There is Nothing Tasteful I can Affix "-Gate" To

It should come as no surprise that Rick Santorum wants to ban hardcore pornography. He's a religious weirdo who believes that God isn't doing enough on His part when it comes to monitoring people's boners.

What should come as a surprise is the response from pornographers. While most of their responses range from "He's out of his mind" to "It'll never happen," I found the response from Michael Lucas, a gay pornographer, to be the most interesting and, in a way, maybe the most indicative of what America is supposed to be. Read on--

Lucas, who grew up in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States in 1997 after working in Europe as a male prostitute, founded Lucas Entertainment in 1998, which flourished into a mega-enterprise that produces some of the most lavish gay porn films in the industry. His side company, Lucas Raunch, boasts a repertoire of hardcore fetish videos that are so explicit that Canadian officials banned copies from the country in 2009.

"This is not what Ronald Reagan envisioned," Lucas said after reviewing Santorum's plan. "This is not what the Founding Fathers envisioned. This is what Rick Santorum envisions. And I think the guy is crazy."

Lucas, by the way, considers himself a conservative, votes Republican and donates generously to several libertarian and right-wing causes. And when he casts a ballot in the November election, he hopes it will be for Mitt Romney.

That, in short, is what America means to me. It means gay entrepreneurs immigrating to America to vote for whoever the hell they want to, regardless of what is popular or expected. That and jerking off within the limits of the law and a basic sense of morality are what America means to me. Those two things, together, like the insignia of Conan the Barbarian.

I also like that these guys aren't sweating a presidential candidate equating them with human smuggling rings and prostitution. I don't know what that means, exactly, but I like it.