A consortium of several conservative organizations is targeting hotels that provide adult videos for guests as part of a new anti-porn effort.
The consortium, made up of 13 conservative groups, recently created CleanHotels.com, a Web site that gives travelers listings of hotels in the U.S. that don’t show porn to guests, the Christian Science Monitor reported.
The organization is also running full page ads in USA Today urging law enforcement to prosecute hotel owners for violating obscenity laws.
Phil Burress, president of the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values, which is part of the consortium, said his organization was disgusted by the number of major hotels that provide hardcore porn to its guests. He explained that he wanted to expose hotels that offer porn and thus allow the market to eventually eliminate porn from hotels.
But Paul Cambria, general counsel for the Los Angeles-based Adult Freedom Foundation, said that hotels are merely providing a service and that they will likely not be intimidated by the effort. He added that prosecutors would see prosecuting hoteliers as a waste of time and money.
Although it’s unclear the value of the hotel pay-per-view porn market since hotels don’t keep track of it, Kagan Research says pay-per-view and video-on-demand market in hotels and residences is valued at about $1.6 billion this year.
This latest anti-porn effort comes about a year after the Justice Department formed the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force aimed at prosecuting members of the adult industry as opposed to those who peddle in illegal child porn.
Last summer, the department was recruiting FBI agents to investigate the adult industry, causing a furor among federal law-enforcement agencies.
But even so, Burress complained that the Bush Administration has done little curb pornography.
Cambria, however, blames such reluctance on the part of federal officials to prosecute porn producers as a sign that porn has become more socially acceptable.
