America's real enemy: hotel porn!

Some people have no freakin' lives. From Newsmax:

Pornographic movies now seem nearly as pervasive in America's hotel rooms as tiny shampoo bottles, and the lodging industry shows little concern as conservative activists rev up a protest campaign aimed at triggering a federal crackdown.

A coalition of 13 conservative groups — including the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America — took out full-page ads in some editions of USA Today earlier this month urging the Justice Department and FBI to investigate whether some of the pay-per-view movies widely available in hotels violate federal and state obscenity laws.
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"These are places that you take your family — these are respectable institutions," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. "Anything that brings porn into the mainstream is a concern. It just desensitizes people."

Precise statistics on in-room adult entertainment are hard to come by. By some estimates, adult movies are available in roughly 40 percent of the nation's hotels, representing more than 1.5 million rooms. Industry analysts suggest that these adult offerings generate 60 to 80 percent of total in-room entertainment revenue — several hundred million dollars a year.
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Both Kathy Shepard of Hilton and Roger Conner of Marriott said the bulk of their hotels are operated by franchise-holders who make their own decisions about in-room programming. They made clear, however, that their companies consider adult movies to be an acceptable option because they can be ignored or blocked out by guests not wishing to view them.

"Really ultraconservative groups try to target the hotels in their zest to eliminate porn," Shepard said. "In their zest to have their personal morals prevail, they're eliminating choice for others."

Conner said none of the programing offered by Marriott is illegal, and he depicted adult movies as a standard part of today's hotel business.

"In-room movies are a revenue stream," he said. "This is a business matter."

Geez, what is it about the ultra-conservatives that make them obsess about people's sexual proclivities? To me, this has nothing to do with whether or not adult movies have any redeeming value. This is much simpler than that: porn is, for better or worse, a legal product (provided consenting adults are involved, of course) that hotel patrons (as well as the general public) can watch or ignore at their own choosing, and that hotel owners can choose to carry or not carry. When I go to hotels, I choose not to watch any PPV movies, especially adult movies. If the couple in the room next to me wants to watch it, it's no skin off my back.

Is adult entertainment a scourge of society, lacking in values and morals? Sure. However, like abortion, it is legal whether anyone likes it or not. Can porn be addictive? Absolutely! But so can cigarettes and alcohol, and I don't see huge efforts to outright ban those legal activities.

While I have no problem with family values groups letting people know what hotels do not carry adult movies, I have a huge problem with them trying to force all hotels to adhere to their narrow views. As I've stated before, we live in a country where people are free to damn their souls to Hell, if they wish.