Lubben was one of the keynote speakers recently in a political luncheon gabfest titled "Pornography Harms" last month, and she was also one of the main speakers at the CalOSHA hearings on imposing mandatory condom requirements on the industry as a result of the "outbreak" last year. She even got some primetime publicity via an interview she did with ABC News for their Nightline news program.
Lately, though, she has had to deal with publicity that isn't quite so glowing...and may even spell real trouble for her and her "movement".
A number of active porn performers have come forth to directly question Lubben's motives in "helping women get out of the porn industry", and to counter some of her more bombastic claims about how women in porn are simply abused and "prostituted".
Monica Foster, for one, has experience in mentoring performers into and out of the industry through her GettingIntoPorn.com and GettingOutOfPorn.com websites; and she has recently been very critical of the fundamentalist Christian focus of Lubben and her PCF "ministry", as well as the lack of actual resources given to ex-performers seeking her help. Some quotage from Foster, courtesy of her blog:
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I used to admire this woman for her supposed attempts to help people, but after doing a bit of research on her, watching her interviews, and having heard about some of the realities of her organization from a few trusted friends, I'm not so certain that even she is clear as to what her true agenda is.But even that is dwarfed by the campaign of another porn performer, Julie Meadows (aka Lydia Lee), whom has virturally launched a one-woman crusade to publically expose Lubben and the Pink Cross Foundation for the frauds they allegedly are. Meadows has been using both her own blog and her space on Mike South's blog to openly question both the motives and the actions of the PCF, and recently she has focused on their tax exempt status as charitable contributions.
I think as of current that she is very self centered, immature, emotionally stunted, manipulative and on a quest of fame at the expense of hurting others and their livelihoods.
What I don't like about Lubben most of all, is that she blames everyone and everything else in life for circumstances she found herself in within life, except for herself. She seems to see the world as black and white rather than billions of shades of gray and colors.
We all have free will and we all make CHOICES in life. She CHOSE to work as a prostitute and a porn actress. No one held a gun to her head. Her career choice didn't work out for her and she chose to leave the industry completely, however that was her choice - and for her to demonize EVERYONE and EVERYTHING associated with it now is just plain wrong.
Using the tax returns that were filed by the PCF in 2008 and 2009 -- returns that are public record and accessible to anyone thanks to disclosure regulations -- Julie and her husband Doug found countless questionable innaccuracies, inconsistencies, and questionable data that could possibly lead to genuine inquiries about the PCF's tax exempt status, let alone about whether or not they are living up to their professed goal of "helping adult performers get out of the pornography industry", or just exploiting ex-performers that much worse in order to line her pockets.
To that end, Doug and Julie created a video in which Doug documents in detail the inconsistencies and questions raised by the "tax documents", and openly wonders whether or not they are mere ruses designed to fend off more detailed auditing of their financial affairs. The video was originally posted to Julie's home blog, then to her YouTube account home page (JulieMeadowsEnt) in four parts; it is also now available over at my own personal SmackDog Chronicles blog.
I highly reccommend you watch the video (or the series) in its entirity; it is, to say the least, quite illuminating.
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A majority of religious organisations are frauds by nature and ‘The Pink Cross Foundation’ is one example. Now I don’t know how Shelly Luben got brainwashed but clearly she’s one of the typical born-again Christians that want to rid the world of porn and other sexual freedoms. Many help groups (groups that help people who have problems, abused, etc) are ran by religious organisations, rather then actually helping them to overcome their problems they instead use the ‘only religion can help you’ line (there are many ways to overcome problems no matter what they are and religion is not the only way, there are many ways unrelated to religion) which is most likely the line that Luben’s organisation uses in order to get more people out of porn and of course some people do fall for that. Now that line doesn’t effect all porn stars but it effects the porn stars who have problems (when one or more problem takes over completely such as drugs, depressions, abuse, etc) and it is when they are at the point of depression and possibly suicidal that those porn stars are a gold mine for groups like Luben’s.
ReplyDeleteDespite claiming they care for these people they really don’t deep down, the only thing they care about is to get more followers no matter what it takes even if they have to cause those exact problems in order to get them.
The campaign to enforce condom use in porn is clearly a bullshit tactic, Luben’s group (along with others like hers) claim it’s because they care about the performers while in reality bareback porn is one of the main drawing points of porn and if all porn uses condoms then the sales will fall rapidly and the industry itself will be no more.
Unfortunately yes you do get porn stars contracting STIs/STDs and in rare cases HIV but I think this is where the industry itself can make the difference in that like maybe donating some money they earn to research organisations to help develop vaccines and cures for these things (can’t trust religious organisations for that since they will pocket most of it) which may in time give the porn industry a good public image.
There are problems in the porn industry such as drugs, abuse, depressions and so on but those problems are in all industries especially the entertainment industries such as the movie industry, TV industry and the music industry.
The religion industry is the world’s biggest with each organisation of whatever religion it is getting trillions if not more every year, rather then using that money to help people they use it for other things and one of those things is funding organisations that are anti-sex especially the anti-porn groups like Lubens.
I believe if there are pro-porn organisations and help groups set up by pro-sex organisations then that may stop groups such as Luben’s from taking advantage of porn stars who may be vulnerable to be saved (more like brainwashed).
And in other news of Lubben dishonesty, it turns out that a while back, she erased all mention of one of her 'converts', deaf porn performer Savannah Jane.
ReplyDeleteRecruiting Jane was a big coup for the Pink Cross group because she was the first (and so far, only) Jewish performer to fall into Lubben's clutches. A useful way of answering folks who knew about the support Lubben enjoys from the neo-Nazi Stormfront crowd.
Jane stopped posting on her own blog as of April 2009. Shortly after, her 'story' was erased from the Pink Cross website.
It turns out that Ms. Jane has been escorting in the nation's capital. Her escort rates were listed as part of a thread on 'porn star' escorts who charge less than $500 on the XXX Porn Talk boards.