Is Texas becoming Censorship Central?

HOUSTON, Tex.—Well, that didn't take long! It seems only yesterday (but was in fact two days ago) that TeXXXas Fan Expo creator John Gray announced the convention's new location after the local Hilton hotel backed out of its deal with Gray last week: the Holiday Inn Southwest, located a couple of miles outside of the city center on Route 59. And now that venue has ditched him as well—thanks to the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), formerly known as Morality in Media, which took credit for the ditchings. Of course, that development couldn't possibly have anything to do with NCOSE's "3rd Annual Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Summit," scheduled for Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 at the Omni Houston Hotel at Westside—could it? After all, how would it look if an anti-porn group held its convention in a city just a few weeks after that same city hosted a convention celebrating sexual free speech? According to HoustonPress.com, Gray last week told the website that "he had never had a venue cancel in his more than two decades of hosting adult entertainment conventions"—and now he's had two in as many weeks! AVN reached out to Gray for additional comment, which can be found here. But somehow, two Texas hotels backing out of an adult-oriented convention seems almost to be expected. After all, it was just last February that Three Expo Events, LLC, the parent company of the Exxxotica Lifestyle Expos, was forced to sue the city of Dallas after its city council voted to bar them from holding this year's gathering at the city-owned Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, with U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater denying Three Expo's Motion for Preliminary Injunction against the city, which would have allowed the expo to go forward. (Since then, the city of Dallas has filed its Answer to the plaintiff's Amended Complaint; a Motion for Trial By Jury filed by Three Expo was approved by the judge on June 24—and the city has filed for, and received, a Protective Order prohibiting any of the parties from disclosing "confidential and highly confidential information" such as convention center rental rates and the identities of the undercover vice officers who found no problems during walk-throughs at the 2015 Exxxotica held at the same convention center.) Meanwhile, MiM NCOSE is moving forward with its plans for its pro-censorship expo, announcing that some featured speakers will be well-known anti-porn "researcher" Dr. Mary Anne Layden, anti-porn neurosurgeon Dr. Donald Hilton, anti-porn evangelist Josh McDowell, Utah Coalition Against Pornography Exec. Dir. Vauna Davis, former Morality in Media and current NCOSE president (and former DOJ obscenity prosecutor) Patrick A. Trueman and a bunch of NCOSE employees including Dawn "Terrifying Porn Flight" Hawkins and the group's new bright light (read: dim bulb) Haley Halverson—and anti-porn attorney Scott D. Bergthold, author of many boilerplagte anti-adult ordinances and at one time a consultant for the defendant in the Three Expo lawsuit. Indeed; Bergthold will be hosting seminars at the con titled "Making Real Progress Against Sexual Exploitation: Effectively Enforcing Sexually Oriented Business Regulations," and "The 3-Step Process for Success Against the Harmful Impacts of Sexually Oriented Businesses." Other seminars will include "Virtual Reality Pornography and Other Frontiers in the Fight against Sexploitation," "In Modern Bondage: A Brief History of the Development of 21st Century Exploitation and the Fight to Eradicate It," "Tackling the Public Health Crisis of Pornography," "Influencing the Private Sector: How Corporations are Rejecting Exploitation" (focusing on NCOSE's "Dirty Dozen" list), "How Pornography Harms: Today’s Research, Scholarly Perspectives, and Real Life Stories," "Sexploitation Is Nobody’s Job: A Review of Legal Approaches to Prostitution," and the gathering's final event, "Tour of Houston Massage Parlors and SOBs with Elijah Rising." Hey, what's not to like, right? Well, at least the attendees will know just where to go once the conference is finally over! Hmmm... maybe the U.S. shouldn't oppose it the next time Texas officials hint that the state might want to withdraw from the Union...