'Porn Nation' Tour Hits College Campuses
A former porn addict is taking the "Naked Truth" across college campuses in an age when many have named sexual addiction the number one addiction in America.
Michael Leahy opened his last speaking tour date at the Boston Metro Area Colleges Tuesday amid evangelical leader Ted Haggard's sexual scandal which has put the nation in dismay. With counseling on the way for Haggard and his self-admitted sexual immorality problem, Leahy is concluding his fall tour with thousands of students exposed to the devastating effects of pornography and sexual addiction.
His tour – "Porn Nation - the Naked Truth" – has already stopped at 15 colleges just this fall. His testimony: a recovering sexual addict whose addictive behaviors cost him countless relationships and financial ruin but is now in freedom and telling the nation.
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Leahy founded BraveHearts LLC to increase the public's awareness of the dangers and long-term consequences of exposure to pornography, which America has become the world's largest producer and consumer of, according to the organization. First exposed to porn at age 11, Leahy's 30-year relationship with pornography had blown into a sexual addiction. He is now 10 years into recovery and has appeared on ABC News "20/20," "The View," and other news channels.
Anne Reznicek, a sophomore at Purdue University in Indiana, recently came across Leahy's "Porn Nation" poster ads on campus and was curious.
"What was this presentation going to be about?" she asked herself in a column inn the independent student newspaper The Exponent. She discovered that it was a lecture on the ills of pornography rather than free adult entertainment.
Quoting BraveHearts, she pointed out staggering numbers of sexual addiction problems in the church. "Men and women professing to be Christians who struggle with full-blown sexual addiction and compulsivity outnumber those in the secular population by more than 2:1."
And "nearly two-thirds of all pastors and ministers admitted that internet porn was their own greatest temptation."
The Haggard scandal blew those surprising proportions and the struggle among Christians into reality. Haggard admitted to sexual immorality after a former male escort alleged they had sexual encounters over the course of three years.
"There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life," he wrote in a letter to his 14,000-member church on Sunday.
Now resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and fired as pastor of New Life Church, Haggard will receive counseling from Pastors Jack Hayford of The Church on the Way in Van Nuys, Calif., and Tommy Barnett of First Assembly of God in Phoenix as some of the overseers for his "restoration." Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, who was also part of the team overseeing counseling, withdrew Tuesday, citing a lack of time.
Haggard isn't the only one struggling from the pulpit. The International Bible Society had cited that as much as 50 percent of men in both the pews and the pulpit said they viewed porn within the past year. Significant numbers were also found among women in another report by Second Glance Ministries.
Leahy points to university campuses as "ground zero" for pornography and culture wars. His goal is to reach 100,000 students on 250 college campuses in three years. He has reached 75 schools over the last two years, according to Agape Press, and has had tens of thousands exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Porn Nation campus tour continues Spring 2007.
