Page 83 - AVN January 2013

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A VN CELEBRATES III DECADES
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Clear-Eyed Optimist A AV VN N’ ’
s s s se ec co on nd d a an nn nu ua al l V Vi is si io on na ar ry y A Aw wa ar rd d g go oe es s t to o . .. .. . P Ph hi il l H Ha ar rv ve ey y! !
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air play, consumer friendliness and just plain
couth—these are some of the virtues attributable
to Adam & Eve founder Phil Harvey, who has
been chosen by AVN Media Network to receive
the second annual Visionary Award. He’ll receive the
award at the 30th annual AVN Awards Show, which takes
place January 19 at The Joint in the Hard Rock Hotel &
Casino in Las Vegas.
Harvey is known not only for his success in taking a
novelty start-up company into nearly every realm of adult
commerce, but also for his sense of civic responsibility in
helping to prevent the scourge of sexually transmitted
diseases and unwanted pregnancies from destroying lives in
Third World countries.
Harvey continues to command the highest respect from
his peers in adult.
“I’m pleased and honored to present the visionary award
to Phil Harvey,” Steven Hirsch, the award’s first recipient,
stated. “No one exemplifies what is good about the adult
industry more than Phil.”
“Of course, I’m honored to receive AVN’s second
Visionary Award,” Harvey said. “It’s been a very long journey
from Adam & Eve’s early days in a single room over the
Central Carolina Bank in Chapel Hill to the enterprise that our company has become.
It’s our people who have done that and they are terrific. I accept this award in their
names as well.”
Harvey’s had a nearly lifelong interest in family planning, and it was partly the poverty
and disease he saw while working overseas that inspired him and Adam & Eve co-
founder Tim Black to return to college and enter a one-year master’s program at the
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in family planning administration—but that
was only the beginning of the long social and legal struggles that would follow.
“In 1969,” Harvey recalled, “I got permission from my department head to run a
mail-order experiment selling condoms by mail, which was illegal at the time under the
1872 Comstock Act which classified all contraceptives, all information about contracep-
tion or abortion, as obscene and unmailable, and that gave us some pause, because what
we were doing would fall under what was then a legal obscenity definition.”
But even Harvey was unprepared for the outpouring of interest by the public in
buying condoms through the mail.
“Because there was no competition and there was this pent-up demand, the orders
came rolling in,” Harvey reported, “and neither Tim nor I knew anything much about
running a business, but there seemed to be more money coming in than going out, and
we allowed as how that was probably called a ‘profit,’ so I read all the books on mail-
order marketing and we had, in effect, a small condom mail-order business.”
When the pair tried to add other items to fledgling Adam & Eve’s early catalogs such
as loungewear, fancy belts and ship-making kits, they found interest to be minimal. But
every time they offered “anything with ‘below the belt’ appeal, that hinted of erotica or
was in fact erotic”—books, lube, sex toys, X-rated movies—orders skyrocketed.
But even with its burgeoning videocassette business, Harvey maintained his standards,
refusing to sell any video that his reviewers—all members of the American Association of
Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists, or AASECT—found to contain “non-
consensual sex: non-consenting sexual activity, any form of coercion, any form of
By Mark Kernes
obvious power disparateness, either by circumstance or
physical force.” Also, in the mid-’90s, he became the only
company to refuse to carry movies which featured Alexandria
Quinn, who had worked in adult video while underage,
forcing a massive recall of her movies, but who, as an adult,
attempted to return to the business in 1996.
Philosophically, Harvey, a self-described libertarian, sees
himself of a like mind to Evil Angel owner John Stagliano,
both of whom support the Reason Foundation, which he says
does “very, very good work.”
But what Harvey may best be remembered for is his
courageous refusal to knuckle under to the U.S. Department
of Justice’s war on mail-order retailers, as chronicled in his
book The Government vs. Erotica: The Siege of Adam & Eve.
“Our activity resulted in the termination of this policy,
which was to put mail-order sellers of X-rated material out of
business by bringing prosecutions at the same time in
Alabama, Connecticut, New Jersey and elsewhere, forcing
them to defend themselves in all of those jurisdictions, which
they predicted would result in pleas, which in virtually every
other case, they did,” Harvey explained. “I believe at least
eight other mail-order companies took pleas, some of them
with very bad terms in which the principals—and in at least
one case, the wife and adult son of the owner—certified that they would never engage in
the selling or marketing of anything that had even the remotest connection with human
sexuality for the rest of their born days—really bad pleas in my opinion. Just in the
process of defending ourselves successfully over that eight-year period and suing the
government on this issue, over the constitutionality of multiple simultaneous
prosecutions of presumptively protected First Amendment material, we succeeded in
eliminating that strategy for good.”
is his c ourageous refusal to knuckle under to the
United States Department of Justice’s war on
”What Phil Harvey may best be remembered for
mail-or der retailers, as chronicled in his book
‘The Government vs. Erotica: The Siege of Adam & Eve’
Adam & Eve has continued to move forward, now under the leadership of VP David
Groves, with Harvey these days acting in a consultant capacity—“company guru” is how
he describes himself—allowing him to spend more time on his other key project, DKT
International, which since 1990 has provided family planning services in India, Ethiopia,
Brazil, the Philippines and other Third World countries, receiving funding from not only
those countries’ governments, but the United Kingdom and the Netherlands as well.
Harvey has also used his free time to author more than 20 short stories for various
publications, as well as his latest novel, Show Time—and even at 74 years of age, he
shows no signs of slowing down.
B Bu ud d L Le ee e | | D Di ir re ec ct to or r, , T Ta al le en nt t R Re ep pr re es se en nt ta at ti iv ve e, , C Cl la as ss s o of f 1 19 98 80 0
W Wh ha at t y ye ea ar r d di id d y yo ou u s st ta ar rt t w wo or rk ki in ng g i in n a ad du ul lt t? ? In the dancing business, 1980. First movies were made in 1982. I helped write and was in The Young Like it Hot , and we made Sweet Young Foxes
at the same time; I performed in it also. The movies were made for Caribbean Films.
W Wh ha at t j jo ob bs s h ha av ve e y yo ou u d do on ne e? ? I am one of the original suitcase pimps. I have been a PA, grip, boom man, video tech, camera operator, PM, writer, performer, producer, director, vice president of
Playboy in charge of production for the Spice Network, and finally as an agent for 101 Modeling.
F Fa av vo or ri it te e m me em mo or ry y o of f A AV VN N A Aw wa ar rd ds s S Sh ho ow w: : I have always enjoyed the shows as it gives me a chance to see and talk to the real people we do this for in the first place: the FANS. I also really
appreciated being inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame. But the most unique experience at the show in Las Vegas was the time everyone expressed sorrow for the death of Hyapatia Lee, who
I happen to know is still alive and well living in the same place since 1986.
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