What’s What at XXXChurch and “Heart Support”?

At XXXChurch, the front page of their site reads Sex Addiction Images, with an information picture that redirects to “Heart Support.” Now, as you can see, it states the information on it as “facts.” And honestly, if something is absolutely true, fine. Truth is truth and I can certainly appreciate the truth, but if it’s not true, then you are a liar and can’t be trusted. So, all we know right now is that it could be true, or it could be a lie.

Since this isn’t a creation of XXXChurch – or so I initially thought – I have to go to the “Heart Support” site, find this picture and then find their information references on the same page, hopefully. Remember, we ‘re just looking for facts. If you present misinformation as “fact”, you are engaging in propaganda. I have already run into people in the industry who really like Craig Gross, but only because he’s not trying to legislate the industry out of existence, but that’s not the kind of small concession I’m willing to make with anyone, regardless of their larger motives. I don’t like liars, and that includes pornographers, family members, neighbors, etc… Don’t lie. It’s pretty simple. And especially if you are a non-profit organization, obviously.

If I follow the link to HeartSupport.com, I’m taken to their “Get Help/Sex” page, but there’s no picture and no reference links to their information, but there is a link entitled “Facts,” so I select that. There’s the picture, but no reference links for their information. Again, I always find it to be a bad sign when I have to do my own research on someone else’s “facts.” At least Shelley Lubben provided some links on Pink Cross Foundation’s site, even though they were hokey and a few pointed back to her as the information source, when the sources should be real sources of researched facts and not just made up stuff mixed with opinion.

• 4.7 million Americans visit porn sites in excess of 11 hours per week

If I Google “how many Americans visit porn sites,” the first link talks about privacy on the internet, the second talks about how the FBI uses fake hyperlinks to snare child porn suspects (bravo there!) – validating the first links suspicions about privacy? – and the third talks about how an adult entertainment company evaluated the backgrounds of people buying porn and, as it turns out in February 2009, anyway, more conservatives and religious people bought porn than anyone else. Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School states,

“Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by.”

This is the kind of thing that I find usually happens when I’m left to research other’s information.

But, I can give them more leeway and continue down the page and try to find something more substantial. The eighth link down states,

“40 million Americans regularly visit porn sites.”

The number is off, though the article is posted in June 2010, it doesn’t state how many hours of the week, and it references the same “Online MBA” link that Shelley Lubben references on her organization’s site. The information doesn’t show up on the “Online MBA” link, though, and there’s no indication of where the information is to be found on the site. So far, I can’t accept the first figure as a fact because it doesn’t match up exactly with any research source I can find.

According to Google’s estimation of the United States population in July 2009 and last updated June 15, 2010, there were 307, 006, 550 people living in this country. If there were 40 million Americans regularly visiting porn sites in 2009, then there were over 206 million people either not visiting porn sites, or only ever so often. So, basically, 13% of the people in the United States regularly visit porn sites. The site Census.gov states that there are 309, 807, 706 people living in the United States as of today, July 23, 2010. How many of those people work at the adult companies and are updating their sites? How many are doing research? How many are adults choosing to visit because it’s not illegal and they have that right? How many are pedophiles being snared by the FBI? And what of the argument that it’s not a parenting issue that underage children visit porn sites? How can adults engaging in adult practices be responsible for other people’s children they don’t even know? All of the responsible adult sites have buffer pages that ask you to verify your age before you continue, so that even if you landed there by accident, you are not exposed to anything unexpected. Why are they going after the entire industry and not the companies who are not responsible when posting their content? I think these are valid questions and possibly point to skewed information, which is important to note.

• 24 million Americans are classified as sex addicts

When I Google “how many people in the United States are sex addicts?” the first link is the Wikipedia page that states under “Official Status”,

“The American Psychiatric Association publishes and periodically updates the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a widely recognized compendium of acknowledged mental disorders and their diagnostic criteria. The most recent version of that manual, DSM-IV-TR, was published in 2000 and does not recognize sexual addiction as a diagnosis.^[7] Although some authors had expressed that excluding sexual addiction from the DSM represents a problem,^[8] the proposed diagnosis was rejected for consideration for inclusion in the DSM-5.^[9] Darrel Regier, vice-chair of the DSM-5 task force, said that “[A]lthough ‘hypersexuality‘ is a proposed new addition…[the phenomenon] was not at the point where we were ready to call it an addiction.”

I can’t find, yet, where it is actually accepted as a disorder, so the question is, “Who is classifying 24 million Americans as sex addicts if the American Psychiatric Association does not recognize sex addiction as a disorder?” I did find an article that states,

“The National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity estimates that 6 to 8 percent of Americans – or 18 million to 24 million people – are sex addicts. And 70 percent of sex addicts report having a problem with online sexual behavior.”

So 6 to 8% of Americans are sex addicts, or are estimated as sex addicts? That’s not the same as being “classified” somewhere, as if the number has been officially registered by an organization, and it doesn’t say they visit porn sites, just that that many are sex addicts. Could I assume they are mainly religious conservatives? Sounds like very good business for religious organizations, if it’s true.

• 260 million pornographic pages on the internet

There are several links that verify this as true, but it’s worldwide, so when I Google “how many web pages on the internet?” the first link to point to pages and not sites states “over 63 billion web pages.” This Google site goes into more detail, and it’s a lot. If there are over 63 billion web pages, then there are at least 62 billion web pages that are not porn pages.

• Sex addiction can often lead to: illegal activity and sex complications

This is tricky, because it says nothing of porn and it still does not point to a scientific reference. Just to see what I can find, I’m Googling if porn can be attributed to a decline in sex crimes.

I found this at CyberCollege.com from January 2009,

“Those who advocate the censorship of sexual material have repeatedly enlisted the help of researchers to prove a link between sexual materials — even hard-core pornography — and sexual crimes.

And, repeatedly, either no valid link was found or, in the case of a Chapman University study, it was actually found that there was a reverse relationship. In areas of the country where pornography expanded the fastest, there was a decrease in rapes. In fact, since 1993, rape in the United States has dropped 72 percent.

Even though millions of dollars have been spent trying to establish a valid link between pornography and sex crime, the “link” that has been established has rested much more on religious beliefs and resulting social attitudes than on the findings of objective research.

Although those who commit sex crimes may collect pornography, 99 percent of people who collect pornography do not commit sex crimes — just as 99 percent of the people who collect guns don’t kill people. Most of the people who collect pornography are married, white males over 30 with average incomes  –  about the same demographics as gun collectors, stamp collectors, and coin collectors. The difference, of course, is in the perceived “morality” of pornography.”

And in this article from March 2010,

“(PhysOrg.com) — The arguments against pornography are many, ranging from insistence that porn degrades women and is morally reprehensible to the assertion that pornography viewing is the cause of sex crimes. However, over the years, there have been numerous studies done on this subject. And, reports The Scientist, it appears that there are links between sex crimes and pornography. Just not the sort of links many of us might have expected. Instead of causing sex crimes, porn might actually contribute to reducing their incidence.

Here is what The Scientist reports on the matter:

“Over the years, many scientists have investigated the link between pornography (considered legal under the First Amendment in the United States unless judged “obscene”) and sex crimes and attitudes towards women. And in every region investigated, researchers have found that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased.”

While that is far from a ringing endorsement, it does at least seem to indicate that pornography isn’t contributing to sex crimes. While some naysayers may point out that most offenders in prison have been exposed to porn, the fact of the matter is that nearly every male — and a good number of females — is exposed to pornography at some point. It stands to reason that most offenders have viewed porn. But other studies found that being punished for porn use might contribute to someone becoming a rapist, and not the porn use itself. Indeed, continues The Scientist, a repressive religious upbringing might be more of a factor in rape than porn:

“Looking closer, Michael Goldstein and Harold Kant found that rapists were more likely than nonrapists in the prison population to have been punished for looking at pornography while a youngster, while other research has shown that incarcerated nonrapists had seen more pornography, and seen it at an earlier age, than rapists. What does correlate highly with sex offense is a strict, repressive religious upbringing. Richard Green too has reported that both rapists and child molesters use less pornography than a control group of “normal” males.”

This sort of assertion is bound to raise a few eyebrows and even cause a little controversy. Especially when taken alongside studies that seem to indicate that porn doesn’t result in feelings of misogyny. Additionally, while there is anecdotal evidence that porn users are abusive toward their female partners, there is no evidence that pornography use is the cause of these actions. Perhaps there are other factors, such as alcoholism or violent tendencies, that are bigger influences.

In any case, while such studies do not prove that porn is actively good for society, they do seem to imply that pornography isn’t actively bad for us.”

I’m not even going to continue, because you can do that, yourself, and then tell me what you find.

This is not to say that people with problems shouldn’t get help, but it is to point out the way some groups skew their “facts” and present information in a way that shames and guilts in order to get you to stop giving money to one or two companies, and start giving your money to them. “Heart Support” has a donation button, but… I can’t find their financial records. The site states that they are a,

“ministry under the umbrella of Fireproof Ministries, which is a 501 (c) (3) faith-based-not-for-profit ministry incorporated in California.”

Does this mean that I can go to Fireproof Ministries and find their financial records? Well, I will try!

Nothing. There are no financial records, and under “History,” Craig Gross writes,

“My name is Craig Gross and back in January of 1999 I left my job as a youth pastor and began Fireproof Ministries with my best friend Jake Larson. We started Craig and Jake LIVE, speaking at youth events and eventually put on our own events across the country. A few years later after seeing so many young people being devastated by the effects of pornography I saw a need to create a safe place online where people could get help and the truth about pornography and in early 2002 launched XXXchurch.com…”

So, XXXChurch and “Heart Support” are one and the same, basically, and there are no available financial records that I can find. If I look at XXXChurch’s site, I find nothing. Even if I Google “Fireproof Ministry Financial Records,” nothing comes up. If I go to “The Core” link, it requires signup. Maybe “Sean B.” can tell me where he found them.

Their “Store” offers skateboards and T-shirts and books – both XXXChurch and separate “Heart Support” paraphernalia - not to mention the “X3pure” software they offer to help cure you in “30 days to purity.” Under “Donate” at the XXXChurch site, in the list of “creative gift ideas”, they list:

* Stocks
* Bonds
* Gold/Silver
* Land
* Homes
* Cars
* Collectibles

Gold, silver, land, homes and cars? A lot of possible material and money to be made in the name of “The Lord.” The page is fairly vague about what the donations are for, except for the sentence: “A Bible handed out at a porn show, free accountability online to anyone who wants it, recovery from an addiction to pornography,” though it looked to me like they charge extra for that? Maybe it’s a free, lower level software program? XXXChurch’s “Statement of Faith” reads,

“Our Faith:

“Do it all for the glory of God.” [I Corinthians 10:31]

While the problems of sexual addiction and pornography addiction are not unique to those with a particular faith, we happen to believe in Christ and have made a point of creating programs for those who are also believers and who want help. Each program is designed with a Biblical perspective and with an assumption that “pursuit of Christ” and “becoming more like Christ” are shared interests with participants.

If you are here and are from another faith, we welcome you to try any of our workshops, and if you are not 100% satisfied, then please email us for a refund.

1. The Bible is the Inerrant Word of God. The Bible is the verbally inspired Word of God and without mistakes as originally written. It is the complete revelation of His will for salvation and the only unfailing rule of faith and practice for the Christian life. (II Timothy 3:16-17; II Peter 1:21; John 17:17)
2. The Trinity. There is one God, Creator of all things, eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that these three are co-eternal and of equal dignity and power. (Matthew 28:19; II Corinthians 13:14)
3. Jesus Christ. We believe in the deity of Jesus Christ; His miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit; His virgin birth; His sinless life; His substitutionary death on a cross; His bodily resurrection; His ascension to the right hand of the Father; and His personal, imminent return. (John 1:1, 14, 18; Luke 1:35; Romans 3:24-26; 4:25; Hebrews 1:3; 3:1; 7:23-25; I John 2:1-2)
4. God is Sovereign. We believe all things in heaven and earth were created by God and exist by His power. (Genesis 1:1; Colossians 1:16-17)
5. Salvation by Grace through Faith. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins and that all who believe in Him are declared righteous because of His sacrificial death. We believe that salvation is a gift of God and is received by mankind of all nations through personal faith in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for sin.

We believe that man is justified by grace through faith apart from works. (Acts 13:38-39; Romans 6:23; Ephesians 2:8-10). We believe that all true believers, once saved, are kept secure in Christ forever. (Romans 8:1, 38-39; John 10:27-30)”

Well, that’s clear. Their organization is based on The Bible as fact, when it can’t be proven. It’s their right, but it’s not a fact, so I have no choice but to question all of their submitted “facts.” How can I not?

I’ll elaborate on all of this and post it as a page under “Anti-Sex Worker Info.” I still haven’t covered other posts on the XXXChurch website or information already accumulated on Shelley Lubben and Pink Cross Foundation.

Also, if you know where to find XXXChurch or “Heart Support” or “FireProof Ministries” financial records, please let me know.

Thank you!

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