Gay Porn's Neocon Kingpin

[Ian David]

March 21, 2008
Gay Porn's Neocon Kingpin

This was not what Patrick Cordova had bargained for. The Stanford junior, a member of the school's student government, had wanted to host a lecture on sexual health. And he figured that a provocative and fun way to tackle the issue would be to bring a prominent pornographer to speak on campus. So Cordova sent out some invitations. The first person he heard back from was Michael Lucas--longtime porn actor and director of such films as Hunt & Plunge, The Bigger The Better, and Fire Island Cruising (editions one through eight). A fixture in New York nightlife and head of his own production company, Lucas is one of the biggest names in gay porn. His 2006 epic La Dolce Vita had a $250, 000 budget, which Lucas says makes it the most expensive porn film in history. The movie garnered best-picture honors at the annual GAYVN Awards, the Oscars of gay porn. (It also garnered a lawsuit from the company that controls the rights to the original Fellini film.) New York magazine has dubbed him the "last of the New York porn moguls."

Lucas--a staunch advocate of safe sex who, unlike some porn directors, uses condoms in his movies--sounded like exactly the kind of guest speaker Cordova had in mind. "We were hoping that people would embrace his ideas on sexual identity and sexual health," Cordova told me. But, after Stanford had already booked him, controversy erupted. Some students felt that Lucas shouldn't have been invited to lecture. By the day of his speech, the storm surrounding Lucas had made its way into the pages of The Stanford Daily, where organizers found themselves defending the invitation against the protests of their outraged peers.

What had provoked such heated debate? It wasn't Lucas's porn. It was his politics. Lucas, it turns out, is a fervent supporter of Israel and a harsh, often offensive, critic of the Muslim world. He has called the Koran "today's Mein Kampf" and regularly inveighs against Muslim homophobia and anti-Semitism in less-than-charming terms. "It totally escapes me how gay people can side with burqa-wearing, jihad-screaming, Koran-crazed Muslims," he opined last year. At the talk itself, which took place this past Valentine's Day and drew an audience of about 50, Lucas stuck to his guns. "What's the point to respect their culture, or supposed culture, when they have a strong contempt for mine?" Lucas asked. And he wasn't content to leave it at that. The day after he spoke, he published an op-ed in The Stanford Daily responding to the charge that he is racist. "I never in my life said or wrote a bad word about Arabs--go read any of my articles," he explained. "My criticism was always addressed towards the religion and ideology of Islam. So I would like to ask Stanford students not to exploit the word 'racism' at their own convenience."

<snip>

You wouldn't know it from watching his movies--which are apolitical--but Lucas has opinions on everything. He is a fan of David Brooks and the late Oriana Fallaci (though he acknowledges her homophobia), thought the Iraq war was a bad idea ("the wrong target"), considers the press soft in portraying Islamist terrorism ("it's very upsetting that they don't allow people to see the beheadings"), loves Nicolas Sarkozy ("I think Marc Jacobs told me that Sarkozy went to synagogue"), and hates Jimmy Carter ("this fucking peanut farmer"). While he originally disagreed with Russia's brutal policies toward Chechnya, he now believes that America could learn something from Vladimir Putin. "The American Army can't take Fallujah?" Lucas asks me, incredulous. "Level it!"

More:
http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2008/03/gay-porns-neocon-kingpin.html


See also:

Booming Porn Faces Backlash (Porn Biz Explodes During Bush II Admin)
Topic started by Mark E. Smith on Oct-28-06 09:20 PM (82 replies)
Last modified by Anakin Skywalker on Oct-30-06 09:52 PM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2585016

Odd bedfellows? Ron Paul, Tucker Carlson & Moonlite BunnyRanch brothel owner
Topic started by IanDB1 on Nov-28-07 10:55 AM (3 replies)
Last modified by TreasonousBastard on Nov-28-07 11:23 AM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=3766322

Mary Carey, porn star to dine with smirk in W.H.
Topic started by donsu on May-19-05 12:35 PM (27 replies)
Last modified by cestpaspossible on May-19-05 06:41 PM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1793848

Email from the Christian (Getting) Action League about their GOP Fundie caught with a whore
Topic started by IanDB1 on Jul-21-07 05:56 PM (10 replies)
Last modified by cami715 on Jul-21-07 09:29 PM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=1397417

3...2...1 It's Liberalism's fault that I was a Gay Porn Star (Rod Majors)
Topic started by maxrandb on Mar-08-07 08:02 AM (61 replies)
Last modified by Dr Fate on Mar-09-07 06:44 PM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=367057

[DeSwiss]

1. As always....

...very enlightening.

- K&R!!!

[FatDave]

2. That's fascinating but...

...I just can't get over that an event was described as "the Oscars of gay porn". And who's to say that the Oscars aren't the GAYVN of Hollywood movies?

[anigbrowl]

10. Because the Oscars have been around much longer than the AVN/GayVN awards. Obvious really /nt

[booley]

3. There are moron in every group

We found one in gay porn.

Thus showing that al groups of humans are equal and thus have an equal ability to be dumb

[Quantess]

8. Conservatives are more likely to have convoluted issues about sexuality.

It's more than "finding a moron".

[booley]

9. yes and no

Cons are more likely but never assume that people who share traits with one's self are any less capable of dumbness.

Humans are weird and can and often do have contradictory positions.

[xchrom]

4. i had loved some of his movies -- until i found out

about his politics.

now i leave his movies alone.

he can get his money from someone else.

[Crowman1979]

5. Porn use to be good...

...but with all of the plastic surgery, waxing, steroid use, people slamming their cocks like a jackhammer and performers just in it for the money--it ain't worth buying nowadays. Heck there are a few mainstream movies that get away with some hardcore material and there is decent acting at the same time, movies like "Shortbus" and "9 songs" to name a few. Also, there is a site called "F*** for Forest" which does porn for a good cause. Then there are those old softcore foreign movies they use to show on skinemax that are fun to watch also. Overall, porn isn't bad, unless it's done for evil purposes and no one is having a good time making it.

[skypilot]

6. His politics aside...

...Michael Lucas in a loathsome douchebag. I can't fucking stand that guy. I don't want to turn this into a thread about porn because I don't want it to get locked, but I've seen some of his movies and you can tell just by watching him that he is quite full of himself. I read an interview he did in a gay magazine where he actually declared himself to be God. Yes, I know that he was probably joking but the guy obviously has that kind of an ego. He's the kind of asshole who makes gay porn where guys walk around in fancy suits smoking cigars. Fucking douche.

On edit: He's a fan of David Brooks. Enough said.

[anigbrowl]

11. This is prety funny

I was at the GayVN awards taping the ceremony because I was working on that episode of Kathy Griffin's show, and I noticed Lucas was wildly unpopular, to the point where people were throwing ice cubes on the stage as he got more and more awards.

So he's got a ridiculous ego and thinks he's God's gift to movies, or at least gay porn movies. Big deal. I think there were two reasons he annoyed the audience so much...

1) He's an annoying Eurotrash* (OK, Russian, but close enough) fag - cf. the comments about guys in suits smoking cigars - whereas most of the audience were bears, leather daddies, or one of the myriad other subgroups of the gay culture. A lot of people seemed to find his money/ sex/ power fantasies terribly annoying.

2) His film was just so much better than everything else. As in, he spent money on the camera and the lights and so on and shot it using the same sort of techniques used for any other commercial film. He made all the other stuff look embarrassingly amateurish. Sure, it's just porn, but there's no rule that says you can't be artistic about it. Since many (most?) of the gay porn companies are based in San Francisco, this basically made all the west coast productions look stupid, and they hated him for it.

I'm not saying he's a genius or anything. I taped an interview with him afterwards and had some conversation with him, and yeah, he's got a big ego etc. So what? He'd just won 9 or 10 awards and he's probably going to make more than a million bucks this year. At least his porn movie looked like an actual movie.

* I can call anyone Eurotrash if I feel like it, since I'm Euro myself.

As for the political stuff, I have no strong opinion, except to note that over in Europe (and I presume in Russia too) there's a lot of friction between the gay community and the Islamic one. Europe in general is more secular and correspondingly Europeans tend to be far less tolerant of any religious lifestyle prohibitions. You're dealing with an entirely different set of cultural baggage there.

[dbackjon]

7. He is right on one thing - Muslims hate gays more than christians do

although I am sure there are many christians that would like to execute us, Homosexuality is still a capital offense in MOST of the Muslim world.


Fundamentalist Religion of ANY stripe is our enemy.

[Richard Steele]

12. The modern "conservative mind" is an exersize in contradictory disassociation. Calm-faced INSANITY

He's no more insane than most of them; it just seems more surprising
to us when it comes from someone who does what he does.