bizarre tale

Pastor says his career as a gay adult film star earned him over $1 million but ruined his life

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Joshua Broome

For years, Joshua Broome earned his living as an adult film entertainer. Now, the Christian preacher is making money by disavowing the industry, and man-on-man content in particular.

Broome, who used to perform under the name Rocco Reed, quit the adult film industry in 2013. He’s currently promoting his new book, 7 Lies That Will Ruin Your Life.

In it, Broome covers his transition from XXX star to pastor, detailing his deep discontentment with adult entertainment. At his peak, he was filming up to 25 scenes per month, and earned more than $1 million. He worked for a total of seven years.

“What’s unique about [porn], is that when an act of intimacy that is meant to be done in private is done in public, there’s this disassociation from reality,” he said during a podcast interview, as transcribed by the Daily Star.

“You have to disassociate yourself from reality to do that because you can’t just be in the moment because you that wouldn’t make a good scene. The performance is not for you, or for the person you’re doing it with. It’s for the camera.”

Broome says his journey started innocently enough. He was approached about making a film, and thought it would be a one-time experience. Little did he know, the industry would destroy his personal life… or so he says.

“I thought ‘well what’s the worst that could happen? I’m going to have sex with this girl I’m going to get paid for it – no one’s going to know.'”

Considering that most adult films are distributed for public consumption, Broome was deeply mistaken. Over time, he says his personal boundaries became blurred and his values became “distorted.”

“The further you go down the rabbit hole of doing those things, the more you leave yourself open to being willing to do things that you said you would never do,” he said.

Over time, Broome says he became increasingly pressured to star in a gay adult film, because “good-looking straight performers” having intercourse with other men apparently “sells like crazy.”

But yet, Broome alleges it can also ruin careers.

“If a guy had done a gay porn scene 10 years years ago and if they tried to get into the straight side of things, most of the girls wouldn’t work with them,” he said.

He claims the vast majority of gay porn stars aren’t even attracted to men. Instead, they use chemical enhancers to achieve arousal.

For Broome, starring in gay porn represented his nadir, though it was intentional. He says he was looking to escape the industry, and making himself toxic was one way to move on.

“I thought ‘Well if I do a gay scene then I won’t be able to do what I’m doing now, so I will cut myself off from everyone and everything… because I couldn’t go back,” he offered.

While Broome expected to experience professional backlash from his gay forays, it was worse than he could’ve imagined. He claims he lost all of his friends in the industry and even considered self-harm.

Lost and dejected, he says arrived at his final decision to leave the business when he was cashing a check in 2013. He usually deposited his checks in an ATM, but this time, he decided to approach a teller. Broome told the Christian Post he wrote something “antagonistic” and “perverse” in the “memo” space, which led to a life-changing reaction.

Rather than respond with judgment, the teller allegedly said, “Joshua, are you OK?”

“In the porn industry, you don’t go by your real name,” he said. “I’d isolated myself from family and anyone who truly knew me to the extent that I hadn’t even heard my name in over a year. So when I heard my name, it essentially shattered the plausible reality that I’d created based on guilt and shame.”

Two years later, Broome says he gave his life to Jesus on Easter Sunday, and started studying at Liberty University in 2018. He married his wife, Hope, in 2016. They have three children.

“To accept his love is to die to yourself because Jesus died for you, and a reasonable response is for you to die for him,” he told the website Church Leaders.

While we applaud anybody’s efforts to improve their lives, we could do without Broome’s shaming, and apparent homophobia. He’s also released a podcast, Unmentionable: The Story of the Prodigal Pornstar.

On Sunday, Broome shared an Easter message on Instagram, providing his so-called “Christian perspective” about Transgender Day of Visibility coinciding with Easter Sunday.

“To my Christian friends who are outraged that this is being discussed, rightly so, if the thing that frustrates you, the righteous anger that is boiling up within you, is about people not worrying about what’s most important,” he said.

“We shouldn’t be surprised by the world doing things the world does. That’s not a new tactic. But here’s the most important thing that you will hear today…there’s more people that do not know Jesus on social media than there are walking into churches.”

If you can make sense of that, we’ve got an autobiography and podcast to sell you!

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