*This is the first part of our series on women struggling with sexual sin. Kathy Gallagher talks with us about her book, Create in Me a Pure heart. In this interview, she helps us to understand why women become involved in pornography and other illicit sexual activities.*

*In this interview with Mike Johnston, she refers to a 2007 poll conducted on our website. I think as we look at where we were as a culture in 2007, and where we are at now, we can only imagine what these statistics, shocking as they were, would look like if we conducted this survey today. But it is our hope that any woman who finds herself as part of these statistics will be encouraged to cry out for freedom from God and begin to pursue a lifestyle pleasing to Him. There is hope, and there is a way out.*

**Kathy I want to start out our discussion today about struggling women with a passage from First Timothy 5:6, "She who gives herself to wanton pleasure is dead, even while she lives." Now, I know that you and Steve have been reaching out to men and couples and certainly wives. But you also work with women who struggle with sexual sin. Tell us a little bit about that.**

It's always been a man's problem, and now we're seeing that it's not just a man's problem, but women struggle quite a bit. We did a survey on our website, and we had 500 women respond to that survey which really shocked us. But what was more shocking, was what women are actually dealing with and what they're struggling with. The level of sexual addiction among women was very shocking.

**I do want to share just a few of these statistics and I don't want to bore listeners too much with statistics, but they really are shocking. These 500 women that responded to the survey were self professing Christian women, correct?**

Yes, they were all Christian women.

**And that's what really makes these statistics, I think, more shocking. 44% of those 500 women admitted to be viewing adult movies alone. 53% admitted to occasionally viewing magazines or internet pornography and 46% reading pornographic stories. 90% of these women acknowledged dealing with masturbation either now or previously in their life. 31% were having online sexual conversations or had at some point. 36% were involved in promiscuity in the form of fornication with other singles. Those are pretty high statistics for women who are professing to be Christian.**

Right

**Do you think that this is kind of the silent cry going on of the church?**

I really do believe this is something that has been boiling beneath the surface in women, not all women, but a lot of women that have already kind of succumbed to the culture. They have succumbed to a lot of other worldly things in their lives, so this is not a huge leap from where they're at.

**Why are women engaging in this type of behavior?**

Well, I think it's a mixed bag. I can't really nail it down to one thing in particular, but I can take a shot at a lot of reasons. I know in my life, at one point when I was young, got involved in pornography because of my husband. You know, Steve introduced me to pornography, and it was our way of trying to hold together a very shaky marriage. And it was what he wanted, and I was more than willing to comply, so I got involved in pornography and saw things I wish I would have never seen. Other women are curious. Single women, they get involved for romantic reasons. They have this romantic fantasy of meeting Prince Charming, so they read novels, or they watch movies and they just keep this kind of a lustful view of life.

**Well let's talk about some of the specific areas that women are getting involved in, and you already touched on one, and that's the viewing of adult entertainment. Let's talk briefly about online pornography. I know from reading your book, that many women get involved in that, if not because of their husbands, very often just because they're lonely.**

Yeah, that's a big motivator, especially if you have a computer in your house and you have access to the internet, you're bored, and you're lonely and you feel just this emptiness then pornography can kind of fill that hole. The thing about pornography is, it’s so addictive, so a young woman or middle-aged woman or a widow may sit in there and she's coming across this stuff, it is very very difficult for her then to detach herself when she has that secret little world. And that's the power of addiction: it's secret. It's powerful.

**You know, and the sad part of that is that at whatever level of naivete or innocence that woman started out with, as that progresses what's really happening in her inside world, is she's being corrupted with evil. And Satan, the evil one, is destroying whatever godly beauty may have been established in her life at one point.**

Yeah. So often people don't even realize how much pornography has affected and warped their minds: the way that they think and the way they view life and people. They think that they have it confined, but they don't realize, and they will find out, at some point in life you will wake up to the reality that this thing has so corrupted them.

**That's true in the next area that we want to talk about, which is cyber-sex. Now what's going on with a woman who's getting involved with cyber-sex?**

Well, I think it starts probably with chat rooms. You know, you get into this fantastical world and you can be anybody you want to. This whole cyber-world, cyber-sex, webcam thing is just, to me, it's a level up from pornography. Now, you can actually, physically become the porn star. You know and throwing your body out there for who knows who.

**I know one of the comments that I read in your book from the women, is that one of the things they loved about the chat rooms, is they loved the feeling that these men were really desperate for them.**

Yes. Yes, and the women are desperate for the men to be desperate for them. That's the insanity of it. Women have this dynamic of wanting to be worshiped and men are all too willing to worship. So, you've got this thing going on between male and female, and a lot of times between two women or even two men. You know, there's just this desperation. Each party is desperate for something.

**They're feeding off of each other?**

They are, they very much are.

**I think that women are more inclined to want to get involved in these fantasy relationships.**

Right, and it really does elevate you to just, enormous ego boosting. It's very, very ego-satisfying.

**And the whole thing is a lie. And you know, as you were saying that, I thought, "well of course, that is what the enemy is doing." He is the father of lies. He is the father of deception. So, this is his world, and these are his tools.**

Yeah, and he's got plenty of instruments in his hands to play with. It's sad to me; it's heartbreaking to me; how many young people, and it's not limited to young people but it's mostly young people, who are just living to just have fun right now. But some day, they are going to have to pay up. And the price is enormously high.

**I hear the passion in your voice, and I know that's why you and Steve have written Create in Me a Pure Heart.**

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