In a drafty warehouse in Chatsworth, veteran pornographer James DiGiorgio and his crew spent a recent Friday producing their latest low-budget flick. But there weren't any buxom young stars in sight. Instead, the production featured puppets and a wholesome message urging parents to keep their adult videos and magazines from falling into children's hands.
"It's kind of like you stepped into an alternate reality," DiGiorgio said.
DiGiorgio, also known as "Jimmy D.," is taping the public-service announcement for XXXchurch.com, a Corona-based Christian anti-pornography group that often finds itself at the center of controversy.
The group's last commercial, played on MTV, Comedy Central and the E Channel, featured a dwarf and the tagline "Porn stunts your growth." It was pulled after it was criticized by the Little People of America.
XXXchurch.com co-founders Craig Gross and Mike Foster make annual trips to an adult-industry convention in Las Vegas, which is where they first met DiGiorgio in 2003, when their booths were face-to-face. DiGiorgio was featuring porn starlets and a huge flat-screen television playing pornographic movies. Gross and Foster brought stacks of Bibles.
They chatted but never expected to cross paths again.
XXXchurch.com is the edgy brainchild of Gross and Foster, two youth pastors who saw a void in mainstream Christian churches' ministry: a lack of outreach to men who were struggling with pornography, at a time when pornography was becoming increasingly commonplace in modern society.
"The church for the most part has done such a poor job in getting the message out," said Foster, 32, who is on the staff of the Crossroads Christian Church in Corona. They "have made it so boring, so sterile, so institutional that nobody is paying attention. We up the ante."
The group's website proclaims that it is "the #1 Christian porn site." The website features hate mail from pornography fans who view the group as puritanical, as well as from the religious right. Its trips to the adult-industry convention draw blistering contempt from mainstream religious officials, as does its name. Gross and Foster said they are anti-pornography but also pragmatic.
"We're not going to shut down a $13-billion-a-year industry," said Gross, 28, who lives in Mission Viejo and is president of Fireproof Ministries in Corona.
