Washington- The first week is always the most difficult, Lonnie Wheeldon told the men. Everyone is ashamed at first. Sharing the details of a secret life is not easy.

The four men, all married and ranging in age from their mid-30s to early 50s, had gathered on a recent Saturday morning in a small room at the Kelso-Longview Community Seventh-day Adventist Church. In front of each was a crisp, spiral-bound text called, “Pure Freedom, Breaking the Addiction to Pornography.”

As the muffled notes of a hymn drifted from across the hall where a choir was practicing, each began to discuss his worries. One feared others would see his car in the mostly empty parking lot and know why he was here. “Part of me would rather not be here and would rather not deal with it,” he said. Another said he looked forward to getting “it out in the open and not feeling so slimy.”

Wheeldon, 37, of Kelso, told the men about his addiction to pornography and sex, about the affairs, about the day his wife found out. He then described how, thanks to a similar program, he changed his habits two years ago.

This small class is the only support group of its kind in Cowlitz County, Wheeldon said. Its goal, he said, is to overcome an increasingly common struggle among the faithful. Church leaders say that pornography, ubiquitous on the Internet and available at most convenience stores, causes infidelity, broken marriages and twisted attitudes toward sexuality.

“It’s truly stuck a knife right in the heart of the Christian church,” said Dave Livermore, the pastor at Seventh-day Adventist. “I think it’s just slaughtering us.”

The Christian Web site Crosswalk.com said that 50 percent of evangelical pastors reported looking at pornography in the last year. And Mike Cleveland, who authored the “Pure Freedom” text, said more than 40,000 people have used his program. Hundreds of churches use his text as well, he said.

“The church has been blindsided by this problem,” Cleveland said. “It has been a cancer that has slowly spread. Some (churches) are doing a good job. Others are throwing up their hands in despair, wondering what to do.”

Online courses have sprouted across the Web touting ways for Christians to stop looking at explicit material.

XXXChurch.com promotes itself, tongue-in-cheek, as the Web’s “No. 1 Christian porn site,” and includes tips for avoiding pornography. Several companies offer software, such as Covenant Eyes, which tell friends what Web sites their peers have been visiting.

For Christians, Livermore said, porn amounts to a secret that hobbles spiritual growth. More men are identifying the problem, especially in the past five years, he said. And they are starting to ask for help.

“They’ve been stalled in their spiritual life,” he said. “How do I get off ground zero here? I’m not growing. I’m not developing. I’m not becoming the man I want to be. Then they realize that this is one of those sins that’s going to be an anchor.”

To be sure, pornography, sex and its addictive nature is a difficult, nebulous issue among any crowd, let alone the faithful. To start, there is no universal definition of pornography. There is debate about when, and if, viewing it becomes destructive. And the adult entertainment industry denies that porn addiction even exists.

There is also debate in the church about how to handle the matter. Churches have been squeamish about sexuality in general. And, Christians wonder, how much sexuality is too much? Should people change the channel during Victoria’s Secret commercials? Should they tune out ads during football games?

“This is a difficult topic,” Livermore said. “It’s tough.”

Wheeldon, who teaches the class at Seventh-day Adventist, refers to his struggle with pornography and sex as, “My secret life.”

A trim, wiry man with a bushy goatee and blue eyes, he remembers seeing his first porn film after he married at 22.

As early as 6 he’d been caught looking at girlie magazines. His parents laughed it off. As a teenager, at drinking parties, he remembers not wanting beer, just girls.

Five years after his marriage, and after he and his wife had three children, he began visiting strip clubs. He always kept a porn movie hidden somewhere, which he watched more and more.

“You think, ‘Well, when I get married — this is all part of puberty and growing up — this will all end. It does for about the first year…. And then problems hit and it all came back and it hit ten times harder.”

He began taking risks, including, “asking girls out just to see if they’d say yes, knowing I would never be able to (go out with them) because I couldn’t get out on the weekends.”

“You see (pornography) and you’re curious and you’re drawn to it. But then when you get older, it was more, boy, it’s just a big draw, a big allure. The secrecy of it, the beautiful women, the heart pounding. You get that taste and then you want more and more.”

When his job as a contractor took him out of town, Wheeldon would visit strip clubs and bars. In time, he’d had a series of one-night stands and continued an affair for several years.

“It was my drug. I would get a feeling, a high feeling from that. Not even doing something, but just planning out,” he said. “I thought about nothing else other than sex, women, being unfaithful.”

Wheeldon recalls that he didn’t respect his wife. His children, he said, could tell something was wrong. At 5, his daughter would eat only half a candy bar. When her friends raided the candy drawer, she pulled broccoli from the fridge. She weighed only 32 pounds.

“I said, ‘Do you think Daddy would love you any less if you were heavy?” Wheeldon recalled, his voice breaking, his eyes reddening. “And she said, ‘Yeah.’ She didn’t think that I’d love her. And she’s 8 now and, like, 55 pounds, but she’s still a bean pole.

“I was modeling that to my daughter.”

Two years ago, a friend told all to Wheeldon’s wife, Lory.

“I felt really, really betrayed. Just devastatingly betrayed,” she said. “It’s almost like the life you thought you had was not what it was.”

“Before I found out, I kind of knew what was going on,” she said. “It’s publicly accepted that men have this problem, or view pornography, or look at other women.”

People think, “Oh, guys do that,” she said.

Lory Wheeldon, now 34, said she consulted with a lawyer, prepared paperwork for a divorce and cleaned out the family bank account before she confronted her husband.

“I just left. I left home,” Lonnie Wheeldon said. “It was like I was at a crossroads. I had a decision to make. Now, the single life, the life I was after … I was free to do that. Now I finally had an opportunity, you know? But down the other road was my wife and kids…. I looked hard down both roads and I made the decision — I don’t want to lose my kids. Also, I did love my wife.”

At the time, Wheeldon said he felt “devastated. All alone. Empty.

“I figured out I wanted help.”

Wheeldon approached Livermore, who directed him to a counselor in Portland. Wheeldon agreed to visit the counselor three times, he said.

During the drive to his first session, he remembers thinking about which strip clubs he could visit, which people he could see.

“I was being tempted like never before,” he said. “I could go here. I could go there. I could see this girl.”

The counselor sent him to a Gresham church that offered porn and sex addiction classes. Wheeldon attended for two years. He mended his marriage. He told his children what had happened. Things got better.

“What made me decide to stay was seeing him be real about the problems,” seeking help from a pastor and going to counseling, Lory Wheeldon said.

“He just really got real.”

Still, the memories remain, she said.

“It’s kind of like when you get a wound, there’s always a scar,” she said. “I will never forget.”

Now, her husband tells her, “I’m so sorry. I do really love you,” she said.

“I found what I always longed for. It wasn’t in pornography or affairs,” Lonnie said.

“I compare it to thirst … pornography leaves you thirsty. You need more and more again, but it doesn’t last. I’m not thirsty anymore.”

Wheeldon said he teaches the Saturday course because, “I could fall back in if I don’t stay connected to that living water, if I don’t stay honest with myself.”

The “Pure Freedom” text Wheeldon uses in his class emphasizes biblical principals and includes daily homework assignments.

At the end of each exercise is a checklist: “Were you free from pornography since you did the last lesson? Were you free from masturbation since you did the last lesson? Were you free from sexual immorality since you did the last lesson?”

The book’s author, Mike Cleveland, a West Salem, Ohio, airline pilot, said his organization, Setting Captives Free, also offers courses for homosexuals, overeaters, smokers and alcoholics.

Cleveland said in a recent interview that he once struggled with pornography, too, but stopped looking at the material six years ago. During hotel stays between flights, he used to carry his television down the hall and deposit it with his copilot. He was trying to avoid the temptation to buy pay-per-view porn. It was “very humbling,” he said.

“A person will focus on pornography and begin to dwell on sexual impurity,” Cleveland said. “It leads people to adultery, homosexuality and so on.

“People become easily angered, hypocritical, judgmental. They’re easily upset. They can’t handle stress in their life.”

The pornography industry denies their products have these effects — or that porn is addictive.

“That term, ‘addiction to porn,’ is always used by people who can’t stand up to the fact that they’re overwhelmed by life and they can’t handle their own problems,” said William Margold, a long-time adult industry advocate who has performed in more than 300 porn films.

In 1985, Margold, 61, testified before the Meese Commission, which was tasked by the Reagan administration to research the effects of pornography. He recalls telling the commission that, “No one has ever died from an overdose of pornography.”

Mark Kernes, the editor of Adult Video News and a board member of a porn trade group called the Free Speech Coalition, said “Anything can be destructive if used improperly.

“For instance, too much milk imbibed over a long period of time can be harmful to the digestive system,” Kernes wrote in an e-mail.

So, no, pornography is not addictive, he said, “although the genuine psychological condition obsessive compulsive disorder sometimes manifests itself as an obsession with sex or sexually related subjects.”

William Stayton, a professor of sexuality who was born in Kelso, agreed that obsessive-compulsive disorder can sometimes be confused for pornography addiction.

In addition, he said pornography can be blamed for other problems in a relationship.

“Is it a matter of power and control?” Stayton asked. “That is, the man does this because he feels he’s in control. It’s his life, he can do what he wants. And the wife says, ‘Look, if you’re going to do this, you’re out.’

“What’s the issue there? The issue is that they’re in a power struggle. If you can resolve that, the pornography problem will melt away.”

Stayton, a psychologist and American Baptist minister who teaches at Widener University in Chester, Penn., said he often uses sexually explicit videos in sex therapy sessions for couples, even those hosted by churches.

“There’s nothing inherent in watching people have sex that is bad,” he said. “It’s in the relationship of the couple whether it’s going to be bad or not. For some couples, it could be really helpful.”

Pornography “may create that kind of sexual high,” he said. “Is that harmful or is that good? If someone is dead sexually and they get turned on by porn and they become more sexually responsive to their partner, then I’d say that was good.”

“Our denominations are really suffering today,” Stayton said. “They’re suffering because they’ve become closed on sex. They’re acting out of ignorance, secretiveness and all of the trauma that is brought up in the church.”

To solve the problem, Stayton said churches need sexuality programs that run consistently from kindergarten through adulthood.

“Ignorance is one of our biggest problems in our culture around sex,” he said. “If one looks at sexual acts as the problem, then that’s going to promote a negative kind of sexuality.”

Of course, local pastors condemned pornography. But several said they haven’t addressed the issue directly with their congregations.

“It’s not an issue that has been much under discussion,” said Father Richard Green of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Longview.

Still, Green said he is concerned that “the people who have this propensity don’t have to go hang out in sleazy adult bookstores” anymore. “They can sit in their very comfortable, upper middle-class homes on their $3,000 computers and go right into the wonderful world of sleaze.”

Nick Stumbo, the interim senior pastor at East Hills Alliance Church in Kelso, said a few members of his congregation have discussed their problems with pornography.

“It’s almost always the same kind of stories,” he said. It started innocently in junior high school when they saw a few movies at a friend’s house. Then it got out of hand. “I knew what I was doing was wrong,” congregants tell Stumbo. “But I didn’t know how to tell anyone.”

“Unfortunately, for the last several decades, sexuality, especially in the church, is taboo,” Stumbo said. “We look at sexual sin and pornography as being a worse sin than other things. If someone says, ‘I struggle with pornography on my computer, everybody sucks in air. ‘No! How can that be?’ ”

The church, Stumbo said, “has distanced itself and said, ‘OK, clean up and come here.” But that’s not the way it should work, he said. People should know they will be accepted if they come to church, no matter their problems, so long as they are willing to work on them.

“God loves you the way you are, yes,” he said, “but God doesn’t want you to stay that way.”

Still, Stumbo, 26, was leery of making too big an issue of pornography in his church.

“There are a host of other things that people are hiding and not talking about,” he said. “If we just put the emphasis on pornography, we may interfere with that message of love and grace for people who are struggling with other issues.”

On a Saturday in November, Wheeldon stood at the pulpit in front of his congregation. His heart pounded. His mouth was dry. He began speaking about his problem and about how he overcame it.

It was a risky move, he recalled, but he wanted to let other men know they weren’t alone and that he might be able to help them.

Wheeldon’s voice failed as he described his struggle. “It was hard for me to do,” he recalled.

But when he finished,” The congregation just broke into applause,” recalled Livermore, the church’s pastor. “It was a powerful moment.”