Franklin Valentine Goodridge Jr. will tell you he was a bad kid. A kid who hung out with the wrong crowd. Who made life rough for his single mother in Springfield, Mass. He will tell you he smoked pot and took LSD as a teen-ager in Virginia Beach, Va. That he was convicted there in 1989 for stealing a can of ravioli, a box of Cocoa Krispies and a gold necklace, among other things, from a friend's house.
He will tell you these things because that Franklin Goodridge Jr., he says, was a different guy. The Franklin Goodridge who now lives and works and crusades to save men's souls in Ellicott City will tell you because he wants you to know one thing about him: He has nothing more to hide.
Not even -- or perhaps especially -- the fact that for more than half his 30 years, Goodridge was what he now calls a pornography addict: a man with a consuming obsession with the explicit sex depicted in X-rated videos and hard-core magazines. A carnal obsession that developed when he was a boy and outlived his renunciation of drugs and crime and even his conversion experience as a born-again Christian.
Even for a man who says he has nothing to hide, it's a risky confession. Some men might joke about such an obsession with a co-worker, a friend, maybe even their wives, but few speak plainly about it. By its nature it's embarrassing, something polite society considers tawdry and repugnant.
But Franklin Goodridge Jr. has not just admitted his problem. He has made it public -- stand-in-the-street-and-shout-about-it public. He has become convinced, maybe even obsessed, with the notion that sharing his secret, and his disavowal of it, will make a difference in other lives. He will tell you that if you approach him at his regular post outside the Pack Shack, an adult video and magazine store less than a mile from his apartment.
The new Franklin Goodridge is the leader of a group he founded called Men Against Pornography. He and members of the group demonstrate almost daily on a grassy median across a service road next to the Pack Shack on U.S. 40. He has healed himself, Goodridge will tell you, and now he wants to heal others.
"I know what these men are going through," Goodridge says, referring to the guys who walk in and out of the store with baseball caps pulled low over their faces and eyes trained on their feet.
"Porn is poison, and it destroys the total man," he says. "I want to help them."
