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from www.onenewsnow.com – Last week radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham told a story of traveling by train from Washington, DC, to New York with her young daughter. Walking up the aisle to get a snack, the little girl pointed to the computer screen of a man sitting two rows ahead of them. “Why are those people swimming naked, Mommy,” she asked. It turns out that their fellow passenger was watching “full blown porn,” as Ingraham described it, in easy view of anyone who happened to be sitting nearby or walking past. How, she wondered, have we reached this point?

Pornography is pervasive. And, as we’re finally beginning to learn, it’s addictive and destructive. It changes the way we think about other people, and about relationships. It damages the people who watch it, as well as the people working in the industry.

A compelling new film called Out of the Darkness addresses pornography from a range of perspectives. The narration is composed of four interviews, each of which covers a different aspect of pornography. We hear the personal stories of a former porn star and a former pornography addict. A psychiatrist relates his professional experience with the issue, while a scholar provides the background on how this all came to be.

While each interview is gripping, interspersed together they make a comprehensive, powerful narrative about the problem of pornography.

Shelley Lubben’s recounting of her experience as a prostitute and porn star is jarring. In stark contrast to the sex object she was for men who watched her films, viewers of Out of the Darkness see Lubben as a human being and hear her very personal story.

After being kicked out of the house by her parents at the age of 18, she was approached by a man while was sitting on a street curb. He told her she could make $35 if she would have sex with a man in a nearby apartment building. Thus began eight years of prostitution and stripping. When someone suggested Lubben try acting in pornographic movies, she jumped at the chance to make more money by doing something that was legal.

Shelley LubbenHer life was far from happy. Lubben used drugs and alcohol to get through the days, and especially through the filming. “When people watch pornography they are really watching mentally ill and physically diseased people have sex,” she says.

When Lubben discovered she had contracted genital herpes, she felt she’d hit rock bottom. She attempted suicide by taking an overdose of pills, but, as she puts it, “God saved me.”

Eventually Lubben got out of the sex industry and married a man she describes as the first man to show her what love meant. “He was my friend,” she pointedly tells the camera, and a pastor’s son. “Pastor’s son marries porn star. God has a sense of humor,” Lubben notes with a wry smile. Their marriage license cost $35, an irony also not lost on Lubben.

Lubben became a Christian and now works to try and get porn stars and sex workers out of the business through the Pink Cross Foundation. She tells her moving story unflinchingly in a desire to expose the porn industry for what it is, and for what it does to people.

Mark Houck (The King’s Men)Mark Houck is co-founder of The King’s Men, an organization devoted to helping men live Christian lives and develop what he calls “authentic masculinity.” The dangers of pornography are a particular focus, given Houck’s personal experience. He, too, is unflinching when it comes to telling his story in Out of the Darkness. His 16-year addiction to pornography began at the age of 10, when he saw his first issue of Playboy magazine. He can still recall those first images that were seared into his brain. In college he progressed from magazines to videos. One day it hit him that, as he puts it, “This is what my life has become.” With the help of his Christian faith he overcame his addiction.

Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons (Inst. for Marital Healing)Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons is a psychiatrist and director of the Institute for Marital Healing near Philadelphia. Fitzgibbons points to the first words God had for Adam: that it was not good for him to be alone. Human beings, he says, are hardwired to connect with other people, to find others to trust and give themselves to. “It’s through giving ourselves that we find ourselves,” he states plainly. Pornography, on the other hand, is complete selfishness, utter narcissism, according to Fitzgibbons. By its very nature it does the opposite of making human connections by turning people into objects. It wreaks havoc on individuals, marriages and families.

Dr. Judith Reisman is an author and expert on pornography and sex education. She is world renowned for the work she has done exposing the lies of Alfred Kinsey’s “sex science.” In Out of the Darkness, Reisman explains how Kinsey and his followers changed how Americans think about sex. It was Kinsey’s work that inspired Hugh Hefner to publish Playboy. Convinced by Kinsey’s fraudulent research that sexual morality was virtually a sham, the spark was lit for the sexual revolution, which included the mainstreaming of pornography.

Out of the Darkness won the Mystery of Love Award at this year’s John Paul II International Film Festival and will be screened at World Youth Day in Madrid next month. Anteroom Pictures, which produced the film, plans to host screenings around the country, in churches and in schools. It’s also available on DVD.