Porn Is Worse Than Drugs? Male Stripper turns Catholic and Tells All with Jim O'Day
Episode 1 of 3 of a Special Series on Men Answering the Heroic Call
Jim O’Day’s unlikely path from male stripper to fighting pornography’s grip on families
“I started stripping in New York nightclubs at the age of 18,” he says matter-of-factly. “And did that for a number of years through college.”
Nothing followed feels casual. O’Day is now the executive director of Integrity Restored, a Catholic ministry focused on protecting individuals and families from the harms of pornography. The distance between those two worlds—nightclub stages and parish sanctuaries—forms the spine of his story.
And, he insists, it makes sense only if you believe in grace.
“That’s What It Means to Be a Man”
A father wound, media models, and a performance version of masculinity
O’Day grew up in New York City. His parents divorced when he was between two and three years old. His father moved to California. He saw him once a year for two days.
“I grew up without a dad,” O’Day recalls. “So I took my vision of manhood from media, movies, sports celebrities, rock stars, and the wise guys in the neighborhood.”
If he could drink more, fight harder, and “be with more girls than the next guy,” he says, “that meant I was a real man.”
While working as a doorman at a nightclub during high school and college, he pitched an idea to the owner: host an all-male review to draw women in early and charge men later.
“Where do I get the guys who are going to dance?” the owner asked.
“And of course,” O’Day says, “Jimmy goes.”
At 18, he was on stage. “When I tell you I thought it was the dream job,” he says, “these women are throwing themselves at me and giving me money. And I thought it was great.”
Looking back, he describes it as performance—an exaggerated masculinity fueled by applause.
A pregnancy scare and the voice he now calls the Holy Spirit
On his 21st birthday, his girlfriend told him she might be pregnant.
He called his father for advice. The response: “How much?”—a question about paying for an abortion. A family friend echoed the same suggestion.
“It just didn’t sit right,” O’Day says. “I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the Holy Spirit. That was God talking to me, touching me.”
He chose differently. Thirty-eight years later, he and Kim remain married. They have two grown children and twin grandsons.
“He reached out and spoke to me in this gentle way,” O’Day says of God. “And what an incredible blessing.”
“You’re Not a Good Father”
Years later, now a vice president of sales and marketing for a defense contractor, O’Day went out to celebrate a major Navy contract win with one of the company’s owners.
In the middle of dinner, the man interrupted the celebration.
“Jimmy, the Lord wants me to tell you something.”
O’Day remembers bristling. The owner delivered three sentences:
“You’re not a good husband. You’re not a good father. And you’re certainly not a good Catholic.”
“I guarantee you at that moment I said, ‘Why are you ruining this good time?’” O’Day recalls.
They argued. The man refused to escalate. He repeated calmly: “I’m not accusing you. I just want you to go back and think about it.”
That night in his hotel room, O’Day pulled a Gideon Bible from the drawer for the first time since high school. He opened randomly, landing in the Letter to the Romans.
“I end up at the side of that bed on my knees sobbing like a baby,” he says. “I didn’t know what happened. But I knew he was right.”
Conversion, RCIA, and discovering God as Father
He returned home on fire.
“I said to Kim, ‘Everything has to change. I gotta go back to church. I gotta go to confession. We gotta get married in the Church.’”
His wife stared at the ceiling fan and asked, “Are you on drugs?”
Together, they entered RCIA. Though O’Day was a cradle Catholic—Catholic schools from grammar through college—he says, “I didn’t know anything about the faith.”
RCIA opened his eyes. The confrontation opened his heart.
Yet one relationship remained difficult: God as Father.
“I got Jesus. I understood him. I could even understand the Holy Spirit,” O’Day says. “The one I couldn’t get was God the Father. I couldn’t. Because I had no human visualization of what that was.”
Healing came gradually, through watching his own father become a devoted grandfather. “That started to heal our relationship,” he says. “And then I could start to understand this creator, this father who loved me.”
A deli named Trinity—and losing everything
After a pilgrimage to Medjugorje, O’Day felt called to step away from constant travel and buy a small restaurant near his home. He named it Trinity New York Deli—an homage to God and his roots.
It flourished at first. Clergy gathered weekly. A local radio station aired clips from question-and-answer sessions.
Then the state closed the road in front of the deli to replace water and sewer lines. With no foot traffic, business collapsed.
“I kept paying my employees,” O’Day says. “If I could just keep the doors open till the construction is done, we’ll be fine.”
It was not fine. He took out a second mortgage. He drained savings. Eventually, he lost the business, the house, the cars—everything.
“I was so angry with God,” he admits. “I was convinced this is what God told me to do. And now everything’s taken away.”
The Mask Comes Off
During that season, O’Day had been speaking at men’s gatherings about faith and conversion. A priest repeatedly urged him to consider nonprofit work.
“You couldn’t afford me,” O’Day had joked.
After the financial collapse, he says, “I was very affordable.”
He entered Catholic nonprofit ministry, eventually joining the board of a fledgling organization called Integrity Restored. Founded by Dr. Peter Kleponis and others, the ministry focused on addressing pornography’s impact.
O’Day knew the struggle personally. In his traveling years, hotel room pornography had become routine.
“In my mind, I wasn’t cheating on my wife,” he says.
Integrity Restored later asked him to serve as executive director. A decade on, he leads efforts to train priests, support spouses experiencing betrayal trauma, and educate families.
Reflecting on a recent conversation with a successful executive who lost his job, O’Day offers what he learned the hard way:
“That was your mask,” he told the man. “That’s the mask you put on to the world… That’s not who you are. Who you are is a son of a loving Father who has a new plan for you.”
“Much worse than drugs and alcoholism”
O’Day describes pornography as more pervasive—and in some ways more insidious—than substance abuse.
“It’s so rampant and no one’s talking about it,” he says.
Integrity Restored now operates globally, training clergy to address pornography in confession and spiritual direction and equipping parents to protect children in a digital age.
The fight, he says, is spiritual and deeply personal.
“I’m still a work in progress,” O’Day admits. “I still want all that stuff. Believe me.”
Yet the identity he once built on applause and income has been replaced by something steadier.
“Prove to him that he is a beloved son,” O’Day says, describing what he believes God has done in his life.
From nightclub lights to kneeling beside a hotel bed with a Gideon Bible, the through-line of his story remains that quiet inner nudge—the voice that “just didn’t sit right.”
For O’Day, that voice marked the beginning of a battle—and the discovery of who he was all along.