Back in February we submitted our first film, MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY to the Motion Picture Association of America (The MPAA). Since MARIE AND JACK is a film about grown-up ideas, with grown-up imagery, intended for a grown-up audience, we had every expectation that the film would receive (the dreaded) NC-17 rating. From MPAA.org:

“An NC-17 rated motion picture is one that, in the view of the Rating Board, most parents would consider patently too adult for their children 17 and under. No children will be admitted. NC-17 does not mean “obscene” or “pornographic” in the common or legal meaning of those words, and should not be construed as a negative judgment in any sense. The rating simply signals that the content is appropriate only for an adult audience. An NC-17 rating can be based on violence, sex, aberrational behavior, drug abuse or any other element that most parents would consider too strong and therefore off-limits for viewing by their children.”

(You can read rest the MPAA’s explanation of their rating system on the MPAA website.)

We submitted the film back in February because we knew that sometime this Summer we’d need to make another run (the fifth!) of MARIE AND JACK DVDs, and we also knew that we wanted to update the cover so that it was more inline with the look of our more recent titles (The M&J design was mine, the more recent covers were designed by Peggy. You can guess at which ones I like better.)

The idea was since we were going to be redesigning/reprinting the cover anyway, why not submit the film and see if having an MPAA rating (even the dreaded NC-17 rating) changed the marketablity of our film.

Would the NC-17 rating and MPAA dingbat make our work seem more legitimate? Or would the MPAA rating make people think they were getting a watered-down, censored version of Marie and JACK. (Point of fact, the MPAA didn’t ask us to change a frame, and even said MARIE AND JACK was just the sort of film the NC-17 rating was made for.)

What the MPAA did ask us to change was the cover, both text and images, so that the packaging would be “suitable for all viewers,” and while you and I may disagree with the MPAA about what is or is not suitable for all viewers, it not your or my opinion that counts; it’s theirs. That’s the bargain you make if you want to be in their club. (Actually, I think the MPAA is best thought of as being like a Chamber of Commerce, or local Better Business Bureau. No one forces a merchant to join the Better Business Bureau, but if you do join, they rules they expect you to follow.)

The original re-design of the MARIE AND JACK cover looked like this:

(You can click on it for a larger version.)

The front cover has been redesigned to be in keeping with the look that Peggy developed for the series. The back cover is unchanged from the previous version.

The MPAA had two objections. To begin with, unambiguous nudity is not considered “suitable for all viewers” so the three photos on the upper left side were unacceptable. One solution suggested was that the photos could be cropped, or shadows could be airbrushed on to them sufficient that a reasonable person could say it was not clear whether or not the people were naked.

The MPAA also objected to the word “orgasms” in the quote from Penthouse magazine, but suggested that climaxes could be used in its place. I’ll admit this made my head spin a little, but the MPAA representative’s explanation was that while most people would probably consider our use of the word tasteful and appropriate, if they let us use the word “orgasm” on our cover, then someone else would want to splash it all over the cover in giant pink letters, and that the MPAA wanted, as much as is possible, to avoid making subjective judgments about what was and was not permissible. No doubt this was a reference to the 1997 film ORGAZMO.

The same explanation was given for their request that the back cover photos be altered: yes, most people would find our use of the nudity completely appropriate, but if they allowed unambiguous nudity on the cover of MARIE AND JACK then some other producer would want the same for their DVD packaging, claiming that their use was also “appropriate,” even if most people would find it objectionable.

The MPAA did not object to the close-up of Jack fingering Marie’s clit while they fucked in the spoon position, complete with his cock half inside her pussy that we used to illustrate the “picture in a picture” version of the un-edited, two camera love-scene offered on the DVD. Whether this is because they thought the image was it was sufficiently ambiguous, or because they simply didn’t know what they were looking at, I don’t know.

So here’s the cover the MPAA approved:

(Again, click for a larger version.)

“Orgasms” has been changed to “climaxes”, and the three back photos have been cropped or simply replace with photos that have sufficient degree of ambiguity as to where or not Marie and Jack are clothed. The close-up was removed altogether – maybe they missed it, maybe they didn’t know what they were looking at, maybe they knew, but thought a close-up of clit stroking is “suitable for all viewers” – I don’t know. Whatever the case, I don’t think it’s all-ages appropriate, that’s the standard, so we took it out. This is what the letter you get from the MPAA looks like:

The people at the MPAA have all been very friendly, and I have to admit, seeing that very distinctive MPAA dingbat on our movie is pretty nifty. But the question remains: will going through this process help us make more money? I don’t know. I think the new cover design will sell better, but I don’t know if the NC-17 is going to make much of a difference one way or the other.

As it stands now, most places that won’t show unrated films won’t show NC-17 films either. Most places that won’t sell unrated DVDs won’t sell NC-17 rated films either. In a surprisingly candid conversation with an MPAA rep last Winter, he told me “we dropped the ball when we introduced the NC-17 rating. We didn’t explain or promote it the way we should have.”

As a result, the NC-17 is sort of a no-man’s land. The only thing you get for accepting an NC-17 rating from the MPAA (aside from the chance to write the MPAA a hefty check,) is the obligation to submit your advertising and packaging for their approval.

No doubt that’s why films like 9 SONGS and SHORTBUS decide to go out unrated; not (necessarily) because the MPAA advertisement approval process is so odious, but if the NC-17 rating isn’t going to help the movie make money, who needs the hassle? In fact, the advertising and packaging on unrated movies with sexual theme tend to emphasize that they the unrated, uncensored, uncut version, even when no other version exists. In the art-house world “Unrated” has come to connote uncensored and uncompromised filmmaking.

So then why did we do it?

Well if nothing else, it’s given us a chance to experience the MPAA process, not as observers, not as critics or pundits, but as participants. Having been run through the mandatory ratings processes in other countries, I have to say I much prefer dealing with the MPAA, especially the fact that it’s voluntary. We have four other films, each unrated, each completely legal to sell or screen, and they’re doing just fine.

I’m not thrilled about the changes to the MARIE AND JACK cover, but neither am I broken-hearted. I understand why the MPAA insists on maintaining some sort of control for where and how their trademarks appear, we do the same thing here at Comstock Films. There are venues available to people who have different ideas about is appropriate or what is in good taste, or even whether or not that’s a relevant question.

In the bigger picture it’s about continuing to take risks, continuing to poke around in the places other people overlook to see if we can find opportunities. Most producers consider the NC-17 rating a stigma, a scarlet letter, but who knows, maybe (maybe) we can make it a badge of honor. We’ll play by the MPAA’s rules with MARIE AND JACK and see if it helps us. If it does, we’ll consider submitting our other films. If it doesn’t, we can always surrender the rating and go back to what we’re already doing.

Or hey wait! Maybe we’ll even redesign our packaging and make sure the words “unrated,” “uncut,” and “uncensored” appear in the biggest, pinkest letters possible!

If you’re not a registered user with your super-secret “adult titles” search enabled, you can’t.

You can find 9 SONGS, a film about a fictional pair of rock-show going, coke-snorting lovers, that famously features explicit footage of felatio, cunnilingus, coitus, and even a pop-shot.

You can find PLAGUES AND PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA, the film that shared the Best Documentary prize with DAMON AND HUNTER at the 2006 Melbourne Underground Film Festival.

You can even find MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, our first erotic documentary title.

But you can’t find DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER.

Says IMDB:

“The IMDb contains over 400,000 different movie titles. The aim of the database is to cover as many titles and genres as possible. As a result, some of these titles contain words or expressions that some of our users may find inappropriate and some movies themselves may also fall into this category. To provide some level of control for those of a sensitive nature some adult titles have been made searchable only by users who are registered with the IMDb and have requested access to this material.”

“Inappropriate.” Apparently an intimate film about two young men in love, and loving one another is “inappropriate.”

Caligola,, Bob Guccione’s notorious bait and switch production isn’t “inappropriate.”

Neither is Love Camp 7, the infamous Nazi exploitation flick. (From the IMDB listing, “The film contains numerous scenes of women prisoners being abused, tortured and humiliated by their Nazi captors. Indeed the whole purpose of the work is to invite male viewers to relish the spectacle of naked women being humiliated for their titillation. LOVE CAMP 7 contains both eroticised depictions of sexual violence and repeated association of sex with restraint, pain, and humiliation.”)

Apparently Pink Flamingos, which (among other things) features an actor eating dog shit, isn’t “inappropriate” either.

But according to IMDB, DAMON AND HUNTER, an award-winning documentary film featuring a consentual love-scene between committed lovers is “inappropriate,” and viewers with more delicate sensiblities must be protected from the pain they might feel should they accidentally stumble across DAMON AND HUNTER in the course of browsing through IMDB.

We’ve been here before.

Last Summer, the Australian OFLC “protected” the good people of Sydney from accidently stumbling into the queerDOC Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and being exposed to DAMON & HUNTER.

Last Fall, a printer in North Carolina refused to print the above poster for DAMON & HUNTER, lest anyone in their plant be exposed to the image of two men about to kiss.

IMDB’s been here before too. Last January, IMDB hid John Cameron Mitchell’s SHORTBUS in the section for “inappropriate” films. (An uproar ensued across the indie film world prompting IMDB to move SHORTBUS from the “inappropriate” section to the “appropriate” section” by the end of the day.)

Of course compared to us SHORTBUS and ThinkFilm are a marketing juggernaut. John Cameron Mitchell’s been quoted in a hundred places pronouncing that SHORTBUS isn’t arrousing and isn’t porn, where I’m quite proud of the fact that (at least for some people) DAMON AND HUNTER is quite arousing, and I’m ambivalent about the p-word. (Short version, it tells you more about the person saying it than it does about the film they’re applying it to.)

I’m also ambivelent about trying to get IMDB to change the listing. Not because I’m happy to have DAMON & HUNTER hidden away, but because I know that trying to get IMDB to change it will take a lot of time and effort. Comstock Films is me and my wife Peggy, there’s only so much of us to go around. And after financing, producing, editing, and marketing these films, there’s not always that much left over for fighting battles with people like the OFLC or IMDB. Sometimes I feel a little ground down,

What I am not ambivalent about is that Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together is not “inappropriate” film, and if “sensitive” IMDB users don’t need to be protected from stumbling across listings for CALIGOLA, LOVE CAMP 7, or PINK FLAMINGOS, they most certainly don’t need to be “protected” from accidentally seeing the listing for DAMON & HUNTER.

UPDATE

You can also find HONEY AND BUNNY, which played along side DAMON & HUNTER at the New York CineKink Film Festival, and features close-up shot of a half-eaten peach lodged in a woman’s vagina, as well as FILTHY FOOD, which also played with D&H at the CineKink Film Festival, and features close-up footage of a woman performing “oral sex” on a variety of foods in the place of penises, vulvas, and breasts.

I’ve just finished reading THE CONVERSATIONS: WALTER MURCH AND THE ART OF FILM EDITING. Murch is wonderfully eloquent in explaining the role that chance or serendipity can play in making films, without coming off as some sort of flake who leaves things to chance because he’s not creative enough or craftsmanly enough to control his projects.

Well thanks to the serendipitous combination of Violet Blue’s writing, The Chronical’s mainstream status, and the ever mysterious Googlebot, I’ve learned about things today that I never would have imagined.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Filtering DVD Player

The combination of Violet’s copy, mainstream placement, and the Googlebot is some sort of idiot savant uber algorythm for data-mining for everything that is wrong with how our culture thinks about sex. I just called Purity Solutions to ask how I could submit my films to become a part of their filtered films database.

No one was there, so I left a message.

“The erotically charged plot is not meant to arouse the audience-No one got a hard-on watching this film.” — Film Director John Cameron Mitchell after the Cannes premiere of SHORTBUS

Well maybe not at Cannes, but it looks like maybe someone over imdb.com got a boner.

“I have been a photographer my entire adult life. In the name of bearing witness to the human condition I’ve documented unspeakable suffering, violence, and death; and for that I’ve been praised as a courageous witness. When I review the scope of people, places and events that have passed before my lens, I am unable to comprehend the censor’s rationale for “protecting” adults from photographic images of sexuality.”

Along with being a photographer, I am also an ambivalent agnostic. Today is one of those days when I lean towards a suspicion that there is indeed a divine being who (for reasons that utterly defy my comprehension) takes an intimate interest my affairs.

What’s special about today? Today we got our first order from Rwanda.

“I have been a photographer my entire adult life. In the name of bearing witness to the human condition I’ve documented unspeakable suffering, violence, and death; and for that I’ve been praised as a courageous witness. When I review the scope of people, places and events that have passed before my lens, I am unable to comprehend the censor’s rationale for “protecting” adults from photographic images of sexuality. Adults have the capacity and the right to choose for themselves what sort of images they wish to see. They do not need to be protected from images of sex, and least of all from a film like DAMON AND HUNTER. In the face of horrific images we are exposed to each and every day, the OFLC decision is not only unfair, it is perverse.” –Tony Comstock, An Open Letter to the OFLC

Remember, a simulated depiction of the rape of a child, using an actual 12 year old child, made with the intent to horrify the audience, is art.

An actual depiction of adults engaged in consentual, mutually pleasurable sex, made with the intent to arouse and delight the audience is merely porn.

Are we clear? Good.

So last night I ended up having an hour-long phone conversation with David Cay Johnston, the New York Times reporter whose byline appears on yesterdays article Indications of a Slowdown in Sex Entertainment Trade.

Mr. Johnston pointed out that 1) the article’s headline was “slowdown”, and 2) the article mentioned that independently generated financial data about the “adult entertainment industry” is all but impossible to come by. Fair enough. I think the article might have made the second point more forcefully, and perhaps sited financial speculation about the size of “the industry” that doesn’t come from people with either an pro-porn or anti-porn agenda. (If he were a regular reader of this blog, he’d know where to look.

We also talked about the book Innumeracy. It turns out it was written by a friend of Mr. Johnston’s, and aside from his reporting duties, he often lectures to journalism students about the importance of understanding numbers.

Everyone’s got an agenda, even me. In my essay The Porn Monster, I laid out my case for the stake that pro-industry people, anti-porn people, journos, and academics have in the continued propegation of (what I feel are) figures for the size of the “adult industry” that simply aren’t supported by evidence or common sense. In short, if you go looking for money in the adult industry, you can’t find it.

Now I’ll cop to my agenda.

Hysterionic reporting on the porn industry, especially the grossly inflated size of the porn industry has given rise to the popular notion that the industry is a beheomuth that nearly perfectly serves the erotic entertainment needs of the public. A phrase you’ll hear time and time again in “the bizz” is, “With 10,000 titles a year, there’s something for everyone!”

Looking from the outside, the existence of title like DIRTPIPE MILKSHAKES (volumes 1 and 2) lends credence to this idea. After all, if a $13B/year industry is making dozens, perhaps even hundreds titles a year devoted to such exotic sexual interests as women eating semen out of other women’s anuses, then certainly there must be something out there for people with more pedestrian tastes – things like convincing, well-crafted depictions of mutually pleasurable sex.

But while there’s no shortage of anal creampie themed videos, gaping anus themed videos, and other things to unsavory to mention on this blog, finding well-crafted sexually explicit films that convincingly depict mutual pleasure is all but impossible. As I said to Stacy Grenrock Woods in Esquire a couple of years ago, it’s easier to find a well-made fishing show than a well-made sex film.

Porn’s supposed to be this multi-billion dollar a year business, so big and dangerous there’s an entire department at the DOJ devoted to it; and it churns out thousands and thousands of titles each year, seeming to serve every nitch fetish, but it can’t seem to serve the wide-spread and basic desire that many people have to see a well-crafted depiction of two people who really seem to be enjoying having sex with each other.

People know in their gut something’s not right. People know there’s a disconnect. People know that what they want to see isn’t some specialized nitch, it’s a basic human desire. Yet it goes unserved. Why? To me the answer is quite simple.

The restrictions on the distribution of erotic images (as in you won’t be able to find MATT AND KHYM at Walmart, Blockbuster, etc.) has restricted the business to making money in a very few, and not especially lucrative ways. Porn margins are razor thin, and the result is that “the industry” vastly overserves niche sexual interest markets, where issues of production quality, or even simple honesty in packaging will be overlooked, while it vastly underserves sexual interest with broader appeal, but much higher expectations.

The combination of the digital video revolution and the internet has removed virtually all barriers to entering the market. These days, any idiot with a BestBuy credit card can make and market porn, and that’s just what’s happened. And anyone who’s taken a highschool economics class knows what happens when too much supply chases too little demand. Certainly Greg Zobary does (from LukeIsBack.com)

Luke: “Do you think there are any millionaires in the industry who are solely employees?”
Greg: “No.”
Luke: “Do you think there are any billionaires in the industry?”
Greg: “No way.”
Luke: “Maybe this isn’t a $12 billion a year industry.”
Greg: “It’s a $400 million [DVD] industry, maybe $500 million. The industry went out and promoted these figures that included strip club revenues, hotel revenues, etc and came up with this [$12 billion] figure, hoping it would lead to the legitimization of the industry. What it has really led to is a bunch of idiots who watch this stuff and think that porn is the new gold rush. They jump in and produce a few movies and think they’re going to get rich. Everyone I’ve seen who’s done that has walked away with no money. We no longer insure these people. They don’t stick around.

But even if you take the well-publicized porn figures at face value, porn just isn’t that big a business when you compare it to other things American’s spent money on. For example:

According to the American Sport Fishing Association who take their data from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, in 2003 Americans spent over $5 billion on equipment, nearly $15 billion on fishing trips, and some $20 billion more on boats, trucks, licenses and other fishing-related products and services. Anglers paid $290 million on ice alone and the total annual economic impact of the sport fishing industry for 2003 was estimated at $116 billion.

According to PackagedFacts.com in 2005 the market for feminine hygene products was over $3 billion. (As with porn in the NYT article, apparently the tampon industry is looking for ways to counter the effects of an aging population on their bottom line.)

Do people spend money on porn? Obviously yes. Is porn “big business”. That depends on whose numbers you use and what you compare it to, and what you think “big business” is. It might be bigger than tampons, it’s definately not as big as fishing. Do we spend to much time thinking about porn? Maybe. Do I? Definitely!

Prior to last Friday, the only things I knew about Andrew Sullivan were that he regularly appears, on the Chris Matthews Show, is out as an HIV+ gay man, calls himself a conservative, and has written some really waggish and scathing things about the current administration on his blog. Count me intrigued.

Now as it happens, it turns out my (gay) uncle already has Sullivan’s new book The Conservative Soul: How we lost it. How we can get it back, and he’s going to lend it to me when he’s done, but in the meanwhile, I spent some time this weekend puttering around the internet to find out more about Sullivan. Yesterday I came across an omission in his blogThe Daily Dish that I think is illuminating. In acknowledging a readers critique of his view of Ronald Reagan, Sullivan writes:

“Reagan did indeed presage some of the worst aspects of today’s degenerate Republicanism. His deficit spending, his subversion of constitutionalism in Iran-Contra, his coded appeal to Southern bigotry when beginning his campaign, and his dithering on the HIV epidemic are all fore-runners of later abuse.”

Notably absent from this list (or at least notably absent to me) is The Meese Commission, which I think is a good symbol for the rise to power of religious fundamentalism inside the Republican party during the Reagan years. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that The Meese Commission itself was the dowery delivered to evangelicals, who really had, and still have, no other reason to wed themselves to what was and still is the party of business.

The Meese Commission and the empowerment of fundamentalists it represents, had a devastating effect on the economic viability of erotic art. The Reagan years saw the rise of “community standards” based obscenity prosecutions, which allowed a district attorney to in any jurisdiction to bring charges against producers in other states, on the theory that a magazine produced and printed in (let’s say) New York had violated the community standards in (let’s say) Macon, GA, and that was a crime.

Sometimes these prosecutions were successful, sometimes they weren’t, but they were always costly to defend. So producers did one of two things: the tailored they work to what they thought (hoped) was within the standard of the most conservative communities, or they refused to distribute to what they regarded as potentially dangerous communities. (This is practice is still commonplace today. Head over to MichaelLucas.com, or Blowfish.com, or anywhere else that sells sex merchandise and check out their “will not ship to” lists.)

But a far more devastating than the obscenity prosecutions was the great Advertiser Pussy Panic.

Throughout the seventies, Penthouse repeatedly challenged Playboy’s status as the premiere nudie magazine with a game of pussy one-upmanship. Flush with cash from mainstream advertisers, Bob Guccioni produced a magazine that was every bit as lush as Playboy, but always went a little bit further. Hef had always been about tits; Bob made Hef show bush. When Hef started showing bush, Bob went pink. If you pick up a copy of Penthouse magazine from the seventies, you’ll see a magazine that looks and feels like any other mainstream magazine (real paper, real photography, and most importantly, real advertisers) except in Penthouse, there were lushly produced photo lay-outs of women with their legs spread wide (or my favorite, a luscious rump offered in that “mount me” sort of way, with a come hither look thrown over her shoulder for good measure).

(For more pining over depictions of sex in the seventies, read Richard Corliss’s Whatever Happened to Movie Sex?)

But the rising tide of fundamentalist in the Reagan years brought that to a halt. Our country was introduced to Jerry Falwell and the strangely name Moral Majority, a cadre of folks with a deep concern for other people’s personal lives, especially other people’s sex lives. Chief among their concerns were:

Outlawing abortion

Opposition to state recognition and acceptance of homosexuality

Enforcement of its vision of family life

Censorship of media outlets that promote what it labeled as an ‘anti-family’ agenda

Suddenly their were pickets outside 7/11 demanding the removal of “obscene material”, and they weren’t just talking about Playboy and Penthouse, they wanted Cosmo and Redbook and any magazine that talked about sex in a way they didn’t approve of off the shelves (And they still do.)

In some places they were successful, and Playboy and Penthouse were pulled off the shelves. But the real damage came because advertisers abandoned Playboy and Penthouse (the only two girlie magazine that have ever been advertising supported).

It was mainstream advertising dollars that supported the lushly produced 1970s editions of Playboy and Penthouse. Without those dollars, mere circulation wasn’t nearly enough to maintain the same level of quality. Penthouse responded by becoming raunchier, until virtually the only advertising it had left was for phone sex.

But without the ad money to make a quality magazine, it was thrown into competition with Hustler and dozens of other titles that, even if they couldn’t afford as well crafted photography, could always out-raunch Bob.

Penthouse entered a death spiral of declining circulation, declining revenues, and declining quality. Without the audience that mainstream advertising revenue fueled edit could provide, Penthouse went belly up. The brand was bought buy investors a few years ago, but it’s a shadow of it’s former self, propelled mostly on the fumes of what the magazine was 30 years ago.

Playboy lives on, but only because it pulled back wildly on what it would and wouldn’t show in the magazine. It’s got (some of) it’s mainstream advertising back, but its circulation (and therefore its ad rate) is nothing like it was 30 years ago.

(In the late nineties, a friend of mine and Maxim staff writer, told me about the magazine’s self-impose “no nipple” policy. The clever folks at Maxim had seen what happened to Playboy and Penthouse, and learned the lesson: young men might like to see naked women, but advertisers don’t. So show just enough to keep the men happy, but not enough to scare away your advertisers and you’ll make a lot of money. I don’t know how the magazine is doing these days, but at the time their page rate was $250,000. That’s right, running a one page ad one time in Maxim cost more than almost any porn movie ever made.)

That’s why those old issues of Playboy and Penthouse, with their ads for top-shelf liquor and other high-life consumer products look so lush; they had mainstream ad dollars that allowed them to produce a mainstream quality product. And that’s why today, completely cut off from any mainstream level of returns, porn today looks so shitty.

Of course it wasn’t just Ed Messe and the moral majority. Technology changed (the VCR) and exciting new diseases came along (herpes, and then HIV), and those changed the way we think about what a sexually explicit film can and should be. But it’s the rise of fundamentalism that I think did the most damage to the genre, and to our country as well.

Yesterday I listened to Sullivan on NPR’s Talk of the Nation and he offered “In some parts of the country “Christian” is becoming synonymous with intolerance.”

Becoming? I don’t know if it’s because he’s a christian himself, or because he’s spent most of his time in this country in places like DC, or New York, or Cambridge; but whatever it is, Sullivan’s behind the curve on this one.

It was during the Reagan years (first term in fact) that I learned to hate Christians; hate them because of what they said about my uncle, hate them because of what they said about HIV, hate them because their Jesus-jugend youth groups lorded over my high school exuding smug, self-righteous superiority, the kind that comes from people who are certain they’re going to heaven and you’re not.

(I’m happy to say that in the early nineties I learned that my hate was misplaced. I met and worked with some very nice people, who as it happens were devote Christians. From that experience I learned I didn’t hate Christians after all. I hate bigots, and I hate people who trade on fear and ignorance to gain power. Ten years later, when (so-called) Christians blamed homosexuals for 9/11, I was angry, but not surprised. That’s what those kind of people do.)

Since he didn’t mention it, I wonder if Sullivan even knows about the Meese Commission. If he does, I wonder if he sees the connection between my right to make and distribute my films, free from fear of being jailed, and his right to fuck, or even marry whomever might have him. Would he agree that a threat to either is a threat to both? Writes Sullivan to introduce my (anonymous) text in his Friday post:

“First, they came for the homos, then the near-dead, then the pregnant women. But you know who their ultimate target will be…”

But there’s something missing from Sullivan’s list, isn’t there? Before the homos, or the near dead or the pregnant women, they came for those of us who would dare make an image of a naked body and offer it with the intent (hope!) to arouse our audience. With the full backing of the Reagan White House, the theocons came after the smut-mongers, and got their first taste of blood. And the Republican party and Sullivan’s (so-called?) conservatism took their first lurching step to the degeneracy we see today.

At the end of Sullivan’s Friday post he writes:

“I’m glad more and more heterosexuals are waking up to the theocon agenda.”

I’m (pretty) sure he didn’t mean it in a condescending way. He doesn’t know me, he doesn’t I “woke up” to the theocon agenda in 1982, he doesn’t know I’ve been fighting (in my own strange way) the rise of fundamentalism and intolerance in this country for more than 20 years.