April 26 1999

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When Steve Lane talks about pornography, he speaks from experience, both as a producer of smut and as a born-again Christian.

Lane, 32, and his brother Mike, 36, each converted last year after watching televangelist James Robison. The two had been publishing a "First-Amendment newspaper" and glossy tourism magazines in the Florida panhandle. After both publications defended and promoted pornographic businesses, the two were about to hit the market with their first porn magazine. Steve Lane says they had printed 30,000 copies last fall, which were sitting in a warehouse awaiting a national sales contract.

"When we got that national contract, it was everything we ever dreamed of," Steve Lane recalls. "All we had to do was sign it and ship the magazines off for distribution. We got saved, and what we have now is worth a lot more than money."

The brothers had an unusual background prior to ending up in the pornography business, Lane says. "Our stepfather was a Baptist minister. Our mother was a gospel song writer. We were two kids who grew up in church," he says.

Yet that stepfather "was the first person who exposed us to pornography. We found his magazines," Lane says. "There are so many dads that say, 'I buy Playboy to read the articles.' If you are a family that carries pornography in your house, those magazines make it eventually into the hands of your children."

After their conversions, the Lanes contacted Robison at his nondenominational Life Outreach International in Fort Worth. "We did two television shows with Robison," Steve Lane says. "In two days, 10,000 people called for help, and about 40 percent were Christians in bondage to pornography."

Lane says the brothers, who relocated to Tupelo, Mississippi, and are working ...