Meet the Parent

Like the other parents in ClassKC, Motley is blunt when it comes to the books that ClassKC deems too vulgar, too sexual or too violent.

"Most of it's bad literature," he says.

ClassKC members take offense at being labeled book banners. They argue that they're not banning any books; they just want them out of classrooms. They want more say in their children's education.

In August 2005, ClassKC claimed a victory when Blue Valley de-listed Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and Walter Dean Myers' Fallen Angels.

Verneda Edwards, Blue Valley's director of curriculum and instruction, downplays ClassKC's role in the district's decision to drop the books; she says they no longer fit the curriculum.

Blue Valley labors to inform parents about book content, sending home a letter at the beginning of the school year outlining the books that students will be assigned, Edwards says. Blue Valley also maintains a Web site that summarizes each book; recaps any profanity, sexual content or violence in a movie-rating-style warning; and explains each book's purpose in the curriculum.

Parents who don't approve of a book can request that their children read a different title, Edwards says. They also can pull their children from the class.

ClassKC members say these remedies only single out their children, isolating them from classrooms. They say other kids tease their children.

So, rather than having their children sit out a particular lesson when they object to a specific book, parents are trying to change the curriculum for everyone else's kids.

To this effort, Motley brings plenty of firsthand experience with real pornography — and a preacher's passion for spreading his message.

The sound of the digital handshake was foreplay for Gregg Motley. The dialing of the phone, the faxlike sound and then the soothing static crash as his computer connected to the Internet turned Motley on.

The urges started when he was 11. A friend showed Motley his brother's secret stash of porn magazines, and Motley was hooked. A ravenous quest began. He searched for books, magazines and videos. In moments of desperation, he settled for Sears catalogs and National Geographic back issues.

By the time Motley graduated from high school, he was, he says, "a full-blown pornography addict."

From all outward appearances, he led a normal — if self-conscious — life. His description of the moment he first saw the woman he would marry sounds like the opening of a bodice ripper.

He's a junior at Greenville College in Illinois. A two-sport athlete — soccer and baseball — he has just run 10 miles for soccer practice. He's soaking his shoulder-length black hair with cold water from the spigot between the soccer and hockey fields. Motley thinks he looks good without a shirt so, wearing only a pair of shorts, he stands up from the spigot and flips back his hair. Motley sees two women staring at him.

South Dakota farm girl Betty Seamen is unimpressed. She shoots him a you-are-so-disgusting look. He returns the glare. But later in the day —after he has showered — Motley sees her again. He's intrigued. They hit it off.

Motley and Seamen married on December 28, 1977, during his senior year. After Betty graduated, the couple settled in Overland Park.

But Motley was falling deeper into his addiction. "Someone is definitely addicted if they want to stop but can't," Motley explains.

The pictures that had titillated him before weren't satisfying him anymore. He needed a new turn-on. "I got into fetish stuff," Motley tells the Pitch. He won't talk specifics, fearing that others will be tempted to look and see.

"I know how men's minds work," Motley says. "If I mention a particular fetish, somebody reads that, they'll go, 'I wonder what that looks like.'"

Despite his marriage, Motley says, his sex life "ended up tied up in two-dimensional images and videos and different fetishes."

Meanwhile, he and Betty had four kids — Allison, now 24; Paige, 21; Katie, 19; and Ben, 16.

Motley hid in the shadows of his hypocrisy. He was a churchgoing man who taught Sunday school. But he couldn't escape the come-hither gazes of the women in the pictures. The women all wanted him. They didn't care about his receding hairline. They didn't care how smart he was.

"It's false intimacy," Motley says. "It's not real. It never satisfies. It never compares with the intimacy that God wanted us to have with one another."

God intervened on August 10, 1986. Motley claims that he met God in a rented warehouse in Anaheim, California. He and Betty, on vacation, stopped by John Wimber's Anaheim Vineyard for Sunday service. Wimber — who claimed to be a healer — stripped away the rigidity of religion. His services were no-frills. There were no pews, just rows and rows of chairs. Wimber kept it casual, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and sandals.

The Motleys showed up a half-hour early and sat in the second row. Wimber's appearance turned them off. So did his band, which looked like the Grateful Dead.