Churches Counsel Porn-Addicted Women

"Every time I'm tempted" to look at porn, says Kelsie, 17, "I'll just let everything out to God." Kelsie is a member of a support group for women addicted to pornography that meets at an evangelical megachurch in Kansas. While churches have long offered men Christian counseling to combat pornography use, evangelical culture is only now beginning to broach the topic of female porn users.

“In the Christian culture, women are supposed to be the nonsexual ones,” says the leader of the Kansas support group, which treats masturbation as a sin and encourages group members to recover "sexual purity." An organizer of Christian anti-pornography seminars tells the New York Times that many churches resist such programs for women: “The problem is, most churches have male leadership, and if you want to pitch an event like that, they’ll say, ‘Our women don’t struggle with that.’" (More pornography stories.)