Conservatives invade your hotel room

Bet you thought you were all alone in your hotel room at the end of a long, tiring business day. Just you, a bottle of Cutty Sark, and Debbie Does Dallas: The Revenge. But you're not alone; you've got the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and eleven other busybody conservative groups for company, crowding your bed, breathing hard, taking copious notes. And they want to take your hotel porn away:

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.

There's not a chance that the hotel industry will take this lying down, as it were. You can criticize housekeeping standards all you want, but don't mess with their revenue streams.

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.

It's laughable that these conservatives claim to be protecting families; honestly, when was the last time that your mom and dad gave you the green light for hot and cold running porn while staying at the suburban hotelera? The simple fact is that these folks just don't like sex. And they really don't like you thinking about sex. H. L. Mencken had these puritans dead to rights many years ago: they are motivated solely by the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

(Cross-posted.)