Matt Sanchez
Matt Sanchez (born 1 December 1970) is an American Marine reservist, political activist, writer, and student at Columbia University. In late 2005, he made formal complaints of harassment at Columbia University against other students, who he said had called him "stupid" for serving in the military. He appeared on several conservative talk shows AbOUT the complaints, and in March 2007 was awarded the first "Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award" as a result of his outspokeness on behalf of military personnel.
The award's event, the Conservative Political Action Conference, received mainstream attention when Ann Coulter controversially referred to John Edwards as a "[...]." In the aftermath, it was revealed that Sanchez had performed in gay pornographic films in the early 1990s as Pierre LaBranche and Rod Majors. Sanchez confirmed this, adding that he sometimes considers himself a progressive stating he "progressed from being a liberal to a conservative."<ref name=Salon Magazine\">
As a milblogger, he has been involved with the Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy.
Biography
Early life
Sanchez was born in East San Jose, California, the youngest of four children to Puerto Rican parents. He attended Independence High School, graduating in 1988, and then traveled to Europe, where he taught English at academias, an informal language center for students. He also did some writing for travel magazines.
Adult entertainment
In the early 1990's, Sanchez performed in gay pornographic movies under the direction of Kristen Bjorn, John Rutherford, and Chi Chi Larue. For French-speaking films, Sanchez was assigned the stage name Pierre LaBranche; for English and Spanish films he was given the name Rod Majors. He starred in several award-winning films including Call of the Wild, Jawbreaker, and Idol Country co-starring Ryan Idol and Marco Rossi.
US Marines Corps Service
In 2003, he joined the Marine Corps and was trained as a refrigeration mechanic.
Political activism at Columbia University
In 2005, while Sanchez was a junior at the Columbia University School of General Studies. he claimed that he was harassed by other students during the Fall 2005 "Activities Day," when he was approached by members of the International Socialist Organization, an anti-war campus group. Sanchez said that they called him "stupid." He made formal complaints to the university; Columbia investigated, but found no grounds for punishing the three accused students.
The three accused students dispute Sanchez's account of the events. In a Columbia Spectator editorial titled "The Conservative Witch Hunt," Zach Zill, one of the accused students, disputed Sanchez's allegations, saying that while he did state that he found on-campus military recruitment offensive, he had done so without using epithets or derogatory language.
Sanchez and others in the student group MilVets, an organization for on-campus veterans, had also voiced their frustration at what they perceived to be a lack of regard for veterans on the campus. In February 2006, this led to the university amending its non-discrimination policy to include "military status" as a group to be protected from harassment. The University says that this was not a policy change, but merely a "semantic clarification," as the words "military status" replaced "disabled or Vietnam era veteran."
National recognition
On December 4, 2006 Sanchez wrote an opinion piece for the New York Post, titled "Diversity "Double-Talk Ivy's 'Inclusion' excludes military" and this led to him being invited onto various conservative talk shows in January 2007, such as Fox News' Hannity & Colmes and The O'Reilly Factor, to talk about the harassment incident. Sanchez also received support from conservative leaders such as Michelle Malkin and Newt Gingrich.
On March 2, 2007, Sanchez was awarded the Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award for his work fighting discrimination against military and veterans, at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). A featured speaker at the conference, Ann Coulter, made some controversial remarks at the event, indirectly referring to presidential candidate John Edwards as a "[...]." This sparked public attention and controversy, during which Sanchez's earlier career as a star in gay adult films was brought to light. Subsequently, the revelations and rumors were reported in major media, such as MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and the Marine Corps Times.
Marine Corps inquiries
On March 16 2007, John Hoellwarth, a staff writer for Military Times Media Group, reported that Sanchez was the subject of a Marine Corps inquiry about his appearances in gay pornographic videos and related allegations. Of concern was whether "Sanchez had enlisted prior to the end of his film career", "if Reserve Marines were prohibited from doing [...] when not in a drilling status", and "how the current “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy might apply".
In an article published April 1 2007 by the Marine Corps Times, Hoellwarth wrote that the Marine Corps was also investigating reports that Sanchez had "wrongfully solicited funds to support your purported deployment to Iraq." According to the article, a Marine investigator accused Sanchez of "coordinating a $300 payment from the UWVC (United War Veterans Council) and $12,000 from U-Haul."
Sanchez told the newspaper that the charges were "demonstrably false." However, in a subsequent comment on the Military Times's website, Sanchez wrote that the organizations offered him money for a trip "as a reporter overseas, and their sponsorship in exchange for promotional consideration." Sanchez maintained that he never actually collected any funds from those organizations. By Sanchez's own account (on his blog and in an interview with Rightwingnews,) a Marine investigator has found that the accusations of funding irregularities resulted from misunderstandings rather than misrepresentations and that he has been cleared of these charges.
War correspondent
Sanchez is a senior at Columbia University, and according to posts on his blog in May through July 2007, is currently an "embedded blogger", first with an American military unit that has traveled from Kuwait into Iraq, and then in July 2007 he switched to a unit in Afghanistan. Sanchez's blog is occasionally syndicated on Worldnetdaily.
Matt Sanchez was revealed to be a source behind the debunking of the Scott Beauchamp "Baghdad Diarist" series of writings which appeared in The New Republic. The story came to national prominence when military bloggers (milbloggers) raised a red flag and The Weekly Standard editor, Michael Goldfarb raised doubts about the details of the Baghdad Diarist's dispatches, and Michelle Malkin aired a report on the matter on The O'Reilly Factor.
Selected bibliography
- "Double-Talk Ivy's 'Inclusion' excludes military." New York Post: Opinion Columnist, December 4, 2006.
- "Missing the big picture: Ivy league protesters feel superior to service members." Marine Times: Opinion, January 1, 2007
- "The Taliban of Tolerance". RightWingNews.com: Blog entry, September 6, 2007
- "Combating Afghans, Poppies and IEDS." WorldNetDaily: Exclusive columnist, December 12, 2007.
Selected filmography
The below is a partial filmography:
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See also
- Culture Wars
- Don't ask, don't tell
- Identity politics
- List of male performers in gay [...] films
External links
es:Matt Sanchez fr:Matt Sanchez