Presidential hopeful caught in porn row
Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is being questioned by social conservatives over on-demand pornography in Marriott hotel chain rooms.
Mr Romney, a Marriott board member from 1992 to 2001, has publicly voiced his opinions on the perils of pornography.
Now conservative activists have attacked the candidate, a devout Mormon, and the Marriott for presenting themselves as family-orientated when pornography continues to be distributed in their hotels.
Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, an anti-pornography group based on Ohio said:
“Marriott is a major pornographer. And even though he may have fought it, everyone on that board is a hypocrite for presenting themselves as family values when their hotels offer 70 different types of hardcore pornography.”
A leading conservative in Washington and president of the Family Research Council Tony Perkins, said:
“They have to assume some responsibility. It’s their hotels, it’s their television sets.”
Mr Romney said in a recent Associated Press interview that during his time as chairman of the board’s audit committee, he has no recollection of pornography being discussed.
He claimed he was oblivious to how much revenue the Marriott chain may have generated from the on-demand service.
Mr Romney emphasised that his main fear is young children innocently coming across pornography on television and the internet.
“I am not pursuing an effort to try and stop adults from being able to acquire or see things that I find objectionable; that’s their right. But I do vehemently oppose practices or business procedures that will allow kids to be exposed to obscenity,” he said.
Marriott and other major hotels claim they offer pay-per-view sex videos due to demand from customers.
Marriott spokesman Roger Conner said of Mitt Romney:
“It certainly would have been wrong to impose his own personal beliefs if they were contrary to the financial interests of the company.”
Mr Conner also said that before Romney joined the hotel chain, Marriott had a contract with ON Command Corporation for television and movies which was signed in 1991, a year before Romney joined.
Following Romney’s departure to take over the 2002 Winter Olympics, the Marriott chain praised him in a announcement as an “active, hands-on director.”
When asked if the contract with On Command was ever discussed or voted on by the board, Marriott refused to comment, saying the directors’ votes and meeting minutes are proprietary.
On Command was bought out by LodgeNet Entertainment Corporation last year and is now responsible for the Marriott’s contracts.
The President of American Family Association of Michigan, Gary Glenn, said: “The Marriott Corporation may be tap dancing around this subject, but a candidate for president should not be able to.”
While it may appear that the Marriott are in the front line, the corporation claims ownership to only a dozen hotels while the rest are franchised.
The Marriott name is engraved on more than 2,800 hotels and Marriott International has more than 500,000 hotel rooms with an annual income exceeding $10 billion.
The fact that most of Marriott’s hotels are franchised, it gives them less control over what goes on.
Mr Romney’s father, former Michigan Governor George Romney and Marriott’s founder J. Willard Marriott, who opened the first Marriott in 1957, became close friends.
The son of Marriott’s founder J.W. Bill Marriott said in 2000 that it was impossible to separate pornographic movies from other films.
