Search Salon

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

Recently in Salon Books

Reviews
"Deliberate Intent"
Does the First Amendment protect a how-to manual for hit men?
By Jonathan Groner
[07/13/99]

Dear Mr. Blue
The plot thickens
I love my girlfriend, but I lust after her best friend. Now they want us all to live together. Is there any way it can work out?
By Garrison Keillor
[07/13/99]

Book Bag
Peerless
The author of "Oscar and Lucinda" picks five very original works of fiction
By Peter Carey
[07/12/99]

Ivory Tower
Life, liberty and the pursuit of aliens
At an annual conference, UFO believers argue for acceptance from the academy.
By Jon Bowen
[07/12/99]

Reviews
"Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga"
Time hasn't healed the former secretary-general's wounds or lessened his bitterness.
By Douglas McGray
[07/09/99]

Complete archives for Books

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

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

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Michelle Goldberg

July 13, 1999 | Luke Ford spends most of his time around porn stars, but he has a crush on Wendy Shalit, the neocon ingenue author of "A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue." Last time we talked, he had passed the afternoon skinny-dipping with X-rated actresses Kendra Jade and Shelle Pearson, but he was still mooning over a recent encounter with the poster girl for virtue and virginity. "Published in Commentary at only 19," he said dreamily. "I was really curious to see what she looked like, so I went to her reading. She's a little cutie, I kind of fancied her. I think we'd make a good couple -- Miss Modesty and Mr. Pornography."

He's not kidding. Ford, one of the most controversial figures in the porn universe, is a man torn between twin obsessions -- hardcore sex and conservative Judaism. He has elevated moral and spiritual schizophrenia to surreal proportions, and the split is most obvious in the two Web sites that he spends his life running. On Lukeford.com, he operates as the Matt Drudge of the triple-X industry, tirelessly reporting scandals, news, gossip, innuendo and minutia, earning $42,000 a year in ad revenue and the loathing of most of porn's major players. In his spare time, though, the sex industry's most notorious muckraker -- and the son, bizarrely, of a Seventh Day Adventist evangelical preacher -- maintains dennisprager.net, a site devoted to conservative writer, Jewish theologian and right-wing radio host Dennis Prager.

"I view porn, adultery, premarital sex, all forms of sexual expression outside of marriage as sinful, meaning against God's will," says Ford, a wry, blandly handsome 33-year-old. "Let me stress that I am single, I have never been married and the Lord has not granted me the gift of chastity. I do not fool myself that what I'm doing is OK by God or my religion. I'm really open that these are the ideals I believe in and in various ways I do not live up to them. C'est la vie. I get therapy once or twice a week for 90 minutes a session." He's a hypocrite and he knows it, revels in it -- in fact, Ford is so blunt about his personal shortcomings he disarms criticism by cheerfully concurring with everything his enemies say about him.

And they say a lot, because as much as the biz hates to admit it, everyone in the adult film world reads him. "You can't find someone in this business who's never heard of Luke Ford," says Atlanta pornographer Mike South, one of the few people in the sex industry to count Ford as a friend. "Luke has done more research into this business than most of the people who lived through it in the '70s and '80s. If there is a Matt Drudge in the porn industry it is Luke Ford, hands down. He's very similar to Matt Drudge -- he came out of nowhere and created a name for himself in a very short time. The difference is that Luke may even be more vicious than Matt Drudge is."

Indeed, Ford's methods are slash and burn, often mean-spirited and journalistically dubious. His Web site is an odd melange of rambling daily reports on the shenanigans of actresses, directors and producers, exposés on industry corruption, torturous self-analysis, satire -- and lots of naked pictures. Also included are capsule biographies of nearly everyone who's ever taken his or her clothes off in front of a camera and Ford's own take on every issue related to the business, from child porn and bestiality to industry racism and mob involvement.

Next page | Sister blames chronic fatigue syndrome