SALT LAKE CITY – Are the devoutly religious more apt to become compulsive porn viewers, or are they simply more likely to term themselves “porn addicts” due to feelings of guilt and shame they experience every time they spy an exposed naughty bit? In a study drawing on a sample...

PHILADELPHIA – Here’s the thing about laughing last: Before you can be said to have done so, you first must be certain no additional chuckles are forthcoming. As the New York Post tells it, porn performer Mia Khalifa just had the last laugh with respect to former University of...

LOS ANGELES – In controversies involving two or more parties telling very different stories about the same events, the truth is often to be found somewhere in between the polar ends of the narrative. As I read the claims and counterclaims unfolding between the producers of Hot...

LOS ANGELES – If there’s one thing I’ve found consistently entertaining and amusing over my years working in and around the adult entertainment industry, it’s the lengths to which many pornographers will go in drawing significant qualitative distinctions between their own work...

BEIJING – Whether the entity in question is a government or a corporation, every organization that operates internationally must make decisions about its “foreign policy.” Among the toughest of the decisions that must be made is how to manage operations within...

NEW YORK – It’s an observation I’ve heard many times over the years, typically in the context of a discussion about television or film: You can depict as much gruesome violence as you wish, but try to slip in some graphic sex and your work is on its way to the cutting room floor...

LAS VEGAS – When I saw the subject line of the email I received this morning, my heart nearly skipped a beat: “The Erotic Heritage Museum vs. The Westboro Baptist Church.” EHM vs. WBC, eh? This, I thought to myself, is either going to be one fascinating civil lawsuit, or the...

SAN DIEGO – Back when I was a high school senior, military recruiters somehow caught wind I wasn’t going straight to college after graduation. As a result, I received at least one phone call a week in which a recruiter for one of the four major branches of the armed forces tried...

WELLINGTON, N.Z. – Nothing brings politicians and political activists together like expressing grave concern about the impact of pornography on modern society. Few, if any, other issues have the same potential for creating agreement between the socially conservative religious...

NEW YORK – Generally speaking, I take a dim view of how the media covers porn. Far too often, the embedded biases of the author are too palpable: They start with the assumption either porn is a cultural disaster or all criticism of porn is informed by prudishness or a hostility...