Man of the Hour: Michael Lucas

I should do more Men (and Women) of the Hour posts. I totally missed my chance with Julian Bond when he was on the Colbert Report and signed a petition in favor of gay marriage within one week. He's got an admirable sense of humor, a strong focus on civil rights for all people, and, heck, he's a bit of a looker for a man his age. Anyway.

This week, Michael Lucas—the gay porn producer/actor/director I so admire for living the American Dream and being reasonably upstanding—is in Israel doing a live sex show. I don't know if it's one performance or many, but in any case, he's over there for a performance, and the media's gone a little crazy, reporting on something they'd normally ignore. People are condemning him, Israelis are telling him to get out of their country, blah blah blah. I think it's great. As he points out, Israel bests most countries, including the USA and especially Israel's neighbors, when it comes to gay rights. They allow gay men in their military (then again, service is mandatory), and they allow these live sex shows and other free expressions of sexuality. Michael's mentioned on his blog that when customs asks him why he's in Israel, he tells them he's an adult performer in for a sex show, and there's never any question or problem.

Israel certainly has issues. It wasn't created under the most morally unambiguous of circumstances, and the strong military presence leads to some horrible, horrible shit. But I do think it's important to remember that the values of the country are just, well, better than the values of surrounding countries. (Yes, I understand some will disagree with me, but I doubt any of my friends will disagree on that point, and the blog is primarily written for people I know.) Does that give it more of a right to exist? Probably not...I don't think they're directly related. But I would be very happy to support a country that lets Michael Lucas do live sex shows. That's more of an American value than America can muster.