OP/ED by Michael Whiteacre
George Orwell once advised that saints should always be presumed guilty until they are proven innocent. It is up to us – the masses who are commanded to kneel — to ask questions, to apply logic, and use our discernment.
In her latest cash grab email blast, Shelley Lubben has found yet another shark to jump: stating that if you don’t donate to Pink Cross, porn performers will die because Pink Cross won’t be able to save them. That’s right, it’s not just souls that Shelley the self-styled “Rebel Prophet” saves, it’s lives as well! But she just needs some more folding cash to do it.
Lubben writes:
Ask us why porn stars keep leaving porn and are coming to Pink Cross for help? OUTREACH! OUTREACH! OUTREACH!
Pink Cross Foundation has reached out to and rescued more women out of porn than any other organization since 2007. In fact, due to our constant outreaches, we are experiencing a MASS EXODUS of women who desperately want out of porn.
WE WILL EMPTY THE PORN INDUSTRY IF WE KEEP GOING!!
Constant outreaches? Pink Cross showed up at one adult convention in 2012 (in San Francisco), and the upcoming AdultCon show in Los Angeles is its first of 2013 (and its first in Los Angeles in two years). Pink Cross also skipped the last two AEE shows in Las Vegas, which feature the greatest number of adult industry members who would supposedly benefit from her “outreach.” Mailing a gift box filled with donated brochures, a couple of pieces of candy, pink lip gloss and a cheap pink plastic bracelet is not outreach. Outreach is done face to face. Sending someone Pink Cross materials is called ADVERTISING, the same as when a bank gives you a free calendar or mouse pad; it’s meant to instill in the recipient a sense of goodwill about the bestower of the gift every time he or she sees it.
Mass Exodus?!? Who are these performers? Where did they go? Why hasn’t anyone missed them? Why isn’t there a plethora of recent (2012-2013) performers on Lubben’s websites?
Then, Lubben gets down to the nitty gritty:
We have a HUGE OUTREACH in two weeks at Adultcon in LA and we still need $2,000.00 to cover expenses. We give the BEST free gifts to make these girls feel loved, the BEST education on STDs, sex trafficking, risks of porn and more, the BEST outreach team made up of mostly ex porn stars who porn stars can ONLY relate to and we give the BEST love, prayer and ministry right there in the porn convention!
WE JUST NEED YOU TO DONATE ONE MORE TIME
According to Lubben, porn stars need to feel loved, and “can ONLY relate to” ex porn stars. This is because they are such a deficient subclass of human beings that reality and good sense cannot register in their feeble minds unless it is presented by another “recovered” member of their group wearing a pink uniform and handing them shiny pink objects.
Dear Lord, there are Colombian drug mules who don’t pull this much out of their ass.
Next, to back up her credentials, Lubben quotes four “testimonials” of ex-performers for whom, she asserts, “YOUR DONATIONS have directly been used to save their lives out of porn.”
First up is Jesse Jewels, a veteran of six scenes in 2005-2006 (a year or more before Lubben began her “outreach”), who implies she was without hope, but then…
The day I found the Pink Cross, I found hope. . . . They are so consistent in staying in touch. They remind me how much they care and how proud of me they are. Nobody does that for girls who were in porn.
If it weren’t the pink cross I honestly don’t know if I would have had the self-esteem and courage to stay away from the sick industry of porn. But with the acceptance, the love and understanding I received from the Pink Cross I have to tell you I found the strength and courage within myself to never go back to that hell again.
Jewels left porn without having to be rescued by Lubben. There’s also no mention of any financial assistance, or other life resources from Pink Cross – they sent Jesse some Hallmark card-like greetings and maybe some pink lip gloss as part of Lubben’s plan “to make these girls feel loved.”
Next up is former BBW performer Jan Meza (aka Elizabeth Rollings), a Pink Cross stalwart who performed in a little over a dozen shoots (in 2007). As Jan exclaims in florid style:
Without Shelley Lubben I would not be here today! God sent her to rescue me from the destruction that the porn industry inflicted upon me. She is a refreshing serum of truth behind the scenes of the seedy and sinister shadows that exist in the porn industry, shadows that wait endlessly to consume women like me. Thank you Shelley, the world needs you and the Pink Cross Foundation.
The reader is left to wonder in what airplane hangars these ravenous shadows dwell, waiting endlessly to consume the stars of the Hot Sexy Plumpers video series.
As Meza indicates, she too left porn without having to be rescued by Lubben, and emails from 2009 between Lubben and ex-performer Sierra Sinn indicate that Pink Cross provided Meza nothing in terms of tangible assistance: “It’s real hard for Jan and her family right now,” Lubben wrote. “She has three kids and they live on military pay which is nothing, and they are donating plasma just to make it.”
The third “testimonial” is my favorite – not because of the quote atttributed to him, but due to its contributor’s self-description: “Ex Male Porn Star Latin King of Erotica Sal McKvey”
I thank God for the Pink Cross Foundation and to Shelley for all of their love, support and prayers. Thank you Shelley and I love your friendship. I am proud to say that I am an ex porn star thanks to the Pink Cross Foundation and especially to God and His Son Jesus Christ.
Sal, a former gay performer, is an interesting character.
When Lubben first announced Sal’s endorsement of Pink Cross last fall, he admitted to a friend that he’d been out of porn for two years, and his only job was “helping out” at the office of a Los Angeles area church. At that time, however, Sal’s twitter account still retained mentions of “private shows,” and his Twitter and Facebook both featured pics of him in lascivious poses. Sal was often featured in full make-up and dressed (unconvincingly) as a woman — and in fact some of the close-up pics on his Facebook profile were actually stolen shots of female porn star Mercedes Ashley! After Lubben was ribbed about all this online, Sal’s social media accounts were suddenly scrubbed.
Sal also left porn without having to be rescued by Lubben. So, what does Sal say he received from Lubben? Love, support and prayers – no mention of Lubben “rescuing” him out of porn or of having provided any financial assistance or valuable resources. She cheered him on in the recovery he undertook on his own.
The final testimonial in Lubben’s fundraising email comes from a woman identified as “Maxielle aka Genevieve.” She writes:
The only hope I ever got from this devastating time was through the Pink Cross. Honestly, if it weren’t for Pink Cross, I would be dead.
Shelley Lubben has truly been my inspiration and I hope that I become like her one day. She is very personalized with the sex workers rather than passive or aloof like many people who have organizations. She not only gave me advice, but also helped me get closer to God. She gave me a gift bag filled with lipstick, a book about God, and a signature letter telling me how special I am and how she was happy about how courageous I had been.
Before the Pink Cross, I felt like there was really no hope.
Genevieve describes her career in porn as “this devastating time” which left her feeling hopeless, and which, she assures us, would have led to her death if not for St. Shelley – so how extensive and death-defying was Genevieve’s porn career? A search of IAFD turned up nothing about her, but more info could be found in her “testimony” as published on Lubben’s eponymous website.
Informed readers can feel Lubben’s velvet touch right off the bat:
I started in porn in 2009 when I was only twenty years old. I loved and craved attention. I always believed that I was porn material because of how much attention I would get and how much love I would feel from it. My mother and father divorced five years ago and because of the emptiness I had felt for so long, I was desperate for love.
I remember browsing through ads on Craigslist when I approached one that attracted me. . . It said that they needed pretty, slender, curvy girls to make fast and easy money. I was astonished because I needed the money to pay for school and clothes and I was going to get the attention I always loved and wanted.
Genevieve describes only one porn shoot:
At the shoot, I was nervous and scared. I never did anything on camera before and I was thinking was how it would feel to actually do something that the whole world was going to see . . . . I waited desperately to start my video, make the money, and leave. But not only did starting the video take time, making it was also very painful and time consuming. At the time, I thought that porn was fast and easy. But they wanted to take so many pictures. So not only did the pictures take time, but the lighting and sex positions needed to be perfect.
My experience was very bad and I didn’t enjoy it at all when they started filming. I was so surprised because when I watched porn, it didn’t seem like it would be so hard to have sex on camera.
I didn’t do the sexual positions right . . . and I was irritable the whole day. The director didn’t really care how I felt; he only wanted to finish the video.
Genevieve also quit shooting porn without having to be rescued by Lubben. Years after Genevieve’s ‘ordeal,’ what did Lubben do for her? She gave her advice, talked about God, and mailed her a gift bag filled with lipstick, a book about God, and a signed letter of encouragement.
And we are supposed to accept that this literally saved her life — a life that had been endangered by porn?
In the penultimate line of Lubben’s latest pitch for easy cash, the woman who has made a career of insulting, belittling, demonizing, and perpetuating stigma against sex workers, writes:
Thank you for caring about what most people consider as "outcasts".
I wonder why they’re considered oucasts, Shelley? Could it be because of people like you who describe people in porn as a bunch of mentally ill, drug-infested, disease-ridden, sick, jaded, demonized, slaves of Satan? Could it be because you’ve recommended treating performers who need help like “wild animals” – not setting down food/treats too close to them because they might “bite you”?
And if that wasn’t vile enough, Lubben’s sign-off is enough to make a maggot gag:
Your donation will save a life today.
Not “may save a life today” — “will save a life today.” This despite the fact that there’s only ever –- EVER — been one death on an adult set – Taylor Summers’ death at a private bondage photo shoot far from the LA “porn industry.” Not a single performer who can be shown to have contracted any illness on an adult set has died, Shelley. Who’s killing porn stars, Shelley? Why are they in such great mortal danger? When I attend an industry event, I don’t see terror in their eyes, Shelley. Eric Edwards began performing in 1969, and performed in five decades – he’s still kicking, Shelley.
Shelley Lubben is quite simply the worst person I have ever encountered. A con artist and fraud. A vilifier and defamer. A charlatan and exploiter. A hypocrite, liar and perverter of truth.
And her spectacular crack-up is a wonder to behold.