“The man who put sex education into our schools that reflected his sexual beliefs; the man… who helped gut the laws that protected women and children; the man who helped get us to a point where little girls are sending naked pictures of themselves across the internet; this is the man who started the sexual revolution: a sexual psychopath.”
Dr. Judith Reisman pulls no punches in “Out of the Darkness,” a documentary that exposes the evil of pornography.
Here, she is speaking of Alfred Kinsey, the man who dropped “the K bomb” on America, as Reisman says elsewhere in the film. An Indiana University professor of zoology, Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948—and, according to Reisman, nothing has been the same since. His work led directly to the inception of Playboy, she explains, and from there, the pornography industry has exploded.
The hub of “Out of the Darkness” is former porn star Shelley Lubben, founder of the Pink Cross Foundation, which offers emotional, financial, and transitional support to people working in “the adult industry.” After first prostituting herself at age 16, Lubben made her first porn film at age 24.
“Every single day was traumatic,” Lubben says emphatically.
Lubben’s story makes specific the information provided by others featured in the documentary. In addition to Reisman, author of Kinsey, Crimes and Consequences and visiting professor of law at Liberty University School of Law, “Out of the Darkness” features Mark Houck, co-founder of The King’s Men, and psychologist Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons.
While Lubben’s experiences bring home the anguish that the porn industry inflicts on those mired in its depths, the expert commentary is far from dry and academic.
“I feel like an Army medic on a battlefield, picking up wounded bodies,” Fitzgibbons says of his work. “Young people don’t know how to have friendships. They can’t see the good and beauty in others because they can’t see it in themselves.
“Women become sexual meat to be consumed. People are using people as sexual objects, and no one’s talking about it.”
While Fitzgibbons focuses on what he has observed in his practice—“an epidemic of narcissism living in an age of entitlement,” he says at one point, has led us to a place where it is difficult for far too many people to see the innate dignity of their fellow human beings—Reisman brings in a historical perspective, pointing out that in one of the charts in Kinsey’s book, he “documents” children as young as five months old experiencing orgasm.
“It’s an around-the-clock experiment on a little boy,” she exclaims. “Who does that—and calls it science?”
Houck, who admits that when pornography first came into his life, he didn’t recognize it as a problem, points out that on any given day in the United States, 40 million adults are looking up pornography on the internet. “The United States is responsible for 89 percent of the porn Web presence out there,” he adds. And because children are exposed to so many sexual images on the televisions in their own homes—about 15,000 in a year—“kids think porn is no big deal.”
But it is a very big deal, as anyone with ears to hear Lubben’s heartbreaking tale will quickly understand.
Reisman reveals that in her own family, pornography had a devastating effect. Her daughter was raped by the boy who lived upstairs when she was just 10 years old; when the little girl tried to stop him, the boy told her that it was okay—he knew she would like it, because he’d seen that in his father’s magazines.
“Pornography is an erototixin,” Reisman says simply. “It’s toxic to the individual, and it’s toxic to the body politic.”
“We are on a self-destructive course,” Fitzgibbons agrees. “My hope is we’re going to hit bottom and turn a corner.”
The bulk of the film focuses on the devastating impact of Kinsey’s “research,” Playboy, and the porn industry that grew from it; but the last section offers hope far brighter than many viewers might expect—again, made specific by Lubben. She has re-made her life completely, leaving the industry, re-building her relationship with God, marrying a pastor’s son and starting a family, and launching a foundation to help other porn stars recover their lives.
Reisman points out that the lifestyle held up by pornographic materials is “completely alien to true happiness.”
“It’s the focus on the narcissistic … that denies what we’re trying to become as human beings.”
What we’re trying to become is part of something larger; what we’re trying to overcome is loneliness. Fitzgibbons notes that we are all on a journey to connect with other people; but the lie the porn industry is selling is that raw sex is real connection. Far from it: sex without relationship does not fulfill, but depletes.
“The model for sexuality is not Playboy; it’s not Hugh Hefner; it’s not Alfred Kinsey,” Fitzgibbons says with a smile. “It’s the Trinity. Total love flows between the Trinity.”
“Out of the Darkness” purports to be a documentary about the porn industry—and it is; but it’s more than that. It’s a film that strives to change viewers’ perspectives, to help them understand that sexuality is a facet of love—not something to be bought and sold, not something to be consumed. It is a gift to be freely given, and then it does fulfill and not deplete.
As Fitzgibbons explains: “There is a higher purpose for why we’re here.”
Learn more about “Out of the Darkness” at www.anteroompictures.com.
Be sure to check CatholicExchange.com tomorrow for more information about the pornography pandemic.
