From www.edgeboston.com- “My stand is not against him doing bareback porn, but forging an ID and doing porn underage.” So Michael Lucas describes his beef with Brent Corrigan.

For those not keeping up with the ins and outs of the gay porn industry, here’s the situation in a nutshell (puns intended): Lucas attended the GayVN Awards, which are the Oscars of male erotic film, in San Francisco last month. Just after Bevan Duffy, an out-gay San Francisco supervisor (that was Harvey Milk’s job), praised the industry for promoting sex-positive imagery, Michael Lucas got on the stage of the venerable Castro Theater and berated the audience for giving an award to Brent Corrigan.

Corrigan won for Best Amateur Video, Best Twink and Best Bottom Performer; as indicated, he is young. Very young. He is, however, of legal age to be performing in adult films. The problem for Lucas is that he was of age when he began his career.

Corrigan maintains that he was led into porn by older men who were using him and broke the law unknowingly at the time. Lucas, however, counters that Corrigan knew what he was doing. More damning for Lucas, however, is that by honoring him now he sees the industry as tacitly condoning using underage men–boys, some would call them.

This is beyond a no-no. Lucas sees it as the ultimate taboo and something that will bring the full wrath of the right and the power of the government enforcers. It is, he believes, even worse than bareback porn–something he is outspoken about; Corrigan has also done bareback porn.

“As a producer, this is my worst nightmare, having police come with machine guns and taking me into custody,” Lucas said from his offices in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on the eve of a visit to his remaining family in his native Russia.

“We should not forgive that. We should not be nominating and celebrating someone who performed underage. The adult industry already has a terrible reputation for exploiting children. I want to be in an industry I can be proud of.”

He maintains that there was no way Corrigan, who was 16 or 17 at the time, couldn’t have known, by presenting a fake ID, that he was falsifying his information. All porn movies have very specific documentation kept on file of the actors’ ages, as anyone knows who pops a DVD in the player and has waited impatiently for the address of the lawyer to scroll by before getting to the fun stuff.

That’s why Lucas puts the blame squarely on Corrigan. “When you are 17, you already know that you can forge an ID,” he said. “Even if he was not familiar with the law, that does not mean he can perform in adult movies. When he forged an ID< he did it for one reason–to put himself into those films.”

What happened after is a matter of he-said-he-said. According to Lucas, Corrigan’s lover, a large guy, walked over to Lucas at the after-party and, within hearing of several people, threatened to throw acid on his face. He also allegedly told Lucas he would kill him.

Lucas called San Francisco police back at his hotel, and, after taking a statement, they went to Corrigan’s room and allegedly apprehended the boyfriend. Corrigan, however, claims that it was Lucas who started the whole brouhaha, and that his boyfriend had security guards at the party issue a warning to Lucas.

When the police arrived, they led him out of their room, he says, but only to question him. “The police were very fair and even sided,” he writes in his blog. “They were polite and quickly drew the correct conclusions. They departed after a little over an hour of discussion.”

The ensuing controversy swept through the porn world. Some defended Lucas for standing up for a beleaguered industry. Others rolled their eyes and looked at it as Lucas begging for attention.

Lucas scoffs at that notion.

“There are many ways to get publicity,” he told EDGE. “I never do any stunts to get publicity. I speak my mind. People have different opinions, and I do lose clients.”

That Lucas is outspoken is the one thing about him that no one can deny. He has used his blog to rail against Muslims for homophobia and misogyny. He has gotten into an Internet shouting match with a black porn star over comments that he doesn’t hire enough black actors. He defends putting beyond-vanilla fetishes, especially water sports, in his films.

He sees speaking his mind as one of the greatest privileges of an American. As an immigrant from what was then an oppressive communist society, this holds special meaning for him.

As for the war of words with black actor Diesel Washington, he dismisses it as “nothing, a pure anti-Semitic thing. He said to stick only to Jewish things, I’d never be black, so I have no right to talk to black people.”

For the record, Washington did make a reference to “the Russian Jewish thing” as “talking about what he knows best,” presumably inferring that Lucas isn’t qualified to talk about black issues.

This all came about because Lucas had responded to someone on his own blog site asking him about why there weren’t more black actors. Lucas inferred that there was more internalized homophobia in the black community.

He also defends his own color-blind casting. “I use more black models than any other company,” he told EDGE. “I wish I could use more!”

One issue that Lucas has been out in front of is bareback porn. He’s firmly against it, and, like Will Clark and a few others who are outspoken on the issue, he has suffered from some slights within the industry because of his stance.

But he firmly believes that porn sends out definite signals to audiences–especially young people, who are just getting used to gay sex and are especially impressionable.

“You’re giving the wrong sexual information,” he said. “Young people learn how to do it from porn. It’s how they manage to learn about sex. It’s irresponsible. People don’t care about their own kind.”

Lucas, who has built a mini-empire of DVD releases with relatively high production quality, has no intention of giving an inch to his critics. Or eight inches.

In an interview this week with Michael Musto in the Village Voice, he half-jokingly refers to himself as “hypocritical” for producing some pretty outré scenes that he wouldn’t participate in himself. He also says, “You can call me Islamophobic, which is fine, but not a racist.”

“I can’t please everyone,” he told EDGE. “I came to this country because I wanted to speak my mind.” That, at least, is one thing you can count on when it comes this mercurial man and his outspoken opinions.