Over 7,000 People Boycott Groupon Over Torture Porn Tour Deal
An anti-pornography group that launched a boycott against Groupon over its connections to a torture pornography business now boasts of at least 7,000 people who have pledged to stop using the "deal-of-the-day" website.
Morality In Media, an interfaith organization dedicated to stopping the porn industry through education and enforcement of obscenity laws, announced the boycott last week.
MIM Executive Director Dawn Hawkins told The Christian Post that as of Tuesday morning, "just over 7,000 have officially signed the pledge to cancel their subscriptions to Groupon and boycott them until they agree to stop doing business with pornographers and companies that exploit and abuse women."
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"We are certain that many more than 7,000 have resolved to boycott as well, they just didn't officially sign the pledge," said Hawkins.
The cause of the boycott came in response to Groupon sending thousands of emails to customers advertising tickets for a tour of the studio for Kink, a pornography business that regularly produces explicit pornography focused on the torture of women.
The studio for the porno company is also a 1914 reproduction of a Moorish Castle once used as an Armory and Arsenal for the National Guard.
In response to complaints, Groupon Customer Support told MIM that although Kink was a torture pornography business, they also were engaged in local philanthropies.
"Kink.com's owner is actually a fixture in the local community and regularly donates to local youth charities," read the letter from Jai H. of Customer Support to Hawkins.
"We feel that because the business is an active good community citizen and the tour is historical and informational in nature (not to mention consensual) it's worth the experiment to run it."
The Customer Support representative also told MIM that they have not had "any negative response from subscribers" and it is regular customer feedback that "weighs heavily on the decision to work with them again."
"It seems to us that Groupon has a responsibility to act responsibly and the promotion of the sexual humiliation of girls and women fails the test," said Hawkins.
"They would not listen to us and to the thousands who have written and called with concerns, so perhaps they will listen as their finances continue to suffer."
According to Hawkins, while MIM has cooperated with other boycotts of various media and businesses, this is the first boycott the organization itself has headed. Nevertheless, last year they almost led a boycott against NBC over its TV show "The Playboy Club."
"Once the show launched, we had thousands of people contact the sponsors threatening to boycott if they continued to sponsor the show," said Hawkins.
"The show was cancelled after the third episode due to low ratings and the fact that they were losing sponsors. We worked with the public to pressure these companies and Parents Television Council worked directly with the leadership of the companies to pull their ads."
Groupon did not return a request for comments by press time.
