YNOT – Oh, the irony … or the unmitigated gall, depending upon one’s viewpoint.

Two of the largest and most vitriolic anti-porn fundamentalist groups have fallen on hard times, forcing them to cut back staff and reduce other overhead in desperate bids to stay afloat and continue “God’s work.” Both are begging for emergency donations.

Focus on the Family, which is rabidly anti-gay in addition to being over-the-top in favor of the death penalty for all pornographers, recently cut 49 jobs, according to the Denver Post. Blaming declining donations, the group now employs less than half the staff it employed in 2002: 650 today, down from 1,400.

“Long ago I suppose there was a time when we had fat to trim, but we’ve moved through that to muscle, sinew, bone — and now we’re scraping out marrow,” FOF Vice President Gary Schneeberger told the Post.

The Family Research Council, too, has fallen victim to a combination of global recession and growing public tolerance of … well, almost everything. A recent plea indicates that without an immediate uptick in donations, FRC may have to scale back its anti-anything-even-remotely-risqué rhetoric.

“Our staff of 65 dedicated policy experts, pro-family advocates and grassroots mobilizers labor long and hard every day,” FRC President Tony Perkins wrote in a fundraising letter. “Without adequate funding, we do less, say less and accomplish less.”

The wages of sin may be death, but apparently the wages of sanctimony aren’t all that seductive either.