Citizens for Community Values is pressuring LodgeNet -- a publicly traded Sioux Falls company to stop offering pornographic titles through its in-room pay-per-view service. The company provides television, on-demand movies and Internet access to 1.8 million rooms in 9,300 hotel properties across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, said he believes some of the movies offered by Lodgenet are prosecutable under federal law.

"They're selling hardcore pornography in all 50 states -- in fact in most cities, in most towns across America," Burress said during a news conference. "That makes their business our business."

LodgeNet said in a statement that mature content is just one category of a wide array of programming.

The company said there's a reason the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI haven't prosecuted companies for offering adult content: It's legal.

Courts have made it clear that the government's ability to dictate taste in private entertainment choices is extremely limited, the company said, and the constitutional system supports individual choice over government coercion.

"CCV confuses its own taste with what the law allows," LodgeNet said in a statement.

The company said it follows the same standards as cable and satellite providers, and its systems allow hotel guests to block access to adult titles. It added that individual hotels determine programming and content, and some do not offer adult titles.

But Bob Navarro, a former Los Angeles police detective hired by CCV, said the three movies he documented and recorded during a July hotel stay in Pasadena were hardcore films that "left absolutely nothing to the imagination."

He said he was shocked that material normally limited to "sleazy adult businesses" was now available in hotel rooms.

Burress said his organization will pass the materials on to Marty Jackley, the U.S. attorney for South Dakota, and ask him to investigate whether LodgeNet is violating federal obscenity laws.

Jackley said he can't comment on possible or ongoing investigations.

Burress and his allies have had some success, pressuring about 16 Ohio and Kentucky hotels to remove adult movies.

The group expanded its fight recently, putting up a "LodgeNet Profits From Porn" billboard along Sioux Falls' main north-south artery and listing LodgeNet's adult movies titles on its Web site.

Burress said if federal authorities won't prosecute LodgeNet, he'll work with state prosecutors to go after the company for violating state obscenity laws.

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Candidate for US President Explains Porn at Hotels

AP, 7/9/07 - Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, who rails against the "cesspool" of pornography, is being criticized by social conservatives who argue that he should have tried to halt hardcore hotel movie offerings during his near-decade on the Marriott board.

Two anti-pornography crusaders, as well as two conservative activists of the type Romney is courting, say the distribution of such graphic adult movies runs counter to the family image cultivated by Romney, the Marriotts and their shared Mormon faith.

"Marriott is a major pornographer. And even though he may have fought it, everyone on that board is a hypocrite for presenting themselves as family values when their hotels offer 70 different types of hardcore pornography," said Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, an anti-pornography group based on Ohio.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a leading conservative group in Washington, said: "They have to assume some responsibility. It's their hotels, it's their television sets."

During a recent Associated Press interview, Romney said he did not recall pornography coming up for discussion while he was on the Marriott board from 1992 to 2001. Despite being chairman of the board's audit committee, he also said he was unaware of how much revenue pornography may have generated for the hotel chain.

Romney said his current concern is not about pornography per se, but children unwittingly stumbling upon it on the Internet or television.

"I am not pursuing an effort to try and stop adults from being able to acquire or see things that I find objectionable; that's their right. But I do vehemently oppose practices or business procedures that will allow kids to be exposed to obscenity," the he said.

Pornography is a lucrative business for various hotel chains. Estimates vary widely, up to $500 million annually industrywide by one opponent, John Harmer, who served as California's lieutenant governor under Ronald Reagan.

Marriott and other major hoteliers say they offer pay-per-view pornography because their customers demand it and entertainment service contracts require it to underwrite first-run movies and free television.

Fundamentalists Want to Outlaw Porn in Hotels

AP, 8/22/06 - Pornographic movies now seem nearly as pervasive in America’s hotel rooms as tiny shampoo bottles, and the lodging industry shows little concern as conservative activists rev up a protest campaign aimed at triggering a federal crackdown.

A coalition of 13 conservative groups — including the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America — took out full-page ads in some editions of USA Today earlier this month urging the Justice Department and FBI to investigate whether some of the pay-per-view movies widely available in hotels violate federal and state obscenity laws.

The coalition also is trying to draw attention to CleanHotels.com, a directory of hotels and motels nationwide that pledge to exclude adult offerings from their in-room entertainment service.

Though porn is now cheaply and readily accessible on the Internet, and through many other outlets, the activists chose to target the hotel industry in part because of the well-known brands of corporations that cater to family vacationers as well as business travelers.

"These are places that you take your family — these are respectable institutions," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. "Anything that brings porn into the mainstream is a concern. It just desensitizes people."

Millions of dollars generated
Precise statistics on in-room adult entertainment are hard to come by. By some estimates, adult movies are available in roughly 40 percent of the nation’s hotels, representing more than 1.5 million rooms. Industry analysts suggest that these adult offerings generate 60 to 80 percent of total in-room entertainment revenue — several hundred million dollars a year.

The recent newspaper ad mentioned no hotel companies by name because of legal concerns, but it did target the two major suppliers of in-room adult movies — South Dakota-based LodgeNet and Denver-based OnCommand, a subsidiary of Liberty Media Corp. The ad accused both companies of distributing hardcore pornography to their hotel clients, and it provided a link to a list of X-rated movie titles.

Spokesmen for OnCommand and Liberty Media declined to comment on the ad, and LodgeNet’s spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment. However, top spokespeople for two of the biggest hotel chains, Hilton and Marriott, defended the policies that make adult movies widely available at their affiliated hotels.

Both Kathy Shepard of Hilton and Roger Conner of Marriott said the bulk of their hotels are operated by franchise-holders who make their own decisions about in-room programming. They made clear, however, that their companies consider adult movies to be an acceptable option because they can be ignored or blocked out by guests not wishing to view them.

"Really ultraconservative groups try to target the hotels in their zest to eliminate porn," Shepard said. "In their zest to have their personal morals prevail, they’re eliminating choice for others."

Conner said none of the programming offered by Marriott is illegal, and he depicted adult movies as a standard part of today’s hotel business.

"In-room movies are a revenue stream," he said. "This is a business matter."

Former porn addict leading campaign
The leader of the campaign against in-room porn is Phil Burress, a self-described former porn addict who heads the Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values.

Burress and his allies have had some success regionally, pressuring about 15 Ohio and Kentucky hotels to stop offering adult movies. But he says a nationwide pressure campaign would be difficult because nearly all the big hotel chains have similar policies — porn is available at some but not all of their affiliates.

Though unable to cite specific cases, Burress contended that the availability of in-room porn is making hotels more dangerous.

"As more and more of these (hardcore) titles become available, we’re going to have sexual abuse cases coming out of the hotels," he said. "Hotels are just as dangerous as environments around strip joints and porn stores."

Hoping for a Justice Department probe
Burress said he was "cautiously optimistic" that Justice Department officials — whom he and other anti-porn leaders confer with periodically — would seriously consider investigating hotel-based pornography.

Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said federal authorities are committed to toughening enforcement of obscenity laws, but he declined to comment on specific targets for investigations.

LodgeNet and OnCommand together provide in-room entertainment to more than 1.8 million hotel rooms in North America — with customers that include Sheraton, Hilton, Holiday Inn, Ritz-Carlton, Hyatt, Marriott and Ramada.

The standard in-room packages offered by LodgeNet and OnCommand include adult movies, but they have tried to accommodate hotels preferring a no-porn alternative, according to Shannon Sedgwick Davis, executive director of an association of hotels which don’t offer adult movies to guests.

One problem, she said, is that the big hotel chains often have negotiated bulk contracts with the video suppliers that include the adult movies and can be expensive to cancel.

Press Release from the Family Research Council

August 8, 2006 - In today's edition of USA Today, Family Research Council (FRC) joined a coalition of pro-family organizations on a full-page ad urging the Department of Justice to investigate whether "adult" videos being sold in hotels by OnCommand and LodgeNet violate long-established federal and state laws regarding distribution of obscene material.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released the following statement:

"OnCommand and LodgeNet are two of the most notorious purveyors of hardcore pornography to hotel chains. We can no longer underestimate the drastic public consequences of adult hardcore pornography. The evidence linking hardcore pornography to sex crimes against women and children and social ills such as divorce, adultery, and family breakdown is overwhelming. The idea that pornography is a victimless crime should be consigned to the ash heap of history.

"Current law is adequate to pursue the distributors of pornography but we lack enforcement. These companies continue to ignore federal law and rake in huge profits at the tragic expense of women and children.

"We urge the Justice Department to make enforcement a top priority by investigating and prosecuting white-collar pornographers. Enforcement is absolutely necessary if we are committed to protecting our children and cleaning up our culture."

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