Newest Morality in Media Website Defames Adult Industry

JESUSLAND—Morality in Media unveiled its latest brainchild today: A website titled "Pornography + Sex Trafficking," which purports to show that pretty much everyone who makes adult content is either a sex trafficker, a victim of sex trafficking, or a "john" taking advantage of it all. And who's their go-to source for much of it? The woman whose lies about the adult industry have been so profound that even AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which once featured her at their press conferences, cut her loose: Shelley Lubben, founder of the scam-ridden Pink Cross Foundation and "star" of a series of videos produced by Michael Whiteacre titled "The Devil and Shelley Lubben." (Episodes of that series and similar videos can be found here, here, here, here, here, here and here.) And rest assured, the lies come quickly and furiously. For instance, at the bottom of the home page is a video apparently made by former(?) adult star Kacey Jordan, who's remembered not so much for her video output as for her splashed-across-the-headlines dalliance with Hollywood star Charlie Sheen. In the video, which is described as "a heartbreaking video of Kacey Jordan attempting suicide on YouTube," Kasey's first words are, "Hi. Okay, so, today I broke up with my boyfriend; I had been kind of a fuck-up before that, so we're gonna play a game." She then displays bottles of Xanax and Advil PM, with which she says she's going to kill herself. At one point, she empties the vial of Xanax into her hand and shows the pills to the camera, then replaces them in the bottle—but a few moments later, when she "takes" them, what she pours into her hand is clearly a white powder with a small number of pills in the mix. We'd ask "What gives?" but we already know the answer: It was apparently a publicity stunt, since she tweeted what she was doing all the way through it, but somehow the crack researchers at Morality in Media missed that. Still, giving her the benefit of the doubt, since the "suicide attempt" occurred in 2011, about a month and a half after Jordan broke up with Sheen, isn't it far more likely that this troubled woman's alleged attempt was related to that rather than her appearances in porn movies—which, incidentally, she continued making at least through part of 2013? In any case, clicking on the home page button labeled "Trafficking In Porn," readers are treated to the claim that, "Performers are sometimes forced or coerced during the production of mainstream pornography." And how do they "know"? Easy; they use part of a definition found in the United Nations' "Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons," which reads, "the recruitment … by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion,… of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services…" So let's see if we've got this straight: Women (and men) who appear in adult movies are paid to do so, and since they have sex on camera, that's akin, according to Morality in Media, to prostitution or "other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services." And how is this accomplished? "Fraud, deception, threat or use of force, coercion, and abuse of power or vulnerability frequently takes place during the filming of these performers," the author(s) claim. A sidebar on the page details who the traffickers are: "Agents, porn directors, porn producers, pimps and other performers," who "often cause women to participate in porn through... Fraud... Force and threats of force ... [and] Coercion." Not only that, but "The fact that many are underage when they begin doing porn, even if they claim to be consenting, is still sex trafficking." (Of course, if they could prove that last charge, the FBI and Justice Department would be swarming all over the adult industry; yet, somehow they've failed to do so. One can almost picture an MiM equivalent of Stephen Colbert shaking his fist and screaming to the skies, "HOLDER!!!!!!!!!!" Check out a few more of MiM's claims about what happens on porn shoots: • "Alcohol and drugs are staples to the porn set. Many are given drugs so they can keep performing scene after scene or to be unaware of the physical trauma to their bodies." (Damn those aspirins!) • "If the performer protests against doing something they feel uncomfortable or unsafe performing, they are often threatened with physical abuse or other forms of blackmail." (Yeah; and "everybody knows" they held a gun to Linda Lovelace's head while filming Deep Throat.") • "They often sign contracts stipulating what scenarios/acts they are and are not willing to perform. Then their directors, photographers, agents, and other performers will sometimes ignore these limitations, initiating them into the business with the exact scenarios or acts they do not want to do." (Because that's a tried and true method of making sure newcomers stay in the business!) • "They are frequently beaten, choked, degraded, and verbally abused by the other performers during filming. Much of what happens on film can be defined as sexual assault and rape." (Yeah... if it weren't all consensual!!! Apparently, everyone at MiM has about as whitebread sex as anyone can imagine—not that they'd want to...) • "If performers do not act as though they are enjoying the sexual abuse, they are sometimes physically abused after filming." (Another surefire method to keep those actresses coming back for more!) • "Other performers are not always honest about what STDs they carry and will continue to work, putting their co-workers in danger of preventable diseases. The use of condoms is often discouraged—even disallowed—on set, despite the immense health risks and laws requiring condoms." (Yeah, there have been a couple of instances of forged tests, but most performers look at their partners' not-more-than-14-day-old tests before fucking, and the incidence of STDs in porn is about the same as for the population of LA in general—and there hasn't been an on-set transmission of HIV in a hetero movie shoot since 2004.) Since MiM can't possibly sustain its charges against the mainstream adult industry, the next home page button, "Forced Acts Recorded," switches the subject to actual trafficking, noting that "Forced sex acts between a trafficked woman or child and a 'John' are often filmed and photographed." Of course, in the wider sense, such recordings are "pornography," but as everyone who knows anything about the adult industry can tell, the videos and web content made by legitimate adult producers are as far from sleazy backroom forced sex as Los Angeles is from Sochi. And yes, as this site points out regularly, such rape videos (hey, that's what they are!) are sometimes uploaded to child porn websites and the like—but for MiM to claim that, "There is no way to always tell the difference between 'consensual' acts and 'forced' acts in porn" is just ignorant bullshit. Not only can anyone tell the difference, but the adult industry actually sponsors a group, the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection, that specifically seeks out such illegal sites and reports them to the federal government. Also claimed on the same page are that "pimps" use explicit images of trafficked women and kids "as advertisements for selling their victims again"; that "pimps will manage their own porn sites as a way to make even more money"; and that "Johns use their recordings as keepsakes and mementos," and sometimes share the videos online. Particularly troubling, however, in the modern technological age, is the claim that a lot of trafficked women and kids are forced to give webcam shows, even allowing "Johns" to "relay[] requests, often for torture, through chat and within seconds, the requests are filled." How these "Johns" and "viewers" find the sites which feature these trafficked "performers" is unknown, but in our examination of news stories about sex trafficking, we've never read of the feds busting such a site, so we're guessing they're beyond the ability of the average person to find. And of course, MiM claims that the cam action is recorded and sold to "an exclusive buyer or uploaded for free to draw more viewers in." (Wonder what their 2257 docs look like?) And yet, claims MiM, with no evidence whatsoever, "Trafficking for the purpose of porn—especially live porn—is increasingly popular. There is an unyielding demand for pornography and as porn users become desensitized to material, they often demand much more violent and degrading acts. Pimps have capitalized on this and found that they can make more money and remain anonymous much easier by getting into the business of creating porn. Running a 'virtual brothel' is safer and easier for them than selling girls on the street." The page ends with what might be the biggest lie yet (and that's really saying something): "It needs to be understood that much of the pornography out there contains unwilling participants subjected to violent and humiliating conditions without the ability to fight back or escape." Two words: Lying ... Cocksuckers. We could easily go on for another couple of thousand words about the pages labeled "Porn Trains Victims" (which claims that pimps use porn to "train" yet more trafficked victims) and "Porn Increases Demand" (which recycles the now-debunked canard that "porn changes the brain" and turns ordinary people into raving sex addicts who seek "harder, more deviant materials"), but why bother? Check all this out for yourself at StopTraffickingDemand.com—and be prepared to enter "another dimension, a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into" ... well, you know!