July 16, 2007 | 9:51 am

Porn star to priest

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Remember that story I wrote last month about the born-again porn star? Well, if the report in Sunday’s New York Times is accurate—and there is reason to believe it isn’t—the adult star formerly known as Rod Fontana is about to take that conversion a step further.

After turning his life over to Jesus earlier this year, Ronald Boyer is considering turning his nascent ministry, which reminds me of this story, into a path to the priesthood, the NYT reports.

From his work in the rented villas of the San Fernando Valley, where hard-core sex films are shot, he has moved just a short distance west, to the Church of the Epiphany, which is guiding his transformation from pornography star to preacher.

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Mr. Boyer’s embryonic ministry, devoted to bringing spiritual comfort to those marginalized by the sex industry, is driven by his deep faith and by a medical crisis that threatened the life of his child. But it is a work in progress, fraught with the contradictions and internal struggles of a man leaving behind a livelihood that was central to his identity.

He has tired of performing in sex movies, but even now doesn’t condemn it. “Not one time did Jesus refer to pornography, or homosexuality,” he observed on the Internet show, which he began as a co-host in May. “Jesus could have commented. He didn’t.”

But Boyer’s pastor, who was not contacted by the NYT, says the story is full of holes.

  “That’s wrong on so many levels,” Mitchel told epiScope. “I’m his pastor, so of course I’m guiding him in that spiritual sense. But no one at Epiphany knows—or knew—about his background, except some key people on the staff. And no one is training him for ordained ministry at any level.”

Calling a key figure like the born-again pornographer’s pastor seems like journalism 101. Complaints about the accuracy of this NYT reporter’s research are not uncommon.

(Hat-tip: LAObserved)