November 2, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – It was the very same day that pornographer Donny Pauling was called in by Playboy and offered $4,000 a day to produce a new lesbian reality series, that he unexpectedly found himself at a moment of crisis.

Pauling had already made millions from pornography over the past eight years, ever since he began shooting porn part-time behind his wife’s back. But $4,000 a day was unprecedented, and there was something about the offer that made Pauling feel that if he took it, he was making his final commitment to the porn industry, and there would be no going back.

As he was driving home after that meeting at Playboy, suddenly he pulled over to the side of the road, and began praying. “I was like, God, it doesn’t matter what I do, you bless me,” Pauling told LifeSiteNews.com in a telephone interview. “And basically what I was saying was, ‘Thanks for the new porn contract.’”

But, he says, “as crazy as it sounds,” after this prayer he immediately felt as if he was “hit with electricity.”  The feeling was so powerful, and so unmistakable, that Pauling says he knew beyond a doubt that it was God.

Pauling had already been praying occasionally, after encountering members of the radically unconventional XXXChurch, who make it their mission to reach pornographers, porn stars, and prostitutes with the message of the Gospel. But it was several days after the experience in the car that he says he finally decided to give his life to Jesus, and to leave the porn industry. That was in September 2006. 

On September 28, 2006 Pauling wrote on his personal blog: “I’m scared. I really, truly am. Terrified. Petrified. All of those things.” But, he added, “I feel a huge sense of relief and happiness for the first time in a LONG, LONG time.”

The making of a porn producer

While Pauling clearly remembers his first encounter with pornography – it happened in third grade, when he stumbled upon a porn magazine - he doesn’t trace his subsequent problems with pornography to that experience. 

It wasn’t until after he got married that addiction reared its head. That was in the early days of the Internet - and easy access to pornography. Pauling found himself spending more and more time online looking at porn, either when he was at work, or late at night, when his wife was asleep. 

He became so taken with what he saw that he decided he wanted to produce porn himself. Pauling was self-employed, and worked at his own private office, so it was easy for him to start recruiting girls and doing photo shoots without his wife knowing.

It wasn’t until Pauling physically cheated on his wife for the second time, three years into producing and selling porn, that he finally came clean with her. He called her from a porn convention and told her about his secret life.

“She flipped out,” he says, and that was the end of his marriage.

But now that porn was no longer his dirty secret, Pauling was free to devote himself full-time to producing smut. After his marriage fell apart he moved into his office, quickly found himself another girlfriend, and in the very first month doing porn full-time, he made $50,350. 

He was hooked.

How to get out of the porn industry

Pauling ultimately worked as a porn producer for over eight years. During that time he says he made millions of dollars, lived a non-stop party lifestyle, recruited hundreds of girls into the porn industry, and was completely and utterly miserable.

In the first place, he couldn’t ignore the fact that his life’s work was literally destroying lives, especially those of the models he recruited and initiated into the brutal world of porn. When asked now if he finds porn appealing, Pauling responds: “There’s nothing appealing about a girl curled up in a corner sucking her thumb because her mind is so blown by what she’s been doing.”

But it also didn’t help, he notes, that he was motivated in large part by a burning hatred for Christians and Christianity. 

The former pornographer traces this hatred to his strict upbringing as the son of a Pentecostal pastor, during which he was taught a “legalistic” definition of God (“God was just a set of rules and regulations,” he says) and witnessed the abject hypocrisy of many of the Christian leaders his father knew.

After he started making porn, he relished running into some of his old Christian friends, who would ask what he was doing.  “I loved throwing porn in their faces,” he says.

But things began to change after he met members of the XXXChurch, who every year would set up a booth at the Las Vegas porn convention, and hand out bibles emblazoned with the words “Jesus loves porn stars.”

“Instead of being outside protesting and holding signs telling people that God was going to send them to hell where they would burn in torment,” members of XXXChurch “were inside setting up booths, doing makeup for girls,” Pauling said. “And instead of judging them, they told them that they were beautiful and that God loved them, and that there was nothing they could do that could change that, and that He wanted more for them.”

Eventually, Pauling says, he came to realize that if he were to be a Christian, “this is the kind of Christian I would want to be, and the kind of Jesus I would want to serve.”

The transformation didn’t happen overnight – in fact, it took over several years - but he credits the “love-based” approach of XXXChurch with bringing him to the point where he was able to send up that confused prayer in his car, and to listen to the response.

After that mystical experience in the car, “I quit, and I just walked away,” he says. “I knew it wouldn’t be easy, because I had a lot of bills. So I lost everything I owned. I had property I foreclosed on.” His girlfriend of five years also left him for a manager at Playboy.

“But I was never more at peace, even though it was a tumultuous time.”

How to beat a porn addiction

After leaving the industry, Pauling enrolled in school to become a pastor (mostly, he says, to “rewire” his brain - he has no plans for the time being to actually lead a congregation), and started up an Internet marketing company. He has also travelled the world speaking to millions of people about the reality of the porn industry, and about how to beat addiction.

He says he is convinced that the same “love-based” approach that brought him out of the industry is the same approach needed for those who are addicted to porn, and want out.

“So many people don’t ask for help because they’re sitting there feeling guilty about their actions, saying, ‘there I go, I’ve done it again,’” he says. “I think that they need to realize that, although sin does separate us from God, He still loves them. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing. His love doesn’t change. It’s not conditional.”

Practically speaking, Pauling urges those who are addicted to porn to be completely open with someone they can trust, and then to set up a system of accountability – someone they can talk to regularly about their struggles with addiction.

The trick, he says, is simply never to give up. “I’ve had people come up to me and say they heard me speak two years ago, and they haven’t looked at the stuff since,”  he says, “but that’s not realistic for everybody.”

“It doesn’t matter how many times you fall down, He’s still there to pick you up and put you back on your feet.”

Pauling compares the experience of overcoming addiction to that of a child learning to walk. Just because the child falls over and over again, he says, doesn’t mean the father tells him walking just might not be for him.

“God who loves us that much is not looking for a reason to send us to Hell, he’s looking for every reason to bring us to Him,” he concludes. “So just stand back up. Stop letting your guilt get you down.”

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CORPUS CHRISTI, TX, February 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- A 12-year-old Texas boy who slipped into a coma after suffering a severe asthma attack has begun breathing on his own – just hours after hospital officials fought to take him off life support because they believed he was legally “brain dead.”  Now, his family has obtained a court order requiring the hospital to provide nourishment to the boy via a feeding tube, and hope to have him transferred to another facility within the week.

Joey Cronin has been at Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi since January 14, when he suffered cardiac arrest as a result of an asthma attack.  In an interview last week with LifeSiteNews, Joey’s father George Cronin said that hospital staff were pessimistic about his chances of recovery from the very start, even though early on, Joey was showing signs of awareness – opening his eyes, gripping his parents’ hands, and responding to external stimuli.

“They were very negative,” Cronin told LifeSiteNews last week.  “On the night he came in, they told me it could be a matter of hours before they would have to [remove Joey from life support].”  However, the testing the hospital did to prove Joey was brain dead showed he was responsive, so they were forced to honor the Cronins’ wishes to keep the boy on his ventilator.  But they refused to install a feeding tube so that he could receive nutrition.

When Joey slipped into a coma several days later, the hospital became more aggressive in its push to have the boy declared brain dead – the legal threshold for issuing a death certificate in Texas.  With a death certificate, the hospital could remove Joey from life support against his parents’ wishes.  Under advice from a local attorney, the Cronins refused to give consent for any further testing. They then sought help from Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal defense group.  Their only goal was to force the hospital to keep Joey alive until he could be transferred safely to another hospital – one that would give him lifesaving treatment without giving up on him. 

At least one facility in Houston had already agreed to take Joey in, and another in New Jersey was open to the possibility.  But the biggest question in the Cronins’ mind was whether Driscoll Children’s would give Joey the care he needed to stay strong enough for transfer.  They reached out via news and social media, begging people to contact the hospital to urge them not to give up on Joey’s care.

Late last Friday, attorneys with ADF successfully obtained a court order forcing the hospital to provide a feeding tube and nutrition for Joey. 

The decision came just in time: Within hours, the boy surprised everyone by chewing on his ventilator tube – a clear sign of life.  The hospital immediately gave him a tracheostomy so that he could breathe on his own without damaging his throat.  Not long after that, he was wiggling his toes. 

Now, his parents hope that he will be transferred to another facility by midweek.

“They said he’s pretty much ready any day now,” Cronin told LifeSiteNews by telephone Monday.  “So we’re hoping it’s not going to be very much longer.”

The Cronins have health insurance, but it’s unclear how much of Joey’s care – especially his transfer – will be covered by their policy.  Meanwhile, George Cronin has had to take an unpaid leave of absence from his job in order to be at Joey’s bedside.  The family is asking for donations to be sent via PayPal to [email protected]. 

They are also asking that people with awareness of facilities outside of Texas that may be able to treat Joey reach out to them (interested parties can do so by contacting the author of this article at [email protected]) because they would prefer to have their son cared for in a state that does not define brain death as legal death.

Since Joey’s turnaround, George Cronin reports that Driscoll Children’s has become much more supportive regarding his care.  “Everything’s fine; they’re cooperating with us now,” Cronin told LifeSiteNews.  “We don’t want to paint them as the bad guys.”

Blogger Charlie Johnston, who first brought LifeSiteNews’s attention to the case, said Driscoll Children’s initial insistence upon pushing for a diagnosis of brain death is less an indictment of the hospital itself than of the culture in which it operates.

“I think an important thing to remember is that Driscoll was not the cause of this situation, but is instead a symptom of where we have arrived,” Johnston wrote in an update Saturday. “They exercised a lot of what are now standard medical protocols. Alas, we really have to take a hard look at whether those protocols are genuinely giving medical professionals information, or whether they are just props to justify premature declarations of death.”

“Certainly, when Joey started showing important and genuine signs of independent life … the people at the hospital entirely changed their outlook to one of helping treat the boy,” Johnston added. “This could have happened at almost any hospital in America today except some religiously affiliated ones that actually take that religious affiliation seriously.”

“As the comic character, Pogo, once famously said, ‘We have met the enemy – and he is us,’” Johnston added. “It is a change of heart in our culture and faith that is necessary to put an end to the sort of assumptions that make crises like these possible.”

Johnston encouraged those who contacted the hospital last week to contact them again to thank them for taking good care of Joey since the court stepped in.

“It would not hurt at all – and might be a great help – for all those who called the hospital before to call them now,” Johnston said. “Tell them you know what an intense week it has been and thank them for giving such effective care after having had such a tense week.”

Driscoll Children’s Hospital can be reached at (361) 694-5000.

February 2, 2015 (CrisisMagazine.com) -- Of late, much attention has been given in both the secular media and Christian media to those who call themselves “gay celibate Christians.” As a man attracted to men yet committed to traditional Catholic teaching on human sexuality, I find the notion both of being “gay” or “celibate” strange. Indeed, in the context of what the virtue of chastity is all about, neither of them make sense.

The gift of the virtues can be summed up by Christ’s words: be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. “The Christian man,” Gaudium et Spes tells us, is “conformed to the likeness of that Son Who is the firstborn of many brothers.” Christ “fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear” and is “Himself the perfect man.” His life is man’s paradigm and the virtues are the template for how Christ, the perfect man, lived.

The commandments are not arbitrary “does and don’ts.” Rather, they are the way man would naturally live—if man knew who he truly was. Those who have virtue will spontaneously live in accord with the commandments. They are not perceived as impositions that deny us pleasure, but as safeguards against harming ourselves and others. Such was the case with Christ.

Despite what most people might think, the virtue of chastity, like all other virtues, isn’t so much concerned with what we do or don’t do. Rather, chastity is the virtue that helps us see things truly and objectively—things as they really are—within the realm of sexuality. This clarity of vision is necessary for true human freedom and human flourishing. It is chastity that gives us the freedom to order our sexual appetites and therefore make decisions that correspond with reality. Christ lived as a chaste man, not because he followed every dot and tittle of the law (which of course he did), but rather, because he lived in accordance with the truth of what it means to be a man, made in the image and likeness of God. Like Christ, a man who truly knows who he is will naturally lead a life of chastity.

When it comes to homosexuality, then, the reason I mustn’t have a relationship with a male isn’t based on an arbitrary whim of God. Rather, it is immoral because it is irrational for human beings to live in such a way, based on the sort of creature that human beings are.

Put more simply, the reason it is immoral for me to live out a life according to my subjective desires and inclinations is precisely because I am not, in fact, a gay man.

Nor is any man.

I have written often before of the reasons I eschew the word gay to describe myself, and why I think it is a mistake for anyone to claim that label. The core question is one of anthropology: who is man, and is man the sort of creature who can rightly be described as “being gay?” (I argue here, here and here why I think this is a mistake. Eve Tushnet and I talked about the topic on the Al Kresta Show.)

The core reason I reject the term “gay” however, is out of humility to my creator. In the second reading from last Sunday’s Mass, we heard St. Paul’s words, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?”

“You are not your own” is fundamental to this question. This calls to mind words of Pope Benedict XVI speaking to the German Bundestag in 2006, when he said:

Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.

Why would I call myself a gay man, then, simply because I find men sexually attractive? This is in opposition to the way God made me and the nature he gave me. Regardless of what my feelings might tell me, my body reveals to me the truth that I am not gay, but rather a male made for a female. The Catechism is clear about our sexual identity: “Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out.”

Accepting myself as I truly am requires that I reject a belief that I have a sexual identity other than being a man made for women. Recognizing this truth of who I am, as a sexual creature, is fundamental to the virtue of chastity. When it comes to homosexuality, however, many seem to believe that sexual continence is the earmark of chastity. But this is not so. Rather, continence, in any single person’s life, is a necessary sign of chastity, but it does not express the fullness or breadth of the beauty of the virtue. Chastity is far more than what we do or don’t do with our sexual organs. The Catechism tells us that “chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.”

We live in an age where the unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being is seen as outdated and obsolete. “Gender is between your ears, not between your legs,” Chastity Bono, daughter of Sonny and Cher, famously said on Good Morning America after beginning the process of sex-reassignment surgery.

The notion that gender and sexuality reside in the mind, or can be chosen at will, is opposed to human flourishing and the true nature of man. The Church wisely gives us the antidote to this view through the virtue of chastity. The Church speaks not of gender, but rather of the two sexes with two corresponding sexual identities. What points us to our true sexual identity is the beautiful differentiation of the body. It is for this reason that I am grateful for the wise words written by then Cardinal Ratzinger in 1986, when he said that “today, the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a ‘heterosexual’ or a ‘homosexual’ and insists that every person has a fundamental Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.”

This truth about my sexual identity is the reason I also refuse to call myself celibate. Though I am living a single life, I am no different than all of my other single friends who have yet to be married. They do not speak of themselves as celibate, nor should I. They and I are single. Nor am I a part of a “sexual minority,” as some would say of a man like me. I am a male, just as Adam was, just as Christ was, just like all of my other male friends. As the 1986 Letter On The Pastoral Care of the Homosexual Person wisely tells me, “every one living on the face of the earth has personal problems and difficulties, but challenges to growth, strengths, talents and gifts as well.” One of my challenges is that I suffer from the privation of the good of seeing women as sexually desirable—but that fact doesn’t make me a different sort of man than all of the other men in the world around me. The virtue of chastity teaches me this truth.

Thus, I find the phrase “gay celibate” a rejection of the very nature of who God made man in the Garden of Eden. I will never say of myself that I am a gay man, for I know that I must humbly “accept and acknowledge” the sexual nature that God gave me: I am a man, made for woman. I do not speak of myself as celibate since I have not taken a vow never to marry, which is what a celibate person does. While I find it very unlikely that I will ever marry, both my nature as a male and my humility to God’s direction in my life must leave me open to the possibility that God may direct my steps towards union with a woman in marriage. For me to call myself a “gay celibate” seems an act of rebellion against how God made me to be. By calling myself gay, I reject my true sexual identity, and the sort of emotional, physical and psychological creature God made me; To call myself “celibate” when I haven’t taken vows of celibacy seems a willful rejection of the potential will of God in my life that he may desire to bring to me a woman with whom I might realize my sexual complementarity. It would be hubris to close the door to the possibility that God is calling me to marriage, because of choosing to identify as “a gay man,” which therefore requires me to live a life of celibacy. This makes no sense.

The notion of “gay celibacy” is an idea stemming from an impoverished and confused view of what chastity is all about. Chastity isn’t the same thing as sexual continence, nor is it marked by celibacy. It is about living in accordance with the truth of things, and how God made us as sexual creatures. It is about lives lived with the right relationship with reality, where we view our sexuality through the “inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.” My body is a more reliable compass than my feelings are, and it always points to my true sexual identity. As my dad wisely told me when I was a child, “feelings are important, but they don’t always tell us the truth.”

Above all else, chastity is about the real nature of things. I don’t get to choose a sexual identity. Sexual identities aren’t the sorts of things that can be chosen, for we are not our own. We have sexual identities, given to us by God. We can accept the truth, and live our lives based on reality. We may reject the truth, but if we do, how can we ever live fully chaste lives?

Reprinted with permission from Crisis Magazine. 

February 2, 2015 (LiveActionNews.org) -- Senator Lindsey Graham is on a roll, and not in a good way.

Just days after announcing his willingness to make the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act virtually useless in actually saving babies just to appease a handful of cowardly GOP turncoats, the South Carolina Republican thought it would be a good idea to bring up attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch’s past support for partial-birth abortion…not because it shows she’s a monstrous extremist who shouldn’t be a dogcatcher, let alone the nation’s top cop, but because he wants to demonstrate how bipartisan he is by supporting her anyway.

Yes, really:

“In 2006, you signed an amicus brief supporting Planned Parenthood’s opposition to partial-birth abortion ban; is that correct?” said Graham at Lynch’s confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Yes,” said Lynch, “I was one of a number of former Department of Justice officials [who signed it].”

“Although, the amicus brief that we signed was focused on the issue of the facial issues of the law, and how it might impact the perception of law enforcement’s discretion and independence,” she said.

“The only reason I mentioned that,” said Graham, “is that if there’s a Republican president in the future, an attorney general nominee takes an opposite view on an issue like abortion, I hope our friends on the other side will acknowledge it’s OK to be an advocate for a cause, as their lawyer. That doesn’t disqualify you from serving.”

So the person under consideration to become the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer is on record as fighting to let people partially deliver babies, stab them in the back of the head, and then suck their brains out, and not only does Graham not see a problem with putting such a woman in power, but he actually takes pride in not seeing a problem.

This may come as a shock, Senator, but you’re not there to win a Mr. Congeniality contest. Your job is to protect the rights of the people, not to sacrifice the littlest people just so the press will praise you for being one of the “good” Republicans. The Constitution vests in you the power to confirm presidential nominees not so you can go through the motions and get the occasional clip that’ll look good in a campaign ad, but to stop the president from putting bad public servants in charge.

Graham’s endless need to pander to moderates must be pathological, because evidence sure didn’t get him to his cockamamie theory that rubber-stamping Democrat nominees will get them to return the favor. Pro-aborts never compromise with pro-lifers to begin with, and they’ve never put politics aside for Republican nominees, from potential judges to all of George W. Bush’s own AG candidates.

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Other than usually being more sanitary, partial-birth abortion is virtually indistinguishable from the gut-wrenching crimes that earned Kermit Gosnell life in prison. It’s the most obviously evil variation of an already horrifying practice, supported only by the fringe. The confirmation of an attorney general who believes in it would be an insult to any country that still prides itself on compassion and justice. Morally and tactically, this is not a difficult call. But if Lindsey Graham thinks that even here, basic right and wrong should take a backseat to his own unique blend of pandering and posturing, then his potential presidential campaign is in for a rude awakening.

Reprinted with permission from Live Action News.