In Defense of Michael Lucas

Earlier this week, pornstar mogul and occasional ideologue Michael Lucas posted a pretty controversial editorial on The Advocate arguing against the mosque at Ground Zero. The blog Queer Sighted argued right back, but for all the wrong reasons.

Love or hate him, you have to admit: Michael Lucas can be kind of a dick. He's been making his political views well known for a while now and, whether or not you always agree with him, it's true that he's not much for diplomacy. The controversial editorial in question, entitled "The Monument to Muslim Terrorism," isn't exactly politically correct. In fact, we could pull a few quotes that are downright offensive, and the troubles with his arguments don't exactly stop at poor word choice. Unfortunately, Queer Sighted's Brent Sullivan's critical response to the editorial doesn't attack Lucas based on the merits (or lack thereof) of his political opinion, but rather, attacks him for having the audacity to be a pornstar with any political opinion at all:

Why the hell is Michael Lucas writing editorials for The Advocate? You know he's a porn star (and magnate), right? Why is a porn star writing editorials in The Advocate, arguably an LGBT publication held in the highest regard for journalistic integrity?

Pray tell us, what is it about the porn industry that necessarily excludes its performers ("and magnates") from participating in political discourse? In the year 2010, are we really still so prudish and closed-minded as to think that anyone who has sex on camera or makes their living as a sex worker should keep their dirty, slutty little opinions to themselves? We may disagree with Lucas' stance on this and many other issues, but we can't deny that he's a smart, exceptionally articulate man. All things being relative, we'd say that the fact that he works so hard to defend and promote his ideals makes him a better man than most—even if we maybe think that some of those ideals are sort of fucked up.

What's more, one would think that, if anything, Lucas' remarkable career would provide him with greater authority as an opinion writer. The man crawled his way up from no-name obscurity to become one of the most recognized and successful businessmen in the porn industry. He founded and runs a multi-million dollar company. If he's not qualified to have an opinion then, we wonder, who is?

When it comes to those who have earned my respect to represent the LGBT community, I look to David Sedaris or Dan Savage, Barney Frank and Ellen Degeneres. There are innumerable examples of gay citizens who uphold a high standard of integrity in both their careers and outspokenness.

Ha! Okay, we'll admit that Barney Frank makes sense in this list—he's a US House Representative and it's his job to have political opinions. Otherwise, let's get this straight, shall we? The gay pornstar/business mogul should keep his mouth shut and let the gay memoirist, the gay sex advice columnist and the gay comedienne do his talking for him? Because his career somehow lacks comparative integrity? We don't know about that. Sure, her groundbreaking work on "The Ellen Degeneres Show" totally got snubbed by The Nobel Committee, but aside from vagina and general family friendliness we really can't really think of anything that distinguishes Degeneres' career from Michael Lucas'. Americans are constantly giving soapboxes to celebrities based solely on the authority bestowed upon them by their celebrity status. We don't need Gwyneth Paltrow to tell us what to eat, Sean Penn to tell us to give a fuck about Haiti, or Gisele Bundchen to tell us how to take care of our babies—but they do, and we let them.

Sullivan argues that "in the straight community, porn stars aren't held in high esteem—because they're porn stars." Well good for them, but straight people do a lot of things we wouldn't do. The thing that we have to remember here is that being gay, by definition, means identifying with other people because of the kind of sex you like to have and who you like to have it with. This may sound like a trivializing or simplifying argument, but one cannot underestimate the importance and power of sex. Protesters have marched, laws have been changed, people have died so that we can have the kind of sex we like to have. Thus, sex workers occupy an important and valued position in our culture that, we would argue, may even offer unique insights into our politics. And regardless, using the work that they do as an excuse to belittle them as somehow less than deserving of a platform from which to fight for their beliefs…well, that basically dick-slaps 30 years of political dissent right in the face.

· The Problem with Michael Lucas (queersighted.com)
· The Monument to Muslim Terrorism