Campaign Launched Against Porn Magnate's Braves Bid

A Colorado billionaire wants to buy the Atlanta Braves baseball team. But a conservative, pro-family campaign in Georgia is springing up to oppose the purchase because some of his fortune is derived from porn, according to a recently published report.

Major League Baseball owners will meet Aug. 8-10 in New York City in a regularly scheduled meeting. They may discuss whether John Malone's company, Liberty Media, can buy the struggling Braves from Time Warner.

No one doubts Malone's financial resources, continued the report. The Englewood businessman, one of the world's richest men, is estimated by Forbes Magazine to be worth $4 billion.

But Stephen Adams, associate editor of the ultra-conservative Focus on the Family's Citizen magazine, says Malone doesn't deserve to own the Braves.

"He has the public reputation of being a Donald Trump-kind of dealmaker or Rupert Murdoch-style media magnate," Adams told the conservative website, Citizenlink. "Indeed, he plays in that heady environment. But there's another side to his business that most people don't know. He is one of the biggest pornographers in America."

"John Malone has been responsible for promoting sexually explicit video for decades," Adams said. "First, with a company called Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), which was residential community-franchise cable TV, and now with On Command, which supplies porn films to a million hotel rooms in America."

Malone's company, Liberty Media, would reportedly get the Braves and an undisclosed amount of cash, in exchange for some shares in Time Warner and a half-ownership in the Court TV cable network. Malone would not be expected to hold onto the team for very long if he got the keys to the owner's box.

Sadie Fields, state chairman of the Christian Coalition of Georgia, said several pro-family organizations have banded together to oppose Malone.

"We have formed the Coalition for Clean Baseball," Fields told CitizenLink from her office in Atlanta. "It is made up of Christian Coalition of Georgia, Georgia Family Council and the Georgia chapter of Concerned Women for America.

So can ultra-conservative groups stop the deal from going through?

"I think public outcry can," Randy Hicks, executive director of the staunch traditionalist group, Georgia Family Council, told Citizenlink’s Pete Winn. "I think if you get the right people expressing concern -- not only about their own community, but about the reputation of baseball -- perhaps Commissioner Bud Selig and the owners will back off the whole idea."

The big problem for the conservative campaign, according to Hicks, is that few people have any idea about Malone's connections to porn.

"If you listen to sports-talk radio in Atlanta, which I do fairly frequently, it's not as if they are talking about Liberty Media a lot," Hicks said. "In fact, John Malone's name rarely comes up, so this is under the radar for most fans."