Meet Matt Sanchez: G.O.P. darling, former gay porn star

Last month, Matt Sanchez was a special guest at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., where Republican presidential candidates made speeches and Ann Coulter famously called John Edwards a "faggot." Sanchez, a 36-year-old corporal in the Marine Corps reserves and student at Columbia University, was being celebrated for his "heroic" efforts in demonizing the campus anti-war movement by exposing Columbia, its students and administration—and by extension, academia at large—as anti-military. Of course, shortly after being championed by such conservative culture warriors as Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity, it was discovered that Mr. Sanchez, aka Rod Majors, had appeared in a number of gay porn films and had worked as a male escort. Can somebody say Jeff Gannon?

Radar caught up with the one-time Fox News darling and star of Touched by an Anal, for a quick Q&A on how one reconciles conservative values with a past in gay porn.

"They are saying, 'You're horrible because you suck cock.' [The left wing] is trying to discredit me because of these sexual acts"RADAR: Now, you were just your everyday run-of-the-mill marine/student at Columbia University, going from class to class minding your own business. And then, after identifying yourself as a member of the military at a campus event, the liberals are beating you up.
MATT SANCHEZ: I don't know if I would call them liberal, they were ISO (International Socialist Organization). They singled me out and accused me of being a recruiter. These people came over and told me I was being used as cannon fodder and that I was stupid. I reported [this ongoing harassment] to the University. The administration sent me to about 20 different people, then they put us all in a room and had us shake hands and we could have sang "Kum Ba Yah," but it just escalated from there and Columbia basically ignored the problem.

You then became a right-wing cause celeb.

This is something you will hear a lot of on your side of the fence, you who have maligned me, when all I did was write an article about my experience and went on television to talk about it. I went on Fox News. It's curious that only Fox News was interested—CNN could have reported it, MSNBC could have reported it. I was on O'Reilly and Hannity & Colmes.

So you do these series of shows and then the CPAC folks decide to give you an award.
I was the first recipient of the Jeane Kirkpatrick award, which is for academic freedom. Jeane Kirkpatrick, you may or may not know, was ambassador to the United Nations.

You were also in a film called Touched by an Anal.
Look, I know I am going to get bashed for this, but I don't remember doing a film called Touched by an Anal. That was just the nature of the business, you shoot a lot films and they use them forever. I know how many [gay porn] films I did—roughly seven, not 40. And I know the time I did them in—1992 through 1993. I thought they would bring out Montreal Men, which is what I'm most recognized for.