The Gay Porn Story Lies to Men

NOTE:  As difficult and vulnerable as it can be to talk about the lies of gay porn, we believe this is a necessary conversation for Christians—especially those seeking to love and care for young men in our cultural masculinity crisis. Harvest USA exists to shine the light of Jesus into dark places—places where the enemy’s lies can easily take hold and where people so desperately need Jesus’s truth and healing. The gay porn story is lying to too many men.

If you are a man who struggles (or has struggled) with gay porn, this article might stir up difficult feelings. As I write, I’m praying for you to know that Jesus is near; he is your helper. I also encourage you to pray before you begin:

Lord Jesus, you have searched me and known me. You know my heart. You know where I’m weak and where I’m vulnerable. Please help me to know your nearness as I read, and hold me secure in your love. If I need to pause, let me bring whatever is stirring in my heart to you. Silence the voice of the Accuser and remind me who you say I am—your redeemed and beloved child. Help me to walk in the light of your truth and equip me to share your truth to the brothers you’ve placed in my path.

Nick’s fingers trembled as he typed the forbidden words into the search bar.

“Naked guys”

He knew, instinctively, that what he was looking for wouldn’t honor Jesus, but the curiosity burned inside his gut like a raging fire. He had to know . . . was he normal?

“This is just research,” he told himself. “I can’t get caught looking at the other guys while we’re changing. This is my only option.” The other guys were all spending the night at Dylan’s house that night. The cool guys. The confident guys. The athletic guys. The guys who never gave Nick the slightest attention, not even to bother making fun of him. Nick had spent hours daydreaming about being one of these guys, about being welcomed into their club. He envied them. He wanted to be them. He was starting to feel like he wanted . . . them.

Nick hit “search,” and immediately his screen was filled with hundreds of men—cool, confident, athletic . . . and naked. These guys seemed to have a “club” too, where they could be naked together without embarrassment or fear, where they wanted each other. These guys seemed to know Nick wanted them too, but they didn’t mind. In fact, they welcomed it.

Nick had discovered gay porn.^[1]

Male Bodies, Masculinity, and Male Friendship: The Lies of Gay Porn

As he scrolled through endless images and videos, gay porn was telling Nick a story—a story about men and bodies and intimacy, a story that Nick was primed and ready to believe as he sat there alone. As Nick indulged in gay porn long into the night, losing himself in this story, he started to believe that he’d found a story about masculinity that he could finally inhabit . . . or at the very least, consume. As body after body flashed across his screen, he never even stopped to wonder if this story was true.

This isn’t the story of every young man who struggles with gay porn, but Nick’s story is far from unique. Gay porn may be a difficult topic, but we cannot afford to look the other way. All pornography is sinful. All pornography is objectifying and dehumanizing. But if you’re a young man like Nick who finds yourself searching again and again for gay porn, whether or not you even think of yourself as “gay,” we need to take a careful, honest look directly at this particular sin struggle. We need to identify the stories that gay porn is telling and consider the better story we find in Scripture.

I want to invite you to consider why Jesus offers you infinitely more than gay porn ever could.

The Gay Porn Story About Male Bodies

Like most mass media, the standards for male bodies in gay porn are utterly unrealistic and unattainable, save for a small minority of the population who have the genetics, drugs, or resources for building an idealized male physique.

It turns out, though, that when men are the primary consumers of the male image, those already high standards go through the roof. While some subgenres of gay porn fetishize skinnier or heavier male bodies, most gay porn declares that chiseled jawlines, ripped torsos, flawless skin, and large penises are the baseline expectation for men. For normal men who can’t possibly measure up, gay porn offers its cast of muscled messiahs. As they worship each other, you are invited to do the same.

The male body, like the female body, is a masterpiece of craftsmanship, designed by our Creator, the master artist, to display his glory. When we see God’s beauty reflected in human artistry like Michaelangelo’s David, we know we are being called to awe, not lust. Gay porn is not wrong because it displays the beauty of the male body. Gay porn is wrong because it exploits the beauty of the male body, turning it into a commodity to consume rather than a glory to behold.^[2]

Gay porn tells a story of liberation for the male body. It promises freedom from all outer constraints of tradition or nature. It erases the need for the biological differences between male and female, objectifying the male body as merely a tool for sexual pleasure. But whenever a man’s body is separated from his Creator’s design and marketed as a commodity, there is only slavery.

The Bible tells a better story about your male body: it was created not for an endless pursuit of self-pleasure, but for self-giving to others—whether that’s in the covenant context of marriage to a woman (1 Cor. 7:4; Eph. 5:25–33), or through embodied acts of love for friend and neighbor (John 15:13; Gal. 5:13–14). The gay porn story tells you that your worth is found in what your body looks like naked, but Jesus—the most worthy man who ever lived—had a male body that was wholly unremarkable. “Jesus won no beauty competitions,” writes Leslie Janikowski, “and his physical body attracted no attention. Yet, the incarnated Jesus was the most beautiful human imaginable because he used his body to tend to and bless his people.”

Gay porn offers you digital representations of male bodies as your means of salvation, but Jesus offers himself, wholly, in the flesh. His male body hung naked on a cross to bear your shame, not simply to distract you from your shame. In bearing the penalty for your sin in his naked body, he has clothed your nakedness with the garments of salvation, and he has covered you with the robe of righteousness (Isa. 61:10).

The Gay Porn Story About Masculinity

Some readers may think of “gay” as a synonym for “effeminate.” While gay culture has historically thrived on the subversion of gender stereotypes, the most common gay porn stories about manhood are anything but soft or feminine. The biggest stars of gay porn are strong, unemotional, aggressive, and confident. In short, they look an awful lot like our culture’s traditional masculine ideal. In a society that’s so quick to label masculinity as “toxic,” gay porn often becomes a place where masculinity—in its basest and most stereotypical form—is celebrated and even worshipped. In gay porn, “toxic” masculinity sells.

Using the term “gay porn” may be a bit of a misnomer, as it implies the sexual portrayal of men who identify as gay. But that’s not always the case. Just a few years ago, on one of the world’s largest pornography sites,^[3] the most viewed category of gay porn was “straight guys.” Some of the most common tropes in gay porn have always involved stereotypically masculine characters like athletic jocks, manual laborers, or womanizing playboys.

These macho “straight guys” (regardless of their actual attractions) are sex machines with a surplus of masculinity. If you’re a man with a perceived deficiency of this so-called masculinity, the gay porn story offers you a solution: you can borrow, rent, or steal the masculinity you need from these men who have plenty. Do you feel weak? Here’s a strong man. Do you feel timid? Here’s an aggressive man. Do you feel invisible to other guys? Here’s a striking man that other guys worship. Have you been hurt by powerful men? Here’s a powerful man you can control. Gay porn offers up pornified, digitized masculinity like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

But where does gay porn leave you? Do you feel more like a man? Is your tank full of the identity and purpose you crave? No. You only feel emptier than you did before. Ironically, as you consume masculinity, you feel like less of a man. So, you return, again and again . . . and gay porn is more than happy to keep your credit card number on file.

Brother, the “union” you experience with the men onscreen is illusory, transactional, shallow, and fleeting—not to mention dehumanizing. But the union that Jesus offers you is solid, free, deep, and eternal. It’s the most humanizing thing in the world. You do not have to chase Jesus, manipulate him, flatter him, or buy his attention. Jesus is the man who has seen you, pursued you, and redeemed you . . . even when you were chasing after others.

Look in the mirror. You may not look like a porn star, but you look like a man—a real man. As a man created fearfully and wonderfully in God’s image, you already possess the raw masculinity that you crave from others. He has given you everything you need. Our sexualized culture and porn-trained eyes may miss it, but God has given you strength, beauty, dignity, and the grounds for true, unshakeable confidence. You have no need to borrow, rent, or steal that which you already possess. In union with Christ, you possess all his riches. In Christ, you are not less of a man, but more. In Christ, you are full, never to thirst again.

The Gay Porn Story About Male Friendship

Many young men like Nick long for healthy male intimacy and friendship but fear they’ll never find true belonging among men. Despite their best efforts to pretend or mimic what they see, this community feels like a clubhouse to which they’ll never be given the password. They’re not entirely sure what happens in that clubhouse, but gay porn stands ready to fill in the gaps with its own story of eroticized male friendship.

Vulnerability, acceptance, connection, and intimacy are powerful components of any story. God created men for all these things—in marriage, yes, but also in friendship and brotherhood with other men. Gay porn hijacks these good brotherly desires, directing them not to self-sacrificial love in friendship, but to self-gratification in masturbation. With orgasm’s rush of oxytocin, men forge bonds with images of bodies rather than embodied brothers. The steady warmth of phileó is substituted with a passionate combustion of eros. 

Why should a lonely young man risk rejection with real guys, when gay porn grants him instant access to cool, confident men who invite him directly into their most vulnerable state? The physical vulnerability of nakedness can quickly become a symbolic stand-in for the emotional vulnerability of connection they long for. Bared bodies are easier (and safer) to find than bared souls.

Gay porn’s narrative teaches you to reduce the real men in your life to machines, viewing them merely as a sum of their body parts, rank-able based on their attributes. Gay porn trains you to wonder not who a man is, but what he can do. It stokes your curiosity not to know a man’s story—his hopes, fears, joys, and sorrows—but to know what he looks like underneath his clothes. Gay porn disciples you not to think about how to lay your life down for a brother, but how to mine and extract the resources from him that you perceive you lack. The gay porn story poisons male friendship.

The plots and tropes of gay porn teach you that the real power behind any male intimacy is ultimately sexual. Thus, when you’re being formed by the story of gay porn, regardless of your convictions, you will start seeing the men in your life primarily through the lens of erotic potential instead of friend potential. The very friendships and brotherhood that you long for—that you were created for—will become twisted by this narrative.

When gay porn is forming you, even your attempts to obey God and pursue holiness can work against you, because when you read the command to “flee sexual immorality,” you may be tempted to think that means fleeing from your brothers instead of the porn that sexualizes them. There may indeed be some men in your life around whom you should exercise caution, but when you’re shaped by the gay porn story, it will be difficult to tell them apart from the true brothers God has placed in your life to help bear your burden.

Gay porn would have you believe that, because you’re aroused by its story, you’re a different kind of man—a gay man. Therefore, your only hope for connection with other men is erotic, the powerful force reserved for love across differences.

But the Bible tells you a better story. You are not a different kind of man. Regardless of the different ways your sexuality has been bruised and broken by the fall, your male body testifies that you are a man like any other, created very good, yet fallen in sin. Like every other brother in Christ, you have been redeemed. This identity is the most important thing about you, not the ways your body and heart have reacted to the lies of gay porn, and not the sinful choices you’ve made. When you’re secure in this identity and formed by the Bible’s better story, you will see the men that God has placed in your life more and more as brothers, and less and less as others.

In this better story, the friendship and brotherhood you long for is freely available to you in the body of Christ, his church. Clothed in the garments of his salvation and the robes of his righteousness, brothers are free to be vulnerable and honest, seen and loved. You are free to confess your struggle with gay porn and let your brothers bear this burden with you, just as you help them bear their own (Gal. 6:2) When erotic love is kept in its proper covenantal context of marriage, brotherhood is liberated for its depth of love and commitment that can, according to the Bible, surpass even the “love of women” (2 Sam. 1:26). In this Christ-centered brotherhood, male bodies do not become irrelevant or taboo. Rather, they become the physical manifestations of Christ’s love to one another: his feet rushing to help, his arms swift to embrace, his presence to sit in our suffering, his eyes welling with tears and sparkling with laughter.

When you are being formed by this better story, gay porn’s story doesn’t just become insufficient . . . it becomes unthinkable.

Reject the Story of Gay Porn

This has been a difficult article to write, and I’m sure it hasn’t been easy to read. Bringing some of these stories of gay porn out of darkness and into the light might leave you feeling exposed and vulnerable. You might be feeling a lot of things right now—anger, sadness, fear, shame—or you may be feeling numb. And right here is where the gay porn story, unmasked and exposed for the hellish lie it is, will tell you, “It’s hopeless.” The voice of the Enemy whispers, “Maybe there is something better out there, but that something is not for you. You’re too far gone. You’ve consumed too much. You’re too broken. No real man would want to be your friend or feel safe around you. No real woman would want to be your wife. Maybe the story of gay porn is false, but in your shame and hopelessness, it’s the best story still available to you.”

As these feelings and fears swirl inside you, you may be tempted to return to the poisoned well, to look for the answer to your shame in the shamelessness of pornified male bodies. Brother, by the power of the Spirit of Christ who dwells within you, reject this lie. Those bodies are not yours to take. Do not return to that well of stolen water which tastes sweet but will poison your soul. The Enemy has lied to you with gay porn long enough. Shut out his whispers, and listen instead for the voice of the Spirit speaking to you:

You are a real man, created in my image, oriented to my love (Gen 1). You have tried to be your own boss, exchanging my Truth for the Enemy’s lies (Rom. 1:25). But even while you were in rebellion, I died for you (Rom. 5:8). You have been washed, you have been sanctified, and you have been justified in my Name (1 Cor. 6:11). There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1). Repent from your desire and pursuit of gay porn and believe my better story (Mark 1:14). You can’t do this on your own—without me, it is hopeless—but with my power, you can say no to gay porn, and every time you do, I am so pleased (Rom. 8:8–11). This will be a lifelong journey, but I have given you brothers to travel with (Gal. 6:2) and you are not alone. I began this good work in you, and I will be faithful to complete it (Phil. 1:6).

Living God’s Better Story

Nick’s hands trembled as he fumbled for the forbidden words.

“I struggle with porn that features naked guys.”

It was eight years, almost to the day, after Nick had first discovered gay porn. He could clearly remember that lonely night when gay porn’s story started spinning its web of deception in his heart. But tonight, he wasn’t alone. He sat in a small circle of other guys from his campus ministry, knee-to-knee, in the basement of their dorm. After years of choosing to return to that poisoned well and drink its stolen water, and after months of contriving fabricated “confessions” to share with his Bible study, he had come to the end of himself. He knew he could not do this alone.

You could hear a pin drop in the room. Nick couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with the other guys. Shame burned inside his gut like a raging fire. I knew this was a mistake. They think I’m disgusting.

Nick felt his friend Dylan’s knee pull away from him in the circle. Of course. They’ll never touch me again. They’ll never even look at me.

But then Dylan turned and wrapped his arm around Nick’s tense and trembling shoulders. “Brother,” he said. “We’re with you.” The tears came like a release, eight years’ worth of secrets and shame. Nick heard chairs scoot back and felt hands laid on his body, with tenderness and strength. And then came their words:

“You’re a courageous man, Nick.”

 “I love you, man.”

“Jesus loves you so much, dude.”

“We’ll carry this with you.”

As his brothers surrounded him and prayed long into the night, Jesus was telling Nick a new story—a story about his body, the church. As some of the other guys opened up and confessed their own sexual sins and Nick stood and placed his hand on their bodies, as he prayed for his brothers and bore their burdens, he started to believe he had found a story that could actually transform him. This story was true. This story was good. And as his heart swelled with a love he had never let himself experience, he knew this story was incredibly beautiful.

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^[1] “Gay porn” is the term most used for pornography that is (1) marketed to men and (2) focuses on male nudity or sexual acts between men. It should be noted, though, that the struggle with gay porn is not limited to men who identify as gay, or even men who struggle with same-sex attraction. Many men who struggle with gay porn usage do not experience attraction to men in real life.

^[2]  Idea adapted from Rev. Robert Cunningham’s lecture, The Redirection of Eros.

^[3] To avoid promoting the website, I have not provided the source link for this data.