Gay Porn Controversy Causes Director of Miss America Feeder Pageant to Step Down
The executive director of a pageant organization in southern California was asked to step down from his position after it was revealed that his gay partner, one of the organization's “Major Scholarship Donors,” is a gay porn star and operates pornographic websites.
RadarOnline.com reported last Tuesday that Ric Alonso, a major donor to the Southern California Scholarship Association, “moonlights as a porn star” under the pseudonym Jake Cruise and owns three different adult websites.
“My movies are not your typical gay porn,” Alonso reportedly says on one of his sites. “I'm in a lot of the movies.”
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The SCSA hosts the annual Miss Hollywood/Miss Southland Scholarship Pageant, which is “an official preliminary to Miss California and Miss America,” according to the SCSA website. The organization was led by Alonso's gay partner, Ernie Koneck, until the news broke of Alonso's connection to the porn industry.
Robert Arnhym, president and CEO of the Miss California Organization, told The Christian Post on Monday that someone from the Miss America Organization called and “asked me to take action, and I did.”
“Bob called me, and told me he wasn't going to fire me, but he was going to ask me to resign,” wrote Koneck in an email to CP. “I'm honestly not sure if I had to resign, but I felt if I did so immediately, the story would die quicker and there would be less negative publicity directed at the pageant.”
Alonso told CP that he only supported the pageants financially, and that he had no other involvement with them.
“I was a sponsor. Someone who donated money. When my partner first began volunteering over 14 years ago, I helped sell tickets for the event at the box office. That was before I began my current profession. Other than that I have had no involvement whatsoever in the pageants. Anyone who has worked with Ernie knows that I have never been involved in any way,” he said.
He also stated that he was upset by the way RadarOnline.com said he “moonlights” as a gay porn star and mogul.
“The word 'Moonlights' causes the impression that I worked full-time on the pageant and that my career was just an aside,” he said. “I run a small business with several employees. I do not moonlight at anything. I don't have the time.”
According to xxxChurch.com, a nonprofit organization that “exists to help people of all ages who are being assaulted by pornography,” over 11 million Americans have a sexual addiction. The organization also describes porn as “the most destructive force in our culture,” and says that pornography is cited as a contributing factor to half of all divorces.
Prior to his pornography businesses, Alonso also founded an “online prayer circle” called PrayersOnTheWeb.com, though he shut it down after it became too time consuming to work on.
“A couple of years later I began to look into online pornography. I still believe in the power of prayer and I wish I could have kept Prayers on the Web going,” said Alonso. “Believe me, I've been praying a lot these past couple of days for Ernie who has been forced from doing what he truly loves. I have never seen him happier than when he worked on his pageant. The Miss America Organization should be ashamed of themselves.”
But some individuals say it is a bad idea for even local pageants to be associated with the porn industry.
"Young girls across the country have looked up to Miss America for decades. Any connection the organization has with the porn industry, even financially, will prove dire effects going forward,” Angie Meyer, a beauty pageant and Hollywood publicist, told Fox News. “It would be a huge mistake for any groups under the Miss America umbrella to continue dealings with these sort of individuals.”
The purpose of the Miss America program is “to provide personal and professional opportunities for young women and to promote their voices in culture, politics and the community,” according to the organization's website. The national organization, along with the state and local organizations affiliated with it, made $45 million in cash and scholarships available to young women in 2010.
Multiple calls and an email sent to the Miss America Organization, to confirm its connection to Koneck's resignation and to find out if it was taking action to prevent ties with the porn industry, were not returned.
