Porn in the USA: Conservatives Are Biggest Consumers – ABC News

"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," said Benjamin Edelman, whose new research shows that when it comes to online porn, conservatives consume more porn than liberals. Using "roughly two years of credit card data from 2006 to 2008 that included a purchase date and each customer's postal code," he trolled the data, controlling for differences in broadband Internet access and population, and found that despite stark differences in stated conservative and liberal values, online porn consumption differed very little between the highest and lowest consumers.

However, 8 of the top 10 highest porn consuming States gave their electoral votes to McCain in 2008, while 6 of the lowest gave theirs to Obama. Moreover, residents of 27 states banning gay marriage boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't. Are we getting it yet? "If you're told you can't have this, then you want it more," Edelman says.

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Indonesia Botches Porn Blockade, Shuts Down Regular Sites – XBIZ.com

Back in 2008, to the cries of "Thank you, God!" Indonesian parliament members passed a draconian anti-pornography law. Last month, they announced their (now legal) intentions of blocking all online pornography during the holy month of Ramadan, when the religious are expected to refrain from any immoral acts, including viewing porn. (Only during that one month, I wonder?)

Unsurprisingly, the country-wide filter ran into a snag as 30 websites, including news portals, were also blocked—unintentionally, according to Indonesian Information Minister's spokesman Gatot Dewa Broto. "The speed of the operation was so huge, we hit the wrong ones," he explained, but touted that the operation had successfully shut down 80% of its intended target. The blockade is being implemented with the cooperation of the country's 300 major Internet service providers.

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Mike Verdugo Fired for Gay Porn Role? Or for Complaining About Harassment by Hollywood PD? – Broward Palm Beach News – The Juice

A police officer in Broward County, Florida, is facing revocation of his officers' license for a 15 minute appearance in a gay porn flick 14 years ago. Mike Verdugo, an officer with over 10 years of service on the force, was one of the first openly gay officers in the area. But when he came out of the closet in 2007, "suddenly everything changed," Verdugo says. He faced discrimination and even filed a complaint. Shortly thereafter, he was demoted. But the story doesn't end there.

After a reality-TV show appearance, a fan recognized him from the long-forgotten porn scene and posted a clip online. Now city officials want him off the force, despite a previous sentencing by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) of a year probation and "ethics" training, discipline for omitting the one-off porn role on his original job application years ago. Hm…witch hunt, anybody?

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UPDATE: Picking up this story, SexAndThe405 notes that AVN, an adult entertainment conference, occurred just last weekend, in the same city where Verdugo was being demonized. Coincidence? Maybe not…. But there’s good news, too. As reported by South Florida Gay News, “The State of Florida Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission has upheld the Settlement Agreement in the case of Mike Verdugo.” This means he is “eligible to be hired by any other department if he so chooses,” one of Verdugo’s lawyers said.

Porn Star Aurora Snow Goes from Barely Legal to MILF – The Daily Beast

There are some massive, gaping, dirty fucking assholes in the porn industry—and no, I'm not talking about the models' bodies. I'm talking about the greedy scumbags who routinely display unwarranted sexism, ageism, and any number of other "isms" you can shake a stick at (and they do). That's why Aurora Snow's story, retold in her own words, is such a worthwhile read.

"Ten years ago, I was one of adult film’s hottest stars. Now I’m 28—and dismissed by directors as over the hill. How did I go from 'barely legal' to 'older woman' so fast?" she asks. The answer? She says "producers would read my age on paper and pigeon-hole me without even bothering to see what I looked like." But rather than cry foul, Snow is embracing new opportunities: "I have been pleased to discover that thanks to the Internet, what might be bad for the industry is good for me." Now she's studying business, being approached for mainstream roles, and wants to become a lawyer. She says porn helped her find her goals.

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AVN – All Charges Dismissed Against Stagliano and Companies

In the case of John "Buttman" Stagliano vs. The United States of America, all 7 8 counts of obscenity charged against Stagliano (a pornographer, husband, and father) have been dismissed under Rule 29 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Judge Richard J. Leon described the prosecution's evidence as "woefully inadequate" after the federal government's star witness made a liar out of prosecutor Pamela Satterfield, the judge, or himself.

Plainly, this means the government never met the burden of proof, they never had a case, and they wasted American taxpayer's money on a 2-year investigation and a trial catering to misguided anti-porn activists' wet dreams. But if you think they'll stop their crusade, remember they're still getting bills passed through the back door. (Pun intended.)

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Closed Court, Miller Time, and Joey Silvera’s Solidarity – Reason Magazine

An important trial is pitting a politically outspoken pornographer, John Stagliano, against a gauntlet of questionable legal ethics. "The case against Stagliano concerns the selling of movies performed by consenting adults to entertain adult DVD viewers who have chosen to watch these films," Richard Abowitz reports. Using taxpayer money to get obscenity convictions for consensual erotic labor is bad enough, but Judge Richard Leon "is putting great effort into limiting public access to how justice is being administered in this case. […T]he strategic placement of monitors outside public sightlines reeks of the abandonment of the presumption of innocence." The case is being prosecuted with familiar anti-porn activist rhetoric. If Stagliano's relatively tame productions can earn years in prison, don't think you're safe from such anti-porn zealots.

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‘Touchdown Jesus’ Burns to Ground As Porn Shop Goes Unscathed

A six-story tall statue of Jesus in Ohio was struck by lightning and burst into fire, damaging a nearby Church but leaving a nearby porn shop unscathed. "Church founder and former horse trader Lawrence Bishop and his wife paid $250,000 for the statue in an attempt to help people," Dana Chivvis wrote. Maybe the 250 grand would have been more helpful?

Bigoted religious zealots are so often so quick to declare signs of God, from Pat Robinson's claim that Hurricane Katrina was divine retribution for legalizing abortion to Iranian clerics who say immodest dress cause earthquakes, that I, for one, would love to see them explain this one! Oh, wait, I already know: "A similar incident in 2007 ripped the arm and hand off a Jesus statue at a shrine in Colorado. The nuns at the shrine said the bolt was a freak act of nature and warned people from gleaning any religious significance from it."

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‘.xxx’ Ruling Has Far-Reaching Implications for the Internet | TechNewsDaily

On Friday, "The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international corporation that regulates domain names like .com and .net, said…it will reverse a previous decision and allow .xxx addresses for adult entertainment web sites," Stuart Fox reports. Interestingly, the decision troubled both pornographers and political conservatives, and could have "implications beyond just the porn industry…that are sure to change the nature of the Internet in the coming years."

Domain registrar company ICM Registry has lobbied for creation of .xxx for over 10 years. Stuart Lawley, president of ICM Registry "thinks a .xxx TLD will help consumers find safe adult entertainment and make it easier for parents to shield children from the same content." But adult entertainment industry spokespeople fear it's a "prelude to legislative action" that will "ghettoize" them and enforce Internet blue-law style censorship. Conservatives fear it will give children easier access to porn.

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Update: Citing Mr. Lawley as their source, The New York Times reports that, “Each domain registration will cost $60 a year, with $10 going to a nonprofit organization promoting ‘responsible business practices’ for the industry.” While ICM Registry has already seen over 100,000 pre-registrations for .xxx domains and expects at least 500,000 by the time they officially open for business, Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, “said many of those were likely to be ‘defensive’ registrations, from businesses that wanted to prevent their names from being hijacked.”

The Both/And of the Porn Wars | Charlie Glickman

Once again, Charlie Glickman offers a well-thought out summation surrounding the current debates over pornography issues, sexuality and the Internet. This time he speaks to the recent arguments between proporn and antiporn contingents, and between different factions of proporn folks. He points out that not all people nor all porn were in fact created equal, and it's true that some porn sometimes has a negative affect on some people—and some peoples' experiences with porn have been exclusively negative and even harmful. Glickman reminds us, however, that that being the case doesn't mean that all porn is always bad for all people, and urges people on both sides to consider that this might be one of those "both/and" issues. He also reminds us, once again, that neither hurling vicious and untrue accusations, fighting amongst yourselves, or attempting to engage with out room in your head for new ideas are helping anything either way. Right. Got it. Thanks!

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On Being Anti Anti-Porn | Sex In The Public Square

At a press event on Tuesday, anti-porn activists Dr. Gail Dines and others called on Congress to use obscenity laws to curb the proliferation and prevalence of porn. "We are now in the midst of a massive social experiment, as no other generation has been so bombarded with so much pornography," Dines said, but assistant professor of sociology Elizabeth Wood says the anti-porn movement's drum-banging is nothing other than an "overblown metaphor."

Wood challenges Dines' statement with simple logic, and urges activists to counter moral panic with real information. "Rates of HPV and of Herpes are high across the US and are rampant even among those with no connection to the porn industry. And we are not in the midst of a great social experiment. Porn is not new. Access to porn is not new. […] If this were really akin to an experiment we'd have to hold everything constant except the porn, and that's obviously impossible." She says a War on Porn will be as (in)effective as the War on Drugs.

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