Appearing today in the US MSM are reports that the Army is investigating the possibility that serving members of the armed forces are appearing in gay porn.
CNN quote an Army “spokeman” as claiming that the fine upstanding men of the 82nd Airborne “appear on a gay pornography Web site”.
I suppose this makes a change from “Bulldog” Gannon selling his Marine experience in the bedrooms of Washington but it does raise questions about Army pay. Are the members of the services being so well “supported” by the Republicans that they are thrust into porn to supplement their income?
CNN only identifies the site this way
The military-theme Web site does not appear to make any direct reference to the 82nd Airborne or Fort Bragg. The registered owner of the Web site’s domain name lists an address in Fayetteville, the city that adjoins Fort Bragg.
To save you wondering, this is almost certainly activeduty,com (curiously there does not seem to be a passiveduty.com) Now the use of serving military men in gay porn is neither new nor unique to the USA. The attraction of using them is obvious as they will usually be a lot fitter than the civilian population. The army and navy also have a long history in both gay iconography and practice. It is said that the horseguards in London would supplement their income by entertaining gentlemen who would slip their visiting cards in their boots while they were on guard duty. Just before the general legalisation of (civilian) homosexuality a Lord was discovered in Hyde Park in the “company” of two such soldiers. Jeff Gannon’s pitch in his advertising was that he was in the Marines but many doubt his claims about this (and indeed that he was only engaging in “journalistic activities” in his contacts with the White House)
Central Europe, particlarly the Czech Republic has a reputation for making pornography alongside their mainstream film industry. Studios there have also used men from their military and from those in Hungary. It appears that with the more relaxed atitudes it was “a bit of a laugh” and a bit of extra money on top…..of their conscript pay. Not that this stopped a press scandal and his expulsion when one of the contestants in the Czech version of Big Brother last year was revealed to have appeared in gay porn, although I am not sure if he was doing his compulsory national service when he performed.
About a decade ago there was a similar report to the current CNN one concerning another gay porn studio in the USA run by a Dick Yates. This went very quiet and it may not be entirely co-incidental that shortly after a documentary was shown on TV detailing how poorly paid the ordinary soldiers were and that some families were living on food stamps in sub-standard housing within the camps. It may well be that after this initial publicity, the matter will again be quietly dropped for fear that any prosecuted will plea poverty in mitigation.