Cybersocket Co-Founder Joins ASACP Advisory Council

Cybersocket co-founder Morgan Sommer has joined the Adult Sites Against Child Pornography Advisory Council.

"It is important that ASACP addresses the needs of all areas of the adult industry," said ASACP executive director Joan Irvine, announcing Sommer's joining. "Morgan brings a wealth of experience, industry knowledge, and he is a well-respected representative of the gay community."

Sommer joins a group that also includes Aly Drummond of Python Video, Alec Helmy of XBiz.com, Gary Kremen of Sex.com, Kat Sunlove of Free Speech Coalition, Jeff Southworth of Epoch Transaction Services, and AVN Online editor-in-chief Tom Hymes.

Sommer told AVN.com he had been working with Irvine for a year on various things and had never sought full involvement on the board before.

"We've worked with Joan to provide lists of keywords that we use to scrub our database," he said. "We have things that (Cybersocket) looks for that violate our standards. And it just so happens that our standards on the gay side are the same things Joan and ASACP have been fighting for. And I think Joan and Aly probably thought I would be an asset to the Advisory Council, just from my point of view in the gay market and helping to reach out to the gay Webmasters and get more of them involved as sponsors or members."

Sommer said he thinks a good number of gay Webmasters would become sponsors or members of ASACP, but there has not been much specific outreach in that direction, in spite of Cybersocket's magazine publishing ASACP ads and the company's making ASACP one of the beneficiaries of Internext's Unity Ball. "I think a lot of people in the industry are not quite clear yet what ASACP is, what does it do, why it is important," he said

But he said working so closely with ASACP is also critical to helping dispel particular misconceptions about the gay community on and offline – especially misconceptions that the gay community by inference supports child porn or pedophilia.

"Organizations like (the North American Man-Boy Love Association) purport to be part of the gay community, but the gay community is not a pedophilic culture," Sommer said emphatically. "It is a homosexual culture. So, as a gay company, a gay-oriented business, we draw a very clear line that we're here to support all aspects of the gay community, but we will not endorse and will not work with anyone who endorses the exploitation of underage gay youth. We have resources for gay youth, but (they're) a specifically non-adult section of our Website."