Adult Internet radio host Darren Austin's plans to marry "a woman as lesbian as I am gay" have attracted the kind of attention he wasn't exactly seeking: a telephone death threat he received November 18.
"I got a death threat from a private phone number that Sprint can't trace," the host of The Darren Austin Show told AVN.com a day after he received the threat. "They said the word 'fag' a lot." And, aside from describing the voice as having "a Southern kind of twist," Austin said he had no clue about who exactly made the threat.
"I don't understand why you faggots have to get married, why you faggots have to have such press about everything," Austin quoted the threat as saying. "I'd love to show up to the wedding and just blow you away."
Austin announced last week that he planned to marry a lesbian woman in Las Vegas during the January Internext trade show. And he said he won't let the death threat intimidate him out of going through with the plan, which he told AVN.com last week he was doing to amplify the issue of gay marriage.
"I'm doing this because people will talk about it and complain about it but never do anything about something like this," he said at the time. "When you roll up your sleeves and get down to the dirty work, are the majority going to be there? No. Therefore, I'm doing exactly what (President Bush, saying marriage was between a man and a woman) said to do. I'm going to marry a woman. And I'm a flaming gay man and she's a flaming lesbian woman, and this issue needs to be brought to people's attention. And there's no place better to do it than in Las Vegas."
But Austin now admitted that not everyone who knew of the plan thought it was as clever an idea as he does. "A lot of people think this is a stupid move," he said. "Surprisingly enough, even in our own industry. They didn't see a point. They didn't see the reasoning for it. Now, the gay community is supportive, but the others are thinking about it more like we're really mocking marriage."
Neither Austin nor the woman appear to be backing away from the marriage plan at this writing. "It gets to the point," Austin said, "where you have to stop listening to the rumors and get back on track, remember your focus, follow your heart, and listen to it."
Austin said police have put a trace on all his incoming telephone calls but otherwise had no further information on who made the threat or whether the suspect might represent a group such as an anti-gay organization.
