Marriott International will meet in Washington May 14 with anti-porn nutters that have petitioned the hotel chain to remove adult movies from its rooms.

Coming in response to an April 3 letter signed by 47 "pro-family" groups, the meeting may or may not serve to further the groups' agenda, as making such a broad change to the corporation's policy would be a very complex proposition, Marriott officials say.

Marriott is a publicly traded company, so Mr. Marriott would not make a unilateral decision, said VP of communications Roger Conner, referring to CEO J.W. Marriott Jr., to whom the letter was addressed.

This is the first time a major hotel chain has agreed to meet with anti-adult lobbying groups, but even so, Conner stressed that it's the individual properties and not Marriott International that decide whether or not to offer adult programming, and that receive compensation for it from Lodgenet and other providers.

Adult industry attorney Paul Cambria, however, pointed out to Cybercast that, Adult entertainment is completely protected by the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court has said so time and time again.

Pro-family nutters have wrapped up what is being called a "productive" meeting with officials of Marriott International.

The meeting focused on the hotel chain's practice of selling in room pornographic movies at some of its properties.

Last month, leaders of 47 pro-family groups sent a letter to Marriott CEO John W. Marriott the Third, which asked for a meeting with Marriott executives about the issue.

Don Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association, says the meeting in Washington D.C. was a good first step: Two things came out of the meeting. They are going to look into a system where people would have to call the front desk and get the movie turned on.

Secondly, notes Wildmon, the Marriot executives will discuss the issue further with some of their franchisees. And he says pro-family nutters will have another meeting with Marriott representatives in about six weeks to check progress on the issue.

Marriott International is coming under heavy fire from nutter activists urging the hotel giant to banish  sexual fare from its bedroom TV.

Focus on the Family met with hotel executives in Washington DC, and provided Marriott with a petition signed by 102,000 nutters who want pornographic films purged from the list of movie offerings.

Daniel Weiss, media and sexuality analyst for the group, said Marriott has billed itself as a family-lodging establishment, and its decision to provide adult films to its customers is contrary to its reputation.

Weiss said hotels and motels have been major contributors to the proliferation of pornography in mainstream culture: We've heard from people who have developed addictions, businessmen, people who travel a lot, who found that away from their support structure and families they were very vulnerable to this type of material. They indicated that hotel porn was very significant in their addiction.

When WND asked Marriott Vice President of Communications Roger Conner why the hotel offers sex films in its rooms, he provided the following response: That's one of those any-kind-of-'why' questions. It's very universal in nature. For 25 years or more, not just Marriott, but the whole industry has offered a wide range including adult movies.

Asked if he believes customers would miss the pornographic films if they were not offered, Conner said, It would be interesting to know. I don't want this to sound flippant, but who knows?

Marriott International offers families an option to block pornographic movies by calling the front desk or using the remote control, but Focus on the Family and other nutter groups would like the hotel chain to consider a policy where the pornography would automatically be turned off unless a guest requests it.

For some people, that may just be enough of a hindrance that they won't access that material, Weiss said. They won't get caught up in it if they have to come out of the anonymity of ordering it in their room and call somebody.

Marriott executives said they will think about the suggestions and respond to concerns by July 1, though Conner acknowledged that not everyone left the meeting satisfied: We know it's not a perfect world that we live in, unfortunately, so it's not a perfect response for those that we met with yesterday. There were some who said they wanted more of an immediate response or decision. But, based upon the complicated business model and contracts that are in place, we can't simply walk away from it as we speak.

Hotels do not lose a large percentage of revenue when they boycott adult content because they only take 10 to 15% of the profits from the sale of pornographic films, Weiss said. He has faith that Marriott International will live up to its reputation as a family friendly establishment and make its 3,000 hotels porn free: I think at this point we want to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they will do the right thing. We're going to take a cautious wait-and-see approach.

The Arlington Group, a coalition of Christian nutter organizations that includes Focus on the Family, met with Marriott International officials in April to try and persuade the hotel chain to stop offering pay-per-view adult movies in its rooms.

Marriott offers the programming in most of its 3,000 U.S. hotels, and the Arlington Group representatives urged the chain to adopt an "opt-in" television system, in which guests would have to contact the front desk to receive adult entertainment. Currently, the programming is available in hotel rooms until guests opt out.

At the meeting, the group presented Marriott officials with 102,000 signatures from people wanting the chain to stop offering adult entertainment. Of those signatures, 9,000 were from Marriott Rewards Card members.

Marriott responded in a letter dated June 26 to Donald Wildman, president of the nutter action group American Family Association, which is part of the coalition.

The letter said the company was in conversation with its adult-entertainment provider, Lodgenet, about the opt-in procedure, said Roger Conner, vice president of communications for Marriott International. Marriott took no other action but promised it would raise the issue at its owners meeting in late July, Conner said.

In a terse letter to Marriott dated July 14, Wildman imposed a deadline of Aug. 15 to hear a definite response on concrete actions taken toward the removal of pornography from your properties.

Rochester, Minnesota,  was one of the first places to enact a smoking ban in hotels, now the city is going after publicly-available pornography.

Olmsted County passed a county-wide resolution for prevention of sexual violence, said Jeanne Martin. She says the public health initiative starts by asking Rochester hotels to voluntarily stop offering pay-per view porn movies.

Olmsted County administrator Richard Devlin says the first step will be to restrict employees from staying in hotels or motels that have pornographic material in the room. County Commissioners will vote later this year on whether to prioritize clean hotels as the first choice for public officials and employees who travel.

Devlin hopes this message spreads across the state, eventually leading to all hotels restricting access to pay-per-view porn: That's kind of our ultimate goal, is to discourage that type of material in hotels and motels, said Devlin.

The Minnesota Department of Health has created a list of hotels that do not offer adult pay-per-view entertainment. 75% of hotels in the state with more than 30 rooms do not.

A movement to make porn films condom-only is sure to gain further traction as two groups plan to protest the Marriott hotel chain.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation and Pink Cross Foundation claim Marriott acts as a middleman in selling condom-less porn productions because it makes millions from the pay-per-view lineup it offers in its hotel rooms.

The groups are planning a Porn In at the downtown Los Angeles Marriott. They also will announce a viral and print ad campaign for a hotel boycott.

They will protest in front of the Figueroa Street Marriott with banners and three-foot wide condoms. Later, a press conference will be held in a hotel room with streaming porn on the room's flat screen.

Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said that until he gets a commitment from Marriott officials to block condomless adult films to their hotel guests he will urge a public boycott of the entire Marriott chain, which pencils out to about 3,000.

We want to highlight the brazen hypocrisy — the Mormon Marriott's moral masquerade — of such a so-called family oriented hotel chain profiteering off adult films that endanger the lives of the performers acting in them, Weinstein said.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has taken a stand after an adult performer tested positive for HIV several months ago.