Four days after Steward's run-in with the police, the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story by Frank Rich profiling the adult-movie industry. The cover's headline was "The World's Most Profitable Back Lot," and it noted below, "There's no business like porn business." The essay posited that porn is a business, run by businessmen, who happen to trade in sex.

In an echo of Rich's thesis, Steward himself informed the police, "I have done nothing wrong. I'm a businessman." And at present, as a businessman, Steward defends his work at the extreme end of porn in nakedly capitalist terms. "This is no different than people selling cars at a car lot," Steward says exasperatedly.

The product he pushes, he says, is no different from the rest of the products of pop culture, like the gross-out humor being offered from cable channels to movie theaters. "It's like 'Jackass' on MTV," says Steward. "Some guy swims in feces on MTV, and that's OK. But for a girl to swallow 80 loads of cum is obscene? I don't think so."

After all, when it comes to bukkake, Steward says, he has moved some 200,000 copies already. JM Productions is only up to "American Bukkake 14," and Steward isn't even the only producer making it. The same day Steward encountered the LAPD, Jim Powers was back shooting another bukkake that night in North Hollywood.

According to AVN.com, Powers declared on the set, "We're doing this for all of America."

Of bukkake, the businessman says, "If people didn't want it, it wouldn't be made."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The case of Adam Glasser, who estimates his company earned $1.6 million last year, is scheduled to start in October. Fortunately for Glasser, he has found himself a lawyer with fisting experience. In 1976, attorney Roger Diamond defended the maker of "Plunge 1," a gay fisting film, and won. Diamond says with confidence, "This thing will be a trip down memory lane."

Steward insists, "I didn't do anything wrong." He, like Glasser, with lawyer Alan Gelbard, plans to go to trial, if necessary, rather than cop a plea. He would be fighting for his First Amendment rights, but for his finances as well. Porn makers who take guilty pleas may face fatally high financial penalties if federal agents later pick up the cases of those who already have state obscenity convictions.

Several porn companies, though, are already discontinuing their extreme video lines. Metro Video's "The World's Biggest Gangbang 3" is no longer available at an adult video store near you. And the porn industry is still trying to figure out if, as they fear, the advent of George W. Bush and his unabashedly moralistic attorney general, John Ashcroft, will generate a conservative trickle-down effect when it comes to obscenity prosecutions, with extreme porn the Achilles' heel for the entire industry.

"This is a crackdown," proclaims criminal defense attorney Jeffrey Douglas, who works regularly with the adult-movie industry and sits on the ACLU's Southern California board of directors. As Douglas sees it, the LAPD was just lying in wait for the likes of Ashcroft, hoping that with Bush in office more federal monies will become available for obscenity prosecutions.

The LAPD vice squad, believes Douglas, is hoping extreme porn will lead to easy convictions, resulting in bigger budgets and providing them sought-after respect. "If all you do all day long is watch X-rated movies and search porn Web sites," Douglas says scornfully, "it's harder to get status amongst your colleagues."

Regardless, pornographers pushing the obscenity envelope didn't foresee that this day would come, says Douglas. "I've been at meetings and events where, if you're talking to a 25-year-old porn-maker about federal prosecutions for obscenity, you might as well be talking about the Spanish-Mexican War," he says ruefully.

And with extreme porn, hypothesizes Douglas, a conservative government struggling for a popular foothold could find the perfect political tool. "In order to pursue obscenity prosecution, you need the convergence of two things," Douglas explains. "You need to have both an ideological commitment and a political payoff." Extreme porn would provide a bone to throw the rabidly anti-porn right-wing constituencies who helped Bush into office, as well as an easily demonized enemy to fight against for mainstream support.

Nevertheless, "Tampa Tushy-Fest," says Douglas, isn't obscene by today's community standards. "If what's available to California consumers and on the Internet is taken into account, then Adam should get a written apology," he says.

The LAPD, for its part, says this is all just business as usual. "I've been doing these type of investigations for the last 16 years," says Detective Steve Takeshita, who is overseeing the latest obscenity cases. "This is standard practice."

Sex in the bedroom may have gotten wilder but, Takeshita asserts, that doesn't make movies featuring provocative sexual content any less obscene when distributed. "What two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home is between them," he says. "As soon as that activity is distributed publicly, that's where obscenity statutes come into practice."

Regardless of the result of the "Plunge 1" case, Takeshita predicts "Tampa Tushy-Fest" is going down, based on his previous experiences with porn. "I think it will be found to be obscene because of past cases that we've done," he says confidently.

Was the LAPD pressured by the federal government? Takeshita says no way. "The LAPD doesn't receive direction on how to do investigation from the feds," Takeshita snaps. "We are not doing anything we haven't done for the last 16 years or even longer." (The investigation of Seymore Butts, it should be noted, began in the Clinton era.)

Deborah Sanchez, the prosecuting attorney in the Glasser case, agrees with the LAPD. What's new is only that the cases are going to trial, she says. "We've prosecuted dozens of obscenity cases," she explains, "but we've always gotten pleas. This is getting attention now that the city attorney is involved."

Sanchez asserts pornographers like Glasser, who push the limits of porn, won't be able to hide behind the First Amendment in court. "From what I've seen," Sanchez says of Glasser's tape, "this goes beyond what the First Amendment covers." The porn industry, Sanchez says, knows full well the unwritten rules of what they cannot do without risking prosecutions. "The industry knew there are things you just don't distribute."

It remains unclear why 100 men masturbating on a woman is less protected by the First Amendment than, say, three men doing the same thing. It's a state of affairs that only serves to illuminate that, when the subject is porno, the criterion of "community standards" becomes increasingly hard to define.

If extreme porn is the adult industry's indirect attempt to narrow the definition of obscenity further to give themselves greater freedoms, Sanchez says, it will backfire: "They want to see if they can test the waters and push the boundaries a little more as far as the First Amendment."

Sanchez expects to win -- "Juries have sided with us," she says -- and she promises that the city will give the producers more of the same if porn continues to test the obscenity limits of adult video in the future. "It's going to continue to be prosecuted regardless of whether Glasser is convicted or not," she says. "If others are distributing videos with bestiality, fisting, defecation, [they are] going to be prosecuted."

Not everyone in the porn world disagrees. "We've had a free ride for a long time," concedes self-appointed porn spokesman William Margold these days, somewhat wistfully. The act of bukkake, he says, encapsulates what's gone wrong with porn.

"I think the biggest thing bukkake proves is that the adult-movie industry has forgotten how to create," Margold sighs. "When you've forgotten how to create, you go through the motions over and over and over again."

But that's not how Steward and Butts and their cohort see the world. "I'm innocent of any wrongdoing and I'm going to fight," pledges Steward. "Why do people have the right to watch what they want to watch in the privacy of their own home?" he asks rhetorically. "That answer is we live in the United States of America."

Porn producer Rob Black, head of Extreme Associates, has since searched his own online buying records looking for the same pseudonymous "Steven Peterson" of the Butts and bukkake cases. It turns out Peterson had already paid Black a visit. The movie purchased was "In the Days of Whore," and, as Black points out, it is not just any video. The finale was shot in a church and features a multi-money shot accessorized with urine and a crucifix.

"We extend our arms openly with a warm embrace for the consequences to come," Black taunts the LAPD from his Web site. "Give us a call if you want to purchase any other products!"

In a plea for support on AVN.com, Glasser is seeking support from porn friends and fans. He asks that distributors push his product more aggressively, retailers introduce their customers to his videos and, "last, but certainly not least, I simply ask fans to whack off a little more!"

Already, Court TV is calling Seymore Butts.

Recent Stories