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Steven Hirsch, Porn Producer, Tells Republicans To 'Catch Up... Sex Is Everywhere'


Porn producer Steven Hirsch warned Republicans Thursday to back off after the GOP added a call for more "vigorous" enforcement of pornography to its platform.

By Kathleen Miles
Posted: 08/31/2012 1:21 pm Updated: 08/31/2012 2:38 pm

Last week, Republicans were warned not to isolate women voters. This week, they're being warned not to anger porn-watching voters. Especially because Republicans reportedly watch more porn than Democrats.

Eight of the top ten porn-watching states voted Republican [ http://people.hbs.edu/bedelman/papers/redlightstates.pdf ] in the last presidential election, according to Harvard researcher Ben Edelman. That stat was quoted by Steven Hirsch, co-chaiman of one of the largest porn franchises, Vivid Entertainment, as he warned the GOP Thursday to back off [ http://vivid.com/news/2012-08-30/adult-entertainment-chief-steven-hirsch-cautions-gop-on-over-zealous-enforcement-of-existing-pornography-laws/ ].

This week in Tampa, Republicans added to their platform a call for more "vigorous" enforcement of pornography and obscenity laws [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/27/gop-anti-porn-plank-platform_n_1833840.html ]. Current federal obscenity law prohibits hardcore pornography on the Internet, hotel/motel TV, cable/satellite TV and in retail shops--which is pretty much everywhere you can get it. However, enforcement is lax because it has hard to determine which porn qualifies as "obscene," and the porn industry has usually won such battles in court, Hirsch pointed out.

The big-time producer wrote on Vivid's web site that Republicans "need to catch up with what's happening in America and the world today," he said. "Books like '50 Shades of Grey,' dozens of popular cable TV shows and the web have made the public more comfortable with portrayals of sex than they ever have been before... Sex is everywhere."

Which is exactly what Patrick Trueman, president of the conservative organization Morality in Media, is afraid of. "It's the Viagra problem for guys in their 20s [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/27/gop-anti-porn-plank-platform_n_1833840.html ]," Trueman said to HuffPost. He claims young men are now spending "10 to 12 years looking at porn on the Internet and masturbating to it, so when they are getting married, they are dysfunctional sexually because their brain maps are changed."

In response to Hirsch's statement to the GOP, Trueman sent the following to Morality in Media supporters Thursday: "Neither Republicans nor Democrats should be taking advice from a man whose business is sexually exploiting young girls for profit [ http://news.avn.com/articles/Trueman-Weighs-in-on-Hirsch-s-Recommendations-to-GOP-Leaders-486435.html ]" and who produced "such hardcore porn films as 'Adventures in Babysitting' and 'Savanna's Anal Gang Bang,'" AVN reports.

Regarding girls who watch porn, he said that they are "several times more likely to engage in group sex." And, also, "56% of divorces now cite Internet pornography as a factor in the breakup," he added.

What do the presidential candidates have to say on this "hot" topic? Mitt Romney said in 2007 that he would make sure every new computer is sold with a porn-blocking filter [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/27/gop-anti-porn-plank-platform_n_1833840.html ] that parents can use to make sure their kids aren't seeing anything X-rated. In his live chat Wednesday on Reddit, President Barack Obama advocated for Internet freedom but did not comment on porn [ http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/187941/obama-joins-gops-call-for-internet-freedom-skips-the-part-about-waging-war-on-porn/ ].

Hirsch's concluding thoughts on the War on Porn? As long as it's not child pornography, we shouldn't be worrying about it. "We have so many more important issues in front of us today than worrying about whether someone is breaking laws that probably should never have been written in the first place," he wrote.

Hirsch is the same producer who, after Prince Henry's naked incident in Las Vegas this month, offered the royal $10 million to star in a porn film [ http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/porn-movie-producer-offers-prince-harry-10-million-letter-star-adult-film-article-1.1144485 ] called "The Trouble with Harry." He has also been an outspoken critic of Los Angeles City's recent law requiring porn actors to wear condoms on set [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/condoms-in-porn-now-required_n_1320948.html ].

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Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/31/steven-hirsch-porn-producer-republicans_n_1845428.html [with video "Tampa Strippers Gear Up For Republican Convention" embedded, and comments]

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further in particular to "GOP Anti-Porn Plank Added To Draft Platform By Republican Committee" (linked in the above), the 29th item (a bit under two-thirds of the way down) in the post to which this is a reply, and the related posts linked following it -- and also to the beard/hair-cutting/eating stuff (linked) following that (and to all the other great fundie follies stuff [linked] bracketing [and as also found in] the inseparably woven together content of the main Willard and the Twerp/wingbutt madness and bullshit segment of that post, which begins with its sixth item, "The Republican National Convention: Where Social Darwinism Meets Theocracy" and continues through to the aforementioned "GOP Anti-Porn Plank Added To Draft Platform By Republican Committee")