Friday, November 03, 2006

Continuing with family values--Republican Party receives political contributions from gay porn movie producer

The scandal situation with the Republican Party is just going crazy. I found this story through Americablog, where the original source is from Brian Ross at ABC News--The Blotter:

Despite running an attack ad accusing a Democratic senatorial candidate of accepting money from "porn movie producers," the Republican National Committee itself has accepted several donations over the past few years from the president of a large pornographic movie distribution company.

Marina Pacific Distributors calls itself "the leader in adult video distribution." Included in the movies for sale on their Web site are videos made by "Active Duty Productions." Active Duty, as their name suggests, has cast active duty soldiers in some of their films but not without serious consequences for the soldiers.

[....]

The president of Marina Pacific, Nicholas Boyias, has personally contributed to the Republican party several times over the last few years, six times to the Republican National Committee. The donations range from $200 to $500 and total around $2,000, according to a search of federal election records.

The RNC would not comment on the donations from Boyias or from the porn industry in general.


A Marina Pacific spokesman said Boyias is a moderate Republican who supports candidates and causes on both sides of the aisle, though no contributions to Democrats were found in a search of federal election records. The company continues to sell Active Duty's films, which include "Fire in the Hole," "Platoon Party" and "Thrill Sergeant."

First, the attack ad that ABC News is referring to is the RNC's add attacking Harold Ford of not only accepting contributions from porn movies, but also suggesting that Ford had sex with white bimbo women at "Playboy parties." It is one of the nastiest political ads that the Republican Party has aired for this campaign. Second, it is not surprising that the Republican Party is accepting contributions from gay porn movie producers. According to this ABC News story, the porn industry generates "about $12.6 billion in 2005 and estimates that more than $2.5 billion of that was from the Internet alone." A CBS News 60 Minutes report in 2004 estimated that the porn industry was taking in $10 billion a year --which was as much as Americans spend on "attending professional sporting events, buying music or going out to the movies." So porn is a Big Business industry, and it is not surprising that the top businessmen in porn will lobby the political parties for their own business interest. But what I do find surprising is how the Republican Party is accepting contributions from the porn industry, while at the same time attacking Democratic senate candidate Harold Ford for accepting contributions from porn movie producers. This is pure hypocrisy.

Of course, it gets better. According to the National Republican Party Platform, as found on the GOP website:

The Republican Party shares the position of the United States Supreme Court in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), that obscene material is “unprotected by the first amendment” (413 U.S. at 23) and that “to equate the free and robust exchange of ideas and political debate with commercial exploitation of obscene material demeans the grand conception of the first amendment and its high purposes in the historic struggle for freedom.” Miller, 413 U.S. at 34. We therefore support vigorous prosecution of obscene material by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In other words, the Republicans want to outlaw pornography. Now if the Republicans want to outlaw pornography, as they've written in their own party platform, then why are they accepting political campaign contributions from gay, pornographic movie producers?

Talk about the GOP hypocrisy here.

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