Anti-Porn Group Pickets Marriott CEO

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A religious anti-porn group picketed outside a National Press Club luncheon recently to protest speaker Bill Marriott, Jr., the CEO of Marriott International. The thrust of the protest was the nationwide hotel chain's decision to make adult pay-per-view programming available in its rooms.

The protest was organized by Larry Cirignano of CatholicVote.org. Cirignano told the website for Concerned Women for America that the group was organizing because of “Marriott Corporation's profiting from the sale of in-room pornographic movies.”

The protest follows a recent open letter of complaint to Marriott from Morality in Media president Robert Peters.

“You profess to be a Mormon; and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is 100% against pornography, which gives me at least a faint hope that you may some day come to your senses and disassociate your family name and faith from pornographic films with titles like these," Peters wrote, listing a series of adult movies such as Housewives Need Cash.

The letter goes on to state that Marriott could be prosecuted for obscenity if the hotel chain fails to drop adult pay-per-view content. Peters sent a similar missive to Marriott in July 2007.