Matt Sanchez
 In case you can’t tell, Sanchez is on the left. |
Claims to fame: Hardcore right-wing, pro-war blogger; U.S. Marine reservist implicated in the Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy; self-described “Hispanic, a Marine, a nontraditional … Ivy League student and a 100 percent flag-waving red-blooded Reagan Republican”; gay-porn star and male prostitute with a female wife; amnesiac
Add to “claims to fame”: Professional whiner. Notes Wikipedia: “In 2005, while a junior at the Columbia University School of General Studies, Sanchez claims he was harassed by students during the Fall 2005 ‘Activities Day.’ According to Sanchez, he was approached by members of the International Socialist Organization, an anti-war campus group. Sanchez said that they called him ’stupid.’ He made formal complaints to the university which investigated, but found no grounds for punishing the three accused students. The three accused students dispute Sanchez’s account of the events. In a Columbia Daily Spectator editorial titled ‘The Conservative Witch Hunt,’ Zach Zill, one of the accused students, disputed Sanchez’s allegations, saying that while he did state that he found on-campus military recruitment offensive, he had done so without using epithets or derogatory language.
“Sanchez and others in the student group MilVets, an organization for on-campus veterans, had also voiced their frustration at what they perceived to be a lack of regard for veterans on the campus. In February 2006, the university amending its non-discrimination policy to include ‘military status’ as a group to be protected from harassment. …
“On December 4, 2006 Sanchez wrote an opinion piece for the New York Post, titled ‘Diversity ‘Double-Talk Ivy’s “Inclusion” excludes military’ and this led to him being invited onto various conservative talk shows in January 2007, such as Fox News’ ‘Hannity & Colmes’ and ‘The O’Reilly Factor,’ to talk about the alleged harassment incident. Sanchez also received support from conservative leaders such as Michelle Malkin and Newt Gingrich.
“On March 2, 2007, Sanchez was awarded the Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). …”
And that’s what blew the lid off Sanchez’s lurid past: “A featured speaker at the conference, Ann Coulter, made some controversial remarks at the event, referring to presidential candidate John Edwards as a ‘faggot.’ This sparked public attention and controversy, during which Sanchez’s earlier career as a star in gay adult films was brought to light. Subsequently, the revelations were reported in major media, such as MSNBC’s ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann’ and the Marine Corps Times.
“In response Sanchez wrote ‘Porn Free,’ a Salon editorial in which he notes comparisons were made to another Marine in gay porn films Rich Merritt, who authored Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star and was on active duty when the New York Times Magazine included him in a cover story about gays in the military under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’.”
In the rambling, disjointed and syntactically-challenged “Porn free,” Sanchez whimpered about the “abuse” he suffered “when gay and liberal bloggers posted ancient pictures” of him from his porn days (”ancient,” according to Sanchez, meaning about 15 years old — but we’ll get to Matt’s convenient amnesia in a moment):
…[I]n the age of Google, when any stray personal factoid may be lodged somewhere on the Internet, it’s impossible to have privacy. We have all done things we don’t want advertised, and many of us may have identities we’ve outgrown…. . .
… But some issues are complex, and some really are simple. People complain of a lack of depth in public discourse and the way complicated debates get compressed into meaningless sound bites. Well, porn is just … porn. …
. . .
Porn reduces the mind and flattens the soul. I don’t like it. That’s not hypocrisy talking; that’s just experience. I sometimes think of myself, ironically, as a progressive: I started off as a liberal but I progressed to conservatism. Part of that transformation is due to my time in the industry. How does a conservative trace his roots to such distasteful beginnings? I didn’t like porn’s liberalism. In porn, everything taboo is trivialized and everything trivial is magnified.
Being in the adult entertainment industry was sort of like being in a cult, and like all followers of a cult, I have a difficult time figuring out when I stopped believing in the party line. I can tell you, though, that by the time I finished my brief tour of the major studios, I was pretty disgusted with myself. …
Why did I become a conservative? Just look at what I left, and look at who is attacking me today. Let’s face it: Those on the left who now attack me would be defending me if I had espoused liberal causes and spoken out against the Iraq war before I was outed as a pseudo celebrity. They’d be talking about publishing my memoir and putting me on a diversity ticket with Barack Obama. Instead, those who complain about wire-tapping reserve the right to pry into my private life and my past for political brownie points.
Wikipedia also observes: “Sanchez also noted comparisons to Jeff Gannon, whom he met at the CPAC convention and had also advertised as a gay escort and was later outed as part of a media scandal.”
Hey, wait a minute! Sanchez openly gay and he serves in the U.S. Marine Corps? what gives? It sounds to us as though Sanchez is trying to pass himself off as a former “gay for pay.”
In the meantime, the USMC doesn’t know what to do with him. Wrote John Hoellwarth in the March 17, 2007, Navy Times:
While Sanchez says he has put his gay porn past behind him, the Marine Corps hasn’t. Homosexual behavior is prohibited by an article of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that forbids “sodomy.”As a member of the IRR, Sanchez falls under the authority of Marine Corps Mobilization Command in Kansas City, Mo., where the commanding general’s staff judge advocate, Lt. Col. Michael Blessing, has begun an inquiry into the revelations about his past, according to command spokesman Shane Darbonne.
“We’re looking into it and we’re going to verify facts and determine if any further action is warranted,” Darbonne said.
As of Friday afternoon, officials at Marine Forces Reserve in New Orleans were unable to confirm whether Sanchez had enlisted prior to the end of his film career or if Reserve Marines were prohibited from doing porn when not in a drilling status. Sanchez has not returned phone calls seeking comment. He joined the Corps May 14, 2003 and is a refrigeration mechanic.
On Friday Officials at Marine Corps Recruiting Command were unable to say whether past participation in gay porn disqualifies a potential enlistee because it was unclear how the current “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy might apply.
(”This is something you will hear a lot of on your side of the fence,” Sanchez would later whine to Radar Online, “you who have maligned me, when all I did was write an article about my experience and went on television to talk about it.” Somebody call the waaaahmbulance!)
Memorable observations culled from reader reactions to Sanchez’s Salon.com screed:
This bulletin from the party of personal responsibility…This article can be summed up like this: “I am a victim.”
I didn’t realize performing in porn counted as someone’s “private life.” Next up: hypocritical liberals start prying into Tom Cruise’s private life in Mission Impossible III.
When a man with a former career in escorting and gay porn ideologically embraces the anti-gay Republican Party and physically embraces one of its most hateful representatives, that’s not growth or change or development. That’s a reaction formation. And writing this column is another example of his exhibitionism. This isn’t journalism or even a confession — it’s dysfunction. Sanchez needs a therapist, not an audience.
Conservatives love gays. They just don’t think they should have any rights (oh, and some of them think you should be stoned to death). …Hooray for your little memorial. Get them to build one for all the gay Americans who’ve served and died for this country in silence and maybe people will see you as something more than a self-promoting twirp.
Oh Major Rod, you still don’t get it, do you? The left isn’t attacking you for having done gay porn. We don’t care about the porn, the porn isn’t the point. The left is angry because you are gay (or at least can be persuaded to be given the right amount of cash) and yet are hanging around with vitriolic, anti-gay warriors and they you. The point is that these people hate something that is a core part of you and yet you stand there and chuckle along as they gay bash. We are not attacking you; we are trying to nudge you into realization here.
The same people who want to outlaw gays in the military, call people “faggots” without getting “sent to rehab” and make sure that gays never gain the rights to marriage or adoption are perfectly cool with you being gay? Since when?
[W]hat is shameful is hiding your past — especially if your past was a public career. If politicians, both budding and experienced, should have learned anything by now, it is that if you are dissatisfied with your life and you want to remake it, you need to own your past — not deny it.
I’ve often wondered what lurked in the soul of a gay conservative. You’ve given me some insight, at least in your case. You once sought validation and approval by doing pornography. Now you’ve “progressed” to seeking validation and approval from yet another set of people who want to screw you. And while I’m fine with you getting it from whomever you want (I’m a liberal, after all), what’s all wrong about it is that your latest Johns are screwing the rest of us, too.
Quit kidding yourself, you got burned for accepting an award from a group that would chop off your head in front of a live studio audience if they could get away with it. You know it, we know it and Mammon knows that fascist harpy you had your picture taken with knows it.
Another member of the Ted Haggard, Jeff Gannon wing of the Republican party!
Dear Major RodWhile you’re at Columbia, why don’t you take some of that GI Bill cash and invest in a critical thinking class?
When you have sex for money on videos and they are for sale, that isn’t private behavior.
Never heard of the guy but I’d have more respect for a guy who appeared in gay porn films than I would for a guy willing to have his picture taken with Ann Coulter.
Joining an anti-gay, anti-porn party when you’ve been a gay porn star makes you a *hypocrite*, and this is why the left is “attacking” you.
Oh puh-leeze, cpl. Girlfriend. You’re queer, you got found out, you led a double or triple or quadruple life and now we are supposed to feel sorry for you being victimized because, um, those nasty liberals had to go and out you. It’s all their fault that you are now a lying “faggot”, as your new buddy, Mr. Coulter, would say.
If you want privacy, you don’t become a gay porn star.
So far everyone seems to be missing the irony here…Let’s see, Timmy…
Ann Coulter calls a happily married heterosexual man a “faggot”.
And actual, honest to God card carrying porn star faggot is photographed with his arm around her.
The actual, honest to God card carrying faggot the complains because “the Left” calls bullshit.
Oh, that’s rich.“How does a conservative trace his roots to such distasteful beginnings?”
Honey, the world of porn was up compared to the scum you’re associating with now.
Can I sue for intellectual whiplash? The guy embraces Coulter and then complains there’s no depth to the discourse. What a wanker.
Poor Matt…….Are you serious? You are at a convention where Ann Coulter calls John Edwards a faggot and the audience laughs and applauds but you don’t find conservates to be hateful?
You allow yourself to be used by right wing conservatives who delight in emasculating everyone who does not agree with them and would deny equal rights to gay people and somehow your enemies are the liberals and the left?
When asked if you are gay you talk only about your fiance and wife?
Who has the problem here?
This is the funniest Salon article ever! My favorite parts:1. Appeared in gay porn films and advertised his sex services, yet complains about being “outed” and people “prying into my private life”. Ha ha!
2. Says appearing in gay porn films is what made him become a conservative. Genius!
3. Says as a conservative he’s concerned that other people might have smaller penises than he does. Too much!
4. Would defend Ann Coulter’s right to call him a faggot. Classic!
5. Bonded with “minor scandal” fellow gay prostie Jeff Gannon at CPAC. Stop it, you’re killing me!
The faux-serious, smug self-righteousness really pushes it over the top. Seriously, who wrote this? One of your staffers, or maybe a freelancer from The Onion? Look out Tom Tomorrow, there’s a new kid on the Salon humor block!
If you didn’t want to be famous, what were you doing on The Tonight Show?
All I can say to him is that I hope his pay-for-play career involved some copraphagia, because that’s the one skill he’s really going to need.
How high can you roll it? … I thought Rush had won the profit-despite-hypocrisy award hands down but you’re making him look pretty amateur. You start out making an honest living, advertising yourself and your impressive package on that WYSIWYG advertisement I checked out. $1600 a day plus expenses wasn’t it? I’m sure the movies pulled in some nice change, too.
Liberace, Rock Hudsen, Brad Davis…the list could go on and on. They all pulled the “I’m not gay” card out.
If a Columbia educated man can write an article in a well respected and read website accusing the liberal wing of this country of being hateful and intolerant while defending his choice to f*ck men on film and proudly stand next to a woman who thinks it’s funny and cute to call people faggots in the year 2007, we need to seriously evalute where our educational system is failing us.
Another one of the clueless who doesn’t know the difference between “Liberal” and “Libertine.” Look ‘em up, Mr. Ivy League.
You lie down with dogs you get fleas, bitch.
Matt reads like an Orwellian satire written by Stephen Colbert.
If you think being in PORN is like being in a cult, what do you think being a REAGAN REPUBLICAN is like?
You’ve been researched because you’re taking a public position and impugning the character of those who disagree with you. You’ve been outed because it underscores the inherent fraudulence of the policies you publicly advocate.
Does leading a more moral life include prostitution? Because he is still advertising his services on the internet. He is not leading a more moral life, he is just selling himself to new groups of people.
Enjoy your fifteen minutes of shame and just don’t expect, you know, equal rights or anything from your new friends anytime soon, Matt.
Two threads seem to run through the whole of Mr. Sanchez’s “unconventional” career: an addiction to meaningless fame and attention and an eagerness to sell himself to anyone or anything that will give them to him.
For a big tough marine, this guy really has a the victim complex down pat.18-year old ivy leaguers called you names? Boo hoo. “Liberals” invaded your privacy by digging up photos of you naked, in a sexually aroused state, that you posed for and were paid to make? Puhleeze…you gave up whatever shred of privacy you had the minute you dropped your drawers.
…[O]f course, liberals would not have outed one of their own. There would have been no point to it. Unlike the current religious conservative crowd, Liberals do not pretend to have a monopoly on morality.
I can’t wait to see what kind of reception you get from the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich, and other “gracious” members of the Republican party. Yeah, Matt, you’ve really backed a winner.Self-loathing isn’t attractive in ANYONE-not even washed-up porn stars who have had sudden (and convenient) epiphanies.
Have a nice life and try to do as little damage as possible to those of us in the gay community who actually fight every day of our lives to try and open minds and obliterate discrimination. Don’t be surprised when your newfound “friends” turn against you to serve the “greater good.”
Had you spoken out about the horrors of torture, special renditions, the Bush Administration’s manipulation of intelligence that got us into Iraq, or the horrors at Walter Reed Hospital, you better believe that the Rove smear machine would have found those old porn pictures in a hurry. You also probably wouldn’t have gotten such a nice reception from Hannity or O’Reilly either.
My, my, some of us do have thin skins.
Of course they love you, Matt. You are one of them now and your claim that porn is the essence of liberalism feeds right into their scapegoating of the left.
So, what’s this about “convenient amnesia”? Either he’s got amnesia, or he’s a shameless liar:
On the Alan Colmes radio show in 2007, Sanchez claimed that it had been “15 years” since he’d made any gay porn movies or engaged in “massage” (which he admitted was male prostitution). However:
• At the time of the interview, it had only been eight years since Sanchez (as “Rod Majors”) had made a gay porn movie.
• Colmes found a print ad for Sanchez’s outcall “massage” service current as of three years earlier. Sanchez denied that the ad was his, or that the phone number in the ad was his — which is funny, since the phone number in the ad was the phone number Colmes used to call Sanchez to arrange the interview.
You can listen to an incriminating six-minute audio excerpt of the Colmes interview here, on YouTube.
In the March, 2007, Radar Online interview, Sanchez claimed:
“Look, I know I am going to get bashed for this, but I don’t remember doing a film called Touched by an Anal.”
And:
“I know how many [gay porn] films I did — roughly seven, not 40.”
Try 38, Matt — not including compilations or anything else released after 1999.
“And I know the time I did them in — 1992 through 1993.”
Wrong again, Mattie. Try 1993 through 1999.
“I thought they would bring out Montreal Men, which is what I’m most recognized for.”
Well, we won’t fault you on this one, Matt — even though all the gay-porn aficionados we’ve heard from say Jawbreaker was your most memorable effort.
“Okay, there is a current of homophobia involved here or at least self-loathing from the gay community. This is horrible.”
Mattie, can you say “projection” — you self-loathing, internalized homophobe, you?
“They are taking a situation and saying, ‘You’re horrible because you suck cock’”…
No, dummy. We’re saying you’re horrible because you’re a self-loathing homophobe in denial about your gayness, who’s Uncle Tom’ing to the Rabidly Radical Right Wing (which, we’ll remind you again, at the risk of bursting your gossamer-thin bubble of cognitive dissonance and sending you into a full-blown psychotic break, would like to stone you to death).
“…and frankly, I don’t ever remember sucking cock on film…”
Now, that’s some convenient amnesia.
“…and it is not something that I ever enjoyed.”
Which is it? You don’t remember doing it, or you do remember not enjoying it?
In any case, if you never enjoyed it, then you’re a greater actor than Marlon Brando, Laurence Olivier, Meryl Streep, and Sarah Bernhardt, combined.
“[The left wing] is trying to discredit me because of these sexual acts.”
No, Mattie: You’ve discredited yourself, and no one on the Left gives a fart in a jar about your “sexual acts.”
It’s the hypocrisy, stupid.
(Uh-oh, are you gonna sue us for calling you “stupid” now?)
Q. “Matt, are you gay?”A. “What’s that?”
Q. “Are you gay?”
A. “No. I know this keeps coming up. I don’t consider myself gay or a member of the gay community.”
. . .
Q. “Have you ever been gay?”
A. “Have I ever been gay? …”
How many times are you going to repeat the question, or pretend you didn’t hear it, before you think of an answer?
“… No. Have I had sex with men? Obviously.”
OK, we’ll give you a pass on that one, Matt. There are gay men, and then there are sad, self-loathing homosexuals.
Q. “Are you not attracted to men anymore?”A. “I never said I was in the first place. Gay men are like fundamentalist Muslims. If you leave their religion they have to send out a fatwa and demand your execution.”
Mattie, Mattie, Mattie. First you say you’re not gay, and then you say you “left” being gay. (Don’t blame us, girl; that’s how it reads.) So, which is it? Are you gay, or are you an “ex-gay”?
Q. “Have you ever enjoyed sex with men?”A. “Did I enjoy sex with men? [Hesitantly] Sure.”
Wow, it probably took all of sixty seconds for you to contradict yourself, Mattie. First you say: “I don’t ever remember sucking cock on film, and it is not something that I ever enjoyed.” Then you say: “Did I enjoy sex with men? … Sure.”
Of course, you could be trying to split hairs here — so finely that we’d need an electron microscope to see the distinction between “sucking cock on film … is not something that I ever enjoyed” and “Did I enjoy sex with men? … Sure.”
“You know, there are societies out there that don’t define people by who they have sex with.”
You know, there are a lot of down-low homos who use that old “I hate labels” schtick in order to avoid a direct answer — but don’t want to lie for fear of going to Hell.
Q. “It wouldn’t be an issue if you hadn’t been given an award by a major conservative group.”A. “Yeah, well, I don’t want to paint myself as a victim.”
Bwahahahahaha! Have you read your own op/ed on Salon.com?
Q. “How do you handle the angry left?”A. “The angry left should be dealt with like a dog on a chained leash, so it can only lunge at you so far before it hurts itself.”
Thanks for the concern, Mattie. Now, why don’t you do what you do best and go hump something for money?
Fun fact: Among the more interesting titles of Sanchez’s porn films we dare to print here (you can find a much… longer list at cplsanchez.info):
• Beat Off Frenzy (1994)
• Bi Conflict (1995)
• Built Tough (1995)
• Come and Get It (1994)
• Conflict of Interest (1994)
• Down On It (1994)
• Forever Hold Your Piece 2 (1994)
• Guest Services (1995)
• Hot Springs Orgy (1995)
• Jawbreaker (1995)
• Laid to Order (1993)
• Lunch Hour 2: Sweating Grease (1994)
• Northern Exposures (1993)
• Power Trip (1995)
• Secret Sex 2: The Sex Radicals (1994)
• Size Queens (1995)
• Taste of Leather 2 (1994)
• Tijuana Toilet Tramps (1994)
• Touched By An Anal (1997)
Moral apex: There are just so many unsavory things about Matt Sanchez to choose from, we’ll leave the “apex” up to you, dear reader.
Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Sanchez:
Wisdom is too high for a fool: he openeth not his mouth in the gate.— Proverbs 24:7
