If you listen only to the Christian conservatives, you might get the impression that pornography and child porn are one and the same. For them, it seems axiomatic that porn exploits minors. They might also have you believing that even legitimate producers of adult materials secretly wish they could exploit those under the legal age.

I'm sick and tired of being painted with this same wide, dirty brush. As a pornographer, I reject the idea that porn and the exploitation of children are equivalent. This is a trick used by the right wing to cloud the issue. It masks their true uptight, puritanical, antisex attitudes.

The models who appear in this magazine and in our adult videos are all of legal age. This is true for all performers in the legitimate XXX field.

As the father of five kids, I also resent the notion that I would have anything to do with child exploitation. People working in adult entertainment are no different than those who work in other fields; we all recognize the need to nurture and protect the precious resource that our children represent. That all children represent.

So to the right wing I say this: Look for your perverts closer to home. These days, it would seem that most of America's pedophiles are either in the church or the Republican Party.

Larry Flynt
Publisher,
HUSTLER Magazine