VIDEO: Michael Bronski on the gay-porn career of "Rod Majors," including a clip from Jawbreaker

Matt Sanchez cut a striking figure on The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes. In January, the USMC reservist and third-year Columbia University student had complained about being mistreated and called a “baby killer” by members of a campus socialist organization, and soon found himself a darling of the conservative media establishment. But then news broke on the gay blog Joe.My.God that Sanchez was, only a few years ago, performing under the name Rod Majors in famous gay porn films with titles such as such as Beat Off Frenzy (1994), Jawbreaker (1995), and Touched by an Anal (1997). And who can forget the inimitable Glory Holes of Fame series (through 1998)? Sanchez also had his own escort service for several years, charging $200 for at-home sessions, $250 for work involving travel to a client’s home.

To Sanchez’s credit, he immediately admitted that all of this was true — although he did fudge on the timeline, claiming that his porn and hustling career was over 15 years ago — and denied that escort ads with his phone number and photos that appeared three years ago were placed by an imposter. Sanchez valiantly, and pointlessly, defended himself on these discrepancies to a kind but unrelenting Alan Colmes on the latter’s radio show.

Sanchez also claims he is not gay, that his porn work was just a job, and that he is now a deeply conservative, patriotic Marine who regrets his past actions. In a piece he wrote for Salon, he claims that porn “reduces the mind, flattens the soul.” There is no reason not to take his word on all of this. Not everyone in gay porn is actually gay, people change all the time, and, as feminists have always pointed out, sex work is, well, work, and probably a prime example of what Marx calls alienated labor.

Smart, witty, gay bloggers such as Tom Baccus have attacked Sanchez for hypocrisy, as has Nation commentator Max Blumenthal. But is this really the case? If anything, the hypocrisy lies all on the side of the likes of O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter — with whom Sanchez had his photo taken at the early-March Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at which she made her infamous “faggot” remark about John Edwards — for whom homosexuality trumps all other virtues.

Case in point: the military’s odious “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy may very well mandate that Sanchez be forced to leave the Marine Corps he loves so much. A recent article in the Marine Corps Times, while vaguely sympathetic to Sanchez, indicates that it might. While bloggers are having a field day excoriating right-wing pundits who have been caught in the most recent crossfire of the culture wars, the reality is that many lesbians and gay men who are not porn stars are suffering because of stupid, indecent federal policies. Matt Sanchez a/k/a Rod Majors is the least of our problems.