Entrepreneur Peddles Porn, Uses Profits To Sell Contraceptives

HANOI, VIETNAM - In the lobby of what Vietnamese delicately call a "rest house," Phil Harvey sits listening intently as the manager details how many condoms he passes out each month and how much a room costs by the hour or night.
This "nha nghi," on a narrow road across the Red River in the communist capital, is one of about 300 establishments that rent rooms for sex.
Harvey, 67, isn't the least bit squeamish around such talk. He runs Adam & Eve, one of America's biggest X-rated mail-order businesses, selling everything from movies to sex toys. He's also a survivor of U.S. government court battles aimed at shutting him down.
The condom catalog
But in Vietnam and 10 other developing countries, Harvey donates a chunk of his millions for contraceptives that sell for pennies to the poor.
"I don't find this odd at all, but a lot of people do," he said. "I mean, what else would I do with the money? This is my life's work. I can't think of any more enjoyable way to make use of those profits."
Harvey is president of Washington-based DKT International, a nonprofit organization that he says gets about $2 million of his annual earnings from Adam & Eve's $70 million in sales.
Adam & Eve evolved from a mail-order condom catalog, giving Harvey and another partner the money they needed 35 years ago to start Population Services International, which today calls itself the world's leading nonprofit social marketer. Harvey later founded DKT, naming it for the initials of D.K. Tyagi, an Indian pioneer in family planning.
But the Reagan administration hit him with obscenity charges over Adam & Eve's operations that entangled him in nearly eight years of legal battles and cost him about $3 million. He pleaded guilty to one charge and paid a $250,000 fine. The deal required Harvey to drop a civil suit against the U.S. Justice Department. It ended the case and allowed his business to continue.
Now he says he's ready to do battle again. DKT is suing the U.S. Agency for International Development and its administrator, accusing them of violating free speech by requiring AIDS nonprofit groups receiving U.S. government funding to sign a pledge opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.
Despite his legal battles, Harvey says his porn industry connection has never seriously hampered his charity work. Donors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Dutch government. Former President Jimmy Carter praised Harvey's 1999 book, Let Every Child Be Wanted.
Harvey says the key is selling contraceptives, rather than giving them away. "After 35 years in this business," he says, "I've never seen a giveaway program that worked very well for very long."
from Chicago Sun-Times