TUPELO, MS (FR) – Thirty-eight Holiday Inns have decided to stop airing pornographic movies on their satellite television channel due to grassroots protests, according to the American Family Association (AFA). “Local Holiday Inns are beginning to feel the effects of the boycott,” said Rev. Donald Wildmon, executive director of the AFA and veteran organizer of the growing anti-porn movement in the U.S.
Twenty noted Christian leaders have also signed a statement saying that Holiday Inn does indeed show in-room porn movies. The response from the 20 Christian leaders came after Bob Brannon, vice president of Corporate Communications for the hotel chain, wrote several concerned potential customers and said, “No Holiday Inn shows pornographic movies.”
The Christian leaders issued a statement which stated: “Having viewed excerpts from several movies shown in Holiday Inns, we found, among other degrading scenes, total female nudity, female bondage with sadistic torture, lesbian and heterosexual orgies, female masturbation, oral sex, and explicit forcible rape. The fact is that Holiday Inns do show pornographic movies.”
Boycotts by Christian and civic organizations and churches have sent a clear message to the Memphis, Tennessee-based corporation. Holiday Inns lost $40,000 in revenue when the International Bible Institute in Plymouth, Florida, told the local Holiday Inn in Orlando that they would not use the facility because of the movies.
The president of Daytona Archers, Patrick Gill, hosted the 1988 Junior Olympic National Championships for the National Archery Association of the U.S. He wrote Holiday Inns saying that he would not use the company to host about 200 guests, including the approximately 100 youth expected to participate in the event.
AFA has also been circulating a resolution through many major Christian organizations which states clearly the objectives and terms of the boycott. About 1,000 Christian leaders, including the heads of approximately 50 denominations, have ratified it. The resolution calls upon the “management of Holiday Inns to show corporate concern for members of our society, especially women and children, by removing these movies and returning Holiday Inns to its historic image of a family-oriented company.”
