What’s a more heinous offense than being gay and out in the military?

Apparently, being openly married to a porn star while you’re in a public service position.

Fort Meyers Beach, Florida has enacted its own unofficial Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy on Scott Janke - the town manager - after it was discovered that his wife was a porn actress.

The town council voted unanimously to relieve Janke of his post without cause, leaving him with six months’ severance pay - and the black mark of a firing on his resume.

The problem? Janke’s wife, Anabela Mota, is the star of some adult videos under the name Jazella Moore. I couldn’t find the names of any of the films, but that’s mainly because I didn’t want to dig too deeply into the bowels of the search engine - even in the name of research.

On her website, the extremely young-looking 43-year-old calls herself a “priestess of the erotic arts” and describes how acting in porn helped her break “the paradox of the Madonna/whore” and let “ecstatic joy” triumph.

It would be hard to top the comments of Howard Simon of the ACLU, who told USA Today that the firing “might go down as one of the top 10 poor judgments by public officials in Florida history.”

True that, Howard. True that.

So, are adult film actresses and actors not allowed to be married? And if they do tie the knot, are they supposed to get hitched to others in “unclean” professions? Finally, does no one see the irony in “erotic art” being considered less savory than doing the dirty work of a politician?

Ren, a writer on the Feministe blog and a sex worker herself, pens an excellent post about the ruckus that gets stirred up when people find out someone in the adult industry is (gasp) married.

She describes how normally sensible people ask incredulous questions about fidelity, intimacy and - the blogger’s favorite - how her husband can “let” her work at such a trade:

In this situation, not only does the sex worker get the great googlymoogly, but so does their partner.  They get in on all the bullshit right along with their sex worker spouse. They can be fired, they can lose their kids, they put up with all kinds of shit right along with their partner in that til death do you part kind of way.

Photo by teresawer