography). Agents Patrick Livingston and Bruce Ellavsky set up shop in Miami posing as distributors of “adult entertainment.” What was initially targeted as a six-month probe with a modest budget of $25,000, eventually developed into an extremely dangerous, 2 ½-year investigation of the Mafia’s involvement in obscenity, costing taxpayers almost a half million dollars.

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Bill Kelly, described by one reporter as having a “tight-lipped, no-nonsense determination to root out pornographers,” was assigned the task of training the two would-be smut peddlers. He spent a couple of weeks teaching the agents the ins and outs of the trade. Years later Kelly recalled the sort of things he warned them to avoid: “When you go to buy videos, don’t offer to pay $60 apiece; you offer $40. And whatever you do, don’t ask for kiddy porn because if you do, right away bells go off, and they’ll make you for a cop.”

With their crash-course on the pornography industry behind them, the two opened Golde Coaste Distributors in a warehouse near the Miami airport. Ostensibly a blue jean outlet, the “real” business operating out of the store was the distribution of adult films and magazines. Unbeknownst to a number of criminals who would visit the location, an electronics expert for the Bureau had wired the building with cameras and microphones. Much valuable and irrefutable evidence was gathered there over the coming months.

Livingston and Ellavsky began making contacts with lower-echelon players, but they were so effective that before long they had done what Kelly had deemed impossible: they were able to infiltrate the close-knit ranks of the country’s pornography leadership.

“These guys were good,” recounted Kelly years later. “Out of all the people they dealt with, only two figured them out, telling them, ‘You guys are either F.B.I. agents or you’re informants working for Bill Kelly and either way, we don’t want to have anything to do with you.’” Ironically, the danger was not in the discovery of their true identities—no criminal in his right mind would knowingly murder a federal agent. It was if the gangsters mistook them for informants. An example of the peril they lived in was manifested in a trip to New York to visit Robert DiBernardo’s operation. They were warned by one of his associates not to cross him: “There are plenty of people who would kill for DiBe.” But whether they were “made” as cops or not, pornography had become a dangerous business. Kelly later stated that he knew of about 80 players in the business who were either doing at least five years in prison or had been murdered.

As time went on, the Batman and Robin of obscenity investigations continued to establish significant contacts with big-time pornographers. During their time on the case they made 25 first-class flights to various cities around the country—even one trip to Hawaii to purchase child pornography.

Many of these trips were to porno conventions. Nowadays, these gatherings have become almost glamorous, but in those days they had to be presented as get-togethers of legitimate magazine publishers. Patrick Livingston and Bruce Ellavsky continued to build their cases against the main pornographers. Their covert operation was so secretive that even other agents didn’t know about the case.

After about a year, prosecutors with the Justice Department opened a Grand Jury investigation and began presenting evidence which the agents continually supplied. Kelly describes the logistical nightmare involved: “We had a room about the size of a big bedroom full of obscene material that we were going to present in trial on 50 defendants. That’s a lot of pornography! On top of that we also had an 8,000 square foot warehouse which was full of extra stuff that we weren’t going to use in the prosecution.”

In his book, Lost Undercover, author Ron LaBrecque describes a dangerous situation that arose toward the end of the MiPorn investigation when Livingston visited Michael Zaffarano in New York:

As a powerful mob boss, Zaffarano played the game in classic fashion and was typically insulated from the daily work. It was primarily because of his less public stance that the agents had never met him. Pat decided to force an encounter… (flying) to New York (to) confront Zaffarano in his Times Square office, located near his Pussycat Theater on Forty-Second Street. The confrontation, however, was unnerving; Pat unexpectedly encountered the Mafia figure in the hallway outside his sixth-floor office.

Zaffarano was a menacing man whom Pat immediately feared, especially since he was unarmed. He knew he would have to make (his undercover character) totally believable. To this end, he kept the conversation as vague as possible until Zaffarano acknowledged some mutual acquaintances. When they moved from the hallway into Zaffarano’s back office, however, Pat pushed too hard with his questioning, asking whether it was true that one of Zaffarano’s acquaintances had gone to jail for him. The pornographer immediately tensed, as if a revelation had come to him, and a grim look came over his face as he told Pat to ‘get (out) and never come around here again.’ He accused Pat of being a police officer trying to set him up.

Pat left the office quickly, running down the stairs to the street rather than waiting for the elevator. He felt a rush of adrenaline as he took a cab back to the airport and returned to Baltimore. It had been a potentially dangerous situation, but despite the fact that he had been kicked out of the office, Zaffarano’s statements during the meeting were enough to link him to others under investigation, so that he, too, could be named in an indictment.

This episode marked the end of the undercover phase of the operation. On February14, 1980, 400 F.B.I. agents began making arrests in 16 cities around the country. Fifty-three defendants were arrested in all. By the time the dust had settled, 45 defendants in the MiPorn investigation had been successfully convicted.

One of the targets who didn’t go to prison was Michael Zaffarano. He dropped dead of an apparent heart attack when agents attempted to arrest him during the nation-wide roundup. Robert DiBernardo was convicted, but his conviction was later overturned. No matter, he disappeared in 1986, murdered on orders of a powerful mob boss.

Unfortunately, the biggest culprit in this story, escaped practically unscathed. The pornography industry has tripled in size since those early days and more importantly, has managed to gain a degree of credibility in the mind of the American public.

It seems highly unlikely that there will ever be another MiPorn investigation. The F.B.I. continues to pursue obscenity cases but, for the most part, has confined its attention to child pornography. The lack of concern shown by most Americans over the effects of pornography on our culture has stymied any momentum law enforcement previously had. The sad fact is that the dirty business of hawking obscene material appears to be a welcomed addition to the new global community.