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Donovan Phillips - The Gentile Pornographer Who Studies Kabbalah He uses the sacred Zohar as a backdrop for some of his photo-sets. GFY thread. I interviewed him by phone Sunday, June 19, 2005, starting at 9:19pm. I've long read his posts on GFY because they are usually coherent and correctly spelled and punctuated (a rarity on industry forums). Donny's father was an Assembly of God (fast-growing strict fundamentalist form of evangelical Christianity) pastor. Donny, born in 1973 (he has a younger brother who used to work for Donny's porn operation): "I went to all the church services and I tried to go along with it but something didn't seem right. "I went to a summer camp where boys and girls had to swim separately [it's the same for most parts of Orthodox Judaism]. The boys would have to swim in jeans and a full shirt. Girls would have to swim in full dresses." Luke: "Were you allowed to watch television?" Donny: "No. I didn't have a TV [until her moved in with his aunt at age 17]. "My parents became Christians when I was five [to try to save their marriage, they eventually divorced when Donny was 26]. My dad studied to become a pastor [that began when Donny was seven]. They kept getting deeper into it. "I grew up all over California because my dad was a pastor, he was moved from church to church. "I don't have bad feelings towards my parents. They did the best they could. I have bad feelings towards church people who caused problems when I was growing up. They would cause petty problems because they wanted to run things and my dad wouldn't let them run the church how they wanted. They'd say my dad wasn't Pentecostal enough. "Pastors get paid from tithing. One family controlled the church's books. They tried to underreport how much tithing came in and tried to starve him out. Some people would claim we were having teenage girls over to our house. None of it was true. Nobody ever came over to our house." Luke: "Did you form any close childhood friendships with Christians that persist to this day?" Donovan: "No. My parents were so mistrusting of other people that they wouldn't let us go spend the night with people in the church. They thought the people would let us watch TV or listen to music. Most of our acquaintances were family members." Luke: "Did your parents get into religion because they were hurting or screwed up?" Donovan: "Yes. They were about to get divorced. They said, we've tried everything else. Now let's try God. Then they just got deeper and deeper. We went to holy roller churches where people shake on the ground." Luke: "Did your parents have a good marriage?" Donovan: "No. They were fighting all the time." Luke: "Even after they turned to God?" Donovan: "Yes." Luke: "What was the main bone of contention?" Donovan: "My mother is really stubborn and she would like to be more hard-nosed than my dad was. She thought he needed to be stricter with people. That he let certain congregation members get away with too much. My dad was more laid-back. "They'd be fighting over whether or not my brother and I respected her enough and all that kind of crap. He would stick up for us. She'd throw fits over him not sticking up for his wife. Every so often, she'd leave for a couple of days and make him beg for to come back." Luke: "Were you glad when they divorced?" Donovan: "I was happy for my dad even though he was really sad about it. My mom's hard to live with." Luke: "What did your parents and your religion teach you about masturbation?" Donovan: "They mentioned some verse in the Bible that you're not supposed to spill your seed on the ground. Masturbation was wrong. They didn't say that sex was only for procreation." Luke: "How old were you when you first masturbated?" Donovan: "Thirteen. I felt guilty afterwards. "I was at my aunt's house. I had climbed under her house to fix some pipes that were leaking. At the end of the night, I was on the floor in the living room and I just by accident brushed my hand across myself. Wow. I finished it from there." Luke: "Did it make a mess?" Donovan: "Oh yeah." Luke: "Did it go shooting across the room?" Donovan: "It went shooting all over my stomach." Luke: "What were your earliest experiences with pornography?" Donovan: "There was this one person I was allowed to hang with from time to time. His parents had been counselors for my parents. Their son and I were walking in the park and we found a girlie magazine in the garbage. I was 13. I remember it was calling a woman's pussy a 'lotus.' "After that, I'd start sneaking off to the liquor store and check out their stash. The store owners would never say anything. At the beginning, I'd like Oriental women who were shaved bald. "When I was 17, I moved in with my aunt near Chico so I could take calculus and have a better chance at a scholarship. I met the woman who became my wife. We started dating after a couple of weeks. There was no sex. I didn't even kiss her for five weeks. "After I got out of college, I came back here." Luke: "Did you go to college?" Donovan: "I majored in computer science at the Devry Institute of Technology in Phoenix." Luke: "When did you lose your virginity?" Donovan: "Not until I was 20, and it wasn't even to her. It was to a girl I'd met in Orlando. She found out I was a virgin, so she kept trying and trying until I finally gave in. "My future wife and I were still dating at the time. I called her and got to the part about kissing the other girl and that's all she wanted to hear. We were broken up for a while. "I got married when I was 22. We got divorced in 2000 after six years of marriage." Though married to a good Christian Assembly of God wife, Donovan got into pornography in 1996, while he was still going to church regularly. He kept it from his wife for four years until the Phoenix Forum in early 2000 when he called her and told her the truth. She promptly divorced him. It was either God's way or the highway. "I got my first computer in 1996. I started surfing the newsgroups. I started seeing brands on there like ATK, Teenflood.com, etc. I started emailing some of those sites and asked them where they purchased their photos. "Before that, I started part-time taking pictures of whoever I could get to pose. I'd pay 'em for it. I had a few private collectors who would buy them. My first commercial job was for ATK." Luke: "How did your wife feel about you working in the pornography industry?" Donovan: "She didn't know. We thought we were deeply in debt at this time. We had about $8,000 in debt. One day I said to her, 'I know a way to get us out of debt. What do you think if I photograph some girls for some adult websites?' She freaked out at even the thought of me considering that. Little did she know that I was already starting to do it. I just kept it from her. I started up a computing consulting business as a front. "She was just as religious as my parents had been. We fought over stupid things. If I wanted to watch a movie that was rated R, she would get mad at me for not being the spiritual leader of the house. That I wanted to watch such a movie showed that my head wasn't there. We fought about the spiritual stuff." Luke: "Where were you religiously [Assembly of God] then?" Donovan: "Off and on, I'd try really hard. It would fluctuate. I'd go from shooting porn to going to church on Sundays and raising my hands and trying to get into to going to Bible study Wednesday 6am with the men's group." Luke: "Did you have many friends in the church?" Donovan: "They claim to be your friends but they're quick to backstab you if they don't think it's right." Luke: "In retrospect, you don't think they were good friends?" Donovan: "No. They probably thought they were. They're the kind of people who will turn their back on you if you're failing and you're not willing to come in and cry and beg forgiveness. They don't think your heart is in the right place. They believe in that verse in the Bible -- 'Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers.'" Luke: "Do you believe in God?" Donovan: "I believe that what everybody refers to as God is actually energy that holds everything together." Luke: "God's not done with you yet." Donovan: "I think that's a bunch of bulls---. It's just people trying to create some hope for themselves that their lives are going to get better because God hasn't finished with them yet. "There's no way I'll ever go back to [Christianity]. It's all bulls---. There's no supreme being watching out over everybody." Luke: "How does it work being a parent and a pornographer?" Donovan: "It's been ok. On my days with my son, I don't do any business. I don't even take phone calls. On the days when my ex has him, I do all my business. "At first she didn't want to take money from me. But she had no choice because she wasn't working. She was a stay-at-home mom. Finally, I convinced her, in her terms, that while I may make the money in a way she thinks is evil, she can do good with it by staying home with her son and raising him. "I have a fiancee now who helps me with the business. On days that I'm going over to get him, she checks to make sure that everything is clean." Luke: "How does your ex-wife feel about your profession?" Donovan: "She still hates it." Luke: "How did she find out?" Donovan: "When I went to my first Desert Forum (CCBill throws it), I called her and told her. She thought I was doing computer consulting with Gary Kremen on pinpointgolfing.com. 'But that's not the area he focuses on. He also owns sex.com. I shoot naked girls.' "She just blew up and that was it." Luke: "Pornography ended your marriage." Donovan: "Yes, it did. For sure. It was a relief, though, to tell her." Luke: "If you had not worked in pornography, would you guys still be together?" Donovan: "If I had been a good Christian boy, we would've. Not fought my feelings that there was something wrong with Christianity. "Porn has allowed me to do a lot of traveling and meet a lot of different people. I was a hardcore Republican for several years while doing porn. At the last election, I voted for Kerry." Luke: "Have you found that pornography isolates you from others?" Donovan: "At first I let it get me down. Now I'm proud. Every where I go, when people ask me what I do, I tell them. "It blows most people away when you are so outfront with it. Some people want to discuss the issue. I always ask them if they want to discuss it logically or emotionally. They always say logically. Usually women don't want to talk about it. Usually they want their man to do the talking for them. "I'll ask the man if he's ever watched pornography. Of course he'll say yes. I'll say, then we don't have anything to discuss. You're in this as much as me. You're the demand and I'm the supply. If they're logical as they've agreed to be, then there's no argument to that. "I was walking around with AaronM (industry photographer) today. He was shocked how many people walked up to me. In the camera store, they know what I do. He said, I couldn't deal with everybody knowing what I do." Luke: "Do you shoot a lot of Chico State girls?" Donovan: "That's the majority of what we do." Luke: "Why don't you use your real name?" Donovan: "For the sake of my son." Donovan is in a monogamous relationship. "It isn't difficult because she's the perfect girlfriend." Luke: "Are you in porn for life?" Donovan: "Definitely." Luke: "How does being a pastor's son continue to affect you?" Donovan: "It opens up a lot of conversations. It puts at ease at a lot of the new models I get. I'm the only guy in town doing what I do. Most of the girls I photograph have never done any work before. When I bring that I'm a preacher's son, they say, whoa, how did that happen? It works to my advantage. The first thought in a new model's mind is that someone is going to find out and tell mom and dad. I can tell them that I've had to face all the things they're worried about." Luke: "Do you shoot much hardcore?" Donovan: "No." Luke: "It'd be hard to get male talent." Donovan: "The males usually can't perform." Luke: "What do you love and hate about GFY?" Donovan: "I hate almost everything about GFY but I'm addicted to it. I get a handful of sign-ups off GFY. I've had a thousand affiliates come from GFY." Luke: "Have you found yourself caught in flame wars where your emotions were getting out of control?" Donovan: "Yes. Several times. KRL and I got into a flame war with Rick Latona over the [burning] cat video [on ConsumptionJunction.com]. It showed a guy locking a cat into a birdcage, dousing it with accelerant, and then lighting it on fire. The title was, 'The hottest pussy you'll ever see,' as though it was funny." Luke: "What does your mother say to you?" Donovan: "She doesn't like it. She doesn't want me to tell her boyfriend. My dad is a retired pastor. When people from his congregation email him about how he can let me do what I do for a living, he usually replies that they should keep their mouths shut. As a pastor, he had to counsel people like them who were addicted to porn. Such people have no place to talk. "He's not happy with the choice I made for a profession but he's proud of me as a person." Luke: "Has he asked you for a free log-in?" Donovan: "No. He did ask me to see photos I photographed who he knew. "My brother thinks it is the coolest thing in the world. He's a laborer. He tried working for me for a while but I wouldn't let him around the girls because he wasn't professional. He was trying to f--- 'em all. He got bored with the office work I had him doing. "Male friends think it's cool [Donny is in porn]. Female friends start to roll their eyes until I have a conversation with them and ask them questions that make them think. Then they come to accept it. "My best friend John runs amateurmarket.net for me. He feels like a bigshot pornographer even though he's never been to a show. His friends think he's a bigshot pornographer too." Luke: "What's the outlook for your business?" Donovan: "There's nowhere for it to go but up. The reason that my business doesn't explode as some of these new programs is that I have never spammed and never used a pop-up (unless they get to a sign-up page and don't join)." Luke: "When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?" Donovan: "An airline pilot. I accomplished almost every goal I set growing up. They usually had to do with academics. "One thing that annoys me about the adult industry is that people don't think they have to be professional. I've slipped numerous times but there's also a professional way to make up for that." Luke: "How would you feel if your son grew up to want to work in pornography?" Donovan: "If he wanted to work with me or run my business, I'd first make him aware of the reactions he would get from the rest of his religious family. And if he still wanted to do it, I'd definitely guide him. I wouldn't want him to be talent. "I welcome when someone comes after me. I think of it as a challenge. I have yet to have someone convince me that what I'm doing is wrong." Luke: "Did you know what you were getting yourself in for?" Donovan: "When I started, I didn't have a clue. If I had, I would've never started. Given what I know now, I would've started. At the beginning, I was blown away because I had lived a sheltered life. The first time I went to Internext, the stuff that was going on there, I felt sick to my stomach. Some of the sites that were out there such as hogtied.com. I'd never been exposed to that. I just felt that it was disgusting. "Over time, that view changed. Now some of that stuff interests me and I also have respect for other people and what interests them. As long as they are not causing harm, there's nothing wrong in what they're doing. I've become less judgmental." Luke: "Have you become jaded?" Donovan: "Yes, I've become jaded. There has to be a lot more to interest me." Luke: "Is there anything good in Christianity?" Donovan: "To be honest, I hate Christians because of their hypocrisy and how they shun people who aren't doing what they think is right." Luke: "Yet, much of what you are is a product of Christianity." Donovan: "I don't know if when you were a kid, you were told that Santa Claus existed. Then you found out he didn't. That's how I felt about Christianity. All the stuff I was taught was bulls---. There's a keen sense of disappointment. "I have to be honest with you. I have been studying Kabbalah" He places the emphasis on the first syllable. Donovan: "Stuff from the Kaballah Centre in LA. I've also asked rabbis what they think of it. Of course they think that most of it is bulls---. "You eat the meat and you spit out the boons. You take what you want from it." Luke: "Would one of the attractive parts of the Kaballah Centre be that it doesn't make any demands on you?" Donovan: "Definitely." Luke: "How much money have you spent on the Kaballah Centre?" Donovan: "About a thousand dollars. I don't buy their water and I don't wear their red strings. I have one but I don't wear it. I don't swallow what they say hook, line and sinker." Luke: "What have you gained from it?" Donovan: "A reassurance from another major group that what I'm doing isn't wrong. They agree with that. It would take too long to tell you what I get from it." Luke: "Give it a go." Donovan: "They have a CD series about what they believe - The Power Of Kabbalah. A lot of what they taught made perfect sense to me. They teach that God is nothing that people can ever comprehend. It's more of an energy and a light that holds everything together. When they talk about Satan, they're not talking about a physical being either. It's negativity. There's positivity and negativity and it's all part of yourself. "I love to ask Christians to explain Hosea 13:16." It reads: "Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up." Donovan: "I say to them, how can you justify killing babies? Why would I want to serve a God who wants to go in there and rip up kids?" Luke: "You've never gotten a good answer to that?" Donovan: "No. That's not a verse they teach in the churches." Luke: "Do you think it would've been good if someone would've done that to Adolf Hitler's mother?" Donovan: "No. Adolf Hitler's mother couldn't be responsible for what he did." Luke: "By killing her and Adolf, we would've saved 50 million lives." Donovan: "But how could you know in advance? I don't even believe in the death penalty." Donovan writes on GFY January 4, 2005:
ADL_JD writes:
Donovan Phillips writes:
ADL_JD posts:
brand0n writes: "Selling porn on the net = sure fire way to avoid heaven. We are all damned. No reason to study anything." Jayeff writes:
Donovan Phillips writes:
Donovan tells me June 19: "Kaballah is older than the written Bible. The literal Kaballah was the spoken Torah. There was a reason why the rabbis had to be 40 years old and married to study it. Most people at that time were uneducated and the literal Kaballah was trying to tell us how things work. "In the Bible, there's a story about the prophet Elijah going into a village. The woman and her husband hadn't had any kids. They made a room for him in their home so when he came into town, he had a place to stay. "He told them you are going to have a son. He was blessing them for their kindness. The son ends up dying and the lady ran to Elijah and said, how come my son died? It would've been better if I had never had him to begin with. Elijah sent his servant and said don't talk to anybody along the way. "Elijah has to come back and lie on the kid and brings him back to life. "The Kaballah teaches that it's not that there's some God up there who wants things done a certain way to entertain him, but every person has an energy inside of them, and God is part of everything. "The reason that the servant shouldn't have talked to anybody on the way home was so that their negativity doesn't affect his energy. "He's saying that you have the ability to channel within yourself a healing into this person's body. "That's what I like about Kaballah -- we're all joined together by this life force, energy, light or whatever you want to call it that allows us to do things that we normally couldn't do. Look at some of the weird things that have happened over the course of history. They're like miracles but they're not." Donny bought the Kaballah Centre's expensive Zohar set in Hebrew and English. He says that was "a waste of money. It sits on my shelf and collects dust. We use it as a photo backdrop. "It's a little deeper than I want to get. "I've bought a lot of other books about Judaism. Judaism For Dummies. "When I first discovered Kaballah, I had a ton of questions and I'd shoot them off to any rabbi who would answer me. I had a few who talked to me on the telephone. JewsForJudaism.com. The founder's son talked to me for a while. Once he found out that I didn't have a background in Judaism, he was still helpful, but not as much as at first. When I first contacted him, he thought I was a fallen Jew." Luke: "How do you feel about Jews not seeking converts?" Donny: "I think that's a good thing." Here are some of Donovan Phillips's blog entries: "Interview Request" & What I Like and Hate About this Industry. Why Donny Doesn't Like Shooting Hardcore. PICS OF MY FIANCEE IN THIS ENTRY.
MY COUSIN POSES NAKED TOO (SHE'S A LIGHTSPEED GIRL). 11/22/06 Ex-Pornographer Donovan Phillips (Pauling) Joins XXXChurch's Porn And Pancakes Crusade There's a Youtube clip of a recent TV news report.
John & Jennifer respond:
Anon writes:
The Esther Fund -- Shelley Lubben and XXXChurch set up a fund to help people leave porn. August 9, 2007
Donny says: "Maybe the next time you feel like masturbating in front of that screen, think about the fact that that girl’s father probably doesn’t talk to her anymore." |