I just checked the stats, and Pursuing Holiness is getting an average of 137 visitors a day. That’s when I haven’t been posting regularly and traffic is down; it’s usually higher. But after an email exchange*, I was reminded of how funny that really is, because a steady amount of the traffic here is from people who come looking for porn.
Why, you might ask, would anyone in their right mind come to the domain pursuingholiness.com seeking pornography? Because my name is Laura. And because I live in the New Orleans area, which was hit by a rather famous hurricane in 2005. I have quite a few posts about that hurricane; it even merits its own category. And it so happens that there is a popular website that includes those two names where people go to temporarily deaden their minds, destroy their marriages, and ruin future relationships by getting a completely wrong idea about sex and relationships.
So when those sad, lonely, people google to find that website, they often come here. I’m trying to be careful about how I phrase this so I don’t mess up those search results, which PH has been in the top five for since September, 2005. I noticed it in the referrer logs right after the hurricane when it was actually #1 – the irony was a much needed laugh at a time when it seemed like the whole world was the grayish-tan of the flood mud, we couldn’t escape that smell, and my hands still felt buzzed an hour after I put down the chainsaw.
In an effort to be helpful, in several posts that reference this phenomenon, I wrote, “Looking for [name of the website]? Click here.” That may not have been what they wanted, but a few hundred people a month click through, and it is what they need. I hope at least some of them actually take the course.
Porn is not a harmless activity, as new Christian and former porn producer Donny Pauling has explained in detail in various posts on his blog. Former porn actress Shelley Lubben writes:
It’s safe to say most women who turn to porn acting as a money-making enterprise, probably didn’t grow up in healthy childhoods either. Indeed, many actresses admit they’ve experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse and neglect by parents. Some were raped by relatives and molested by neighbors. When we were little girls we wanted to play with dollies and be mommies, not have big scary men get on top of us. The same horrible violations we experienced then, we relive through as we perform our tricks for you in front of the camera. And we hate every minute of it. We’re traumatized little girls living on anti-depressants, drugs and alcohol acting out our pain in front of YOU who continue to abuse us.
What a damning indictment. And lest we get all “holier than thou” – Christians are just as likely to view porn as anyone else:
* August 7,2006: 50% of all Christian men and 20% of all Christian women are addicted to pornography. 60% of the women who answered the survey admitted to having significant struggles with lust; 40% admitted to being involved in sexual sin in the past year; and 20% of the church-going female participants struggle with looking at pornography on an ongoing basis. From the results of a ChristiaNet poll reported by Marketwire.com
So I’m amused – and sad – at the flow of traffic through this site. If nothing else, knowing that a few hundred people a month at least learn about a free program that can help them makes it worthwhile to keep up the blog and post often enough to keep my Google credibility.
* here’s the email exchange, which I’m including because I wanted an excuse to repost the link, and because I think it’s hysterical how once you start talking about sex, everything seems suggestive. Or maybe I’m just some kind of crazed fiend, and this never happens to anyone else. Hmmm… first rule for holes – stop digging! 
Jaibones: I am still laughing about visitors to “Pursuing Holiness” looking for porn. That’s hilarious.
Laura: And here I thought it was well known what Protestant women are like.
See? But I’ll have a post explaining the porn seekers tomorrow; that topic has actually come up several times in the last week. FYI, I tried four or five variations on that, i.e. the subject has arisen, and I finally just gave up – I can’t think of a way to phrase it that doesn’t seem suggestive, but that’s probably because I’m a Protestant woman and, well, that’s evidently what we do. I hope you get as good a laugh out of that dilemma as I did.
All joking aside, I’ve posted on sex several times recently. But John Piper really says it all and the comparison reveals me to be a shallow thinker indeed. Go read what he says about it and be enlightened.
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