Anti-Porn Crusader and Banking Criminal Charles Keating Jr. Dies

PHOENIX, AZ—Charles H. Keating, Jr., the "deeply religious man" who attained worldwide notoriety for looting the Irvine-based Lincoln Savings & Loan he founded and swindling thousands of its customers, died Monday after a long illness caused by an undisclosed disease. He was 90. In the adult community, Keating is best remembered as the founder of Citizens for Decent Literature, a Cincinnati-based pro-censorship group, as well as for being an appointee to the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, which found few if any societal problems traceable to viewing sexually explicit material. Keating was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1923, graduating from St. Xavier High School in 1941. After a troubling stint as a U.S. navy pilot during World War II, he returned to the University of Cincinnati to complete both his undergraduate studies and law school, from which he graduated in 1945. Keating and his brother William then founded a law firm that eventually had only one client: Conservative financier and newspaper publisher Carl Lindner. Later, Keating joined Lindner's American Financial Corp, eventually becoming its vice president and a director of the company. According to the 1993 book, Trust Me: Charles Keating and the Missing Billions, by Michael Binstein and Charles Bowden, Keating became active in the censorship movement in 1956 after joining a Cincinnati-based group of concerned Catholics. Through that group, he began giving lectures on the dangers of pornography, and in 1958, testified regarding the dangers of adult mail-order companies before the House Judiciary Committee. At that time, Keating stated that sexually explicit content was "capable of poisoning any mind at any age and of perverting our entire younger generation," that it was a major factor in causing juvenile delinquency, and that it was "part of the Communist conspiracy." It was during that same year that Keating founded Citizens for Decent Literature (CDL), which later grew to have 300 chapters nationwide and over 100,000 members—the largest organization of its type in the country. (Cincinnati Magazine described it as "the self-appointed attendant at the nation's closets.") Over the several years of its existence—it changed names several times, with "Citizens for Decency through Law" being the most memorable—Keating and CDL sent millions of letters to members, government officials, religious leaders and others, seeking to press its anti-porn agenda (as well as soliciting donations, of course). Keating was instrumental in getting Russ Meyer's film Vixen prosecuted for obscenity, succeeded in getting a closed-circuit presentation of the popular off-Broadway play Oh! Calcutta (which featured plenty of nudity) cancelled and managed to scare local moviehouses into giving short shrift to the controversial Marlon Brando starrer, Last Tango in Paris. "Within hours of the supreme Court's 1973 Miller decision on pornography—the famed 'community standards' decision—every 'adult' theater and bookstore in Cincinnati were closed. And they have since remained closed," wrote Cincinnati Magazine in July, 1977. Keating also held one of the nation's first anti-porn rallies—"The Decency Rally"—a two-day event in May of 1977 where one of the featured speakers was Memphis, TN prosecutor Larry Parrish, who had gained nationwide attention by prosecuting Harry Reems for obscenity for having appeared in Deep Throat. "Ding-dong, the witch is dead!" declared David Bertolino, writer/producer of The Deep Throat Sex Scandal, in which Parrish and Keating are both major characters. "He stole millions from the innocent and attacked sex positive lives. He even donated a million dollars to Mother Teresa in hopes it would keep him out of jail. It didn't." Keating was also responsible for the anti-porn mini-movie Perversion for Profit, which was released in 1965 and appended as a DVD "extra" to Vivid Entertainment's Man's Ruin (2007). The film features then-well-known announcer George Putnam railing against the societal devastation allegedly caused by viewing explicit materials. Particularly egregiously, Keating aided Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis in his attempts to prosecute Hustler publisher and club owner Larry Flynt in 1976 for obscenity and racketeering, and though Flynt was convicted, the decision was overturned and Flynt spent less than a week in jail. "Well, I never say anything bad about anybody who's passed on, but no one deserved it more than him," Flynt told reporter Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times in an interview. "All those years in the '70s when he was having me prosecuted for having published obscenity, he was stealing money from those little ol' people in Lincoln Savings and Loan. He's the scum of the earth." Flynt also claimed that Keating had a large private collection of porn from around the world, that he used to show to houseguests. "I talked to an attorney who attended a party at Keating's house.... He was showing the movie Deep Throat at his home," Flynt said. "Probably the only people who have a larger porn collection than Keating is the Vatican." But perhaps Keating's main claim to porn fame came with his appointment, following the resignation of his namesake Kenneth B. Keating, by then-President Richard Nixon to the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, which had been empaneled by President Lyndon Johnson. Chaired by William B. Lockhart, long-time professor, constitutional scholar and Dean of the University of Michigan Law School, Charles Keating became the main dissenter to the Commission's final report, and even succeeded in having the D.C. federal district court delay publication of the report for several weeks until Keating could craft a dissent—with the help of Nixon's White House speechwriter Pat Buchanan. In calling for "a massive sex education effort," the majority of those on the panel stated, "The Commission believes that accurate, appropriate sex information provided openly and directly through legitimate channels and from reliable sources in healthy contexts can compete successfully with potentially distorted, warped, inaccurate, and unreliable information from clandestine illegitimate sources." But perhaps more importantly for the adult community was this recommendation: "The Commission recommends that federal  state, and local legislation prohibiting the sale, exhibition, or distribution of sexual materials to consenting adults should be repealed. Twelve of the 17 participating members of the Commission join in this recommendation." Keating's reaction? "The shocking and anarchistic recommendation of the majority is difficult to comprehend... Such presumption! Such an advocacy of moral anarchy! Such a defiance of the mandate of Congress, which created the Commission! Such a bold advocacy of a libertine philosophy! Truly, it is difficult to believe that to which the majority of this Commission has given birth." Keating later continued, "At a time when the spread of pornography has reached epidemic proportions in our country and when the moral fiber of our nation seems to be rapidly unraveling, the desperate need is for enlightenment and intelligent control of the poisons which threaten us—not the declaration of moral bankruptcy inherent in the repeal of the laws which have been the defense of decent people against the pornographer for profit. One can consult all the experts he chooses, can write reports, make studies, etc., but the fact that obscenity corrupts lies within the common sense, the reason, and the logic of every man." There's plenty more dirt to be found about Keating's savings & loan scandal, such as the massive "campaign contributions" he gave to the "Keating Five"—five senators, including John McCain and former astronaut John Glenn—as an apparent quid pro quo to get them to call off congressional investigators. Even Alan Greenspan, a follower of Ayn Rand and later Chair of the Federal Reserve, concluded that Lincoln S&L posed no "foreseeable risk" to depositors and praised the thrift's "seasoned and expert" management. In the end, however, the failed banker was convicted in 1993 of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud and served 50 months of a 12 year sentence before his conviction was overturned on a technicality. Then, in 1999, he pled guilty to four counts of fraud, but was sentenced to time served. His legacy of financial misdealings remains to this day. "Keating was the test pilot, the guy who blazed the trail" for the security traders and hedge fund managers who created the financial catastrophe which hit the world in 2008, said Associate Prof. William Black, an economist, attorney and former federal Savings & Loan regulator. "It was easy for folks who came after him. They didn't have to invent the playbook. "Had we learned the right lessons from dealing with the Keatings of the world and the Savings & Loan debacle," he added, "there certainly would not have been the great financial crisis that we're suffering from now." What can we say but, "Good riddance, Chuck. Hope the worms enjoy your flesh."