Controversy over the alleged gay porn past of a Massachusetts-based high school English teacher continues to swirl, with support split between the employee and the reporter who broke the story.
As The Boston Globe is reporting, Kevin Hogan, who was hired in August to head the English department at Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden, was placed on administrative leave after Fox News broke the news yesterday that he had acted under the pseudonym "Hytch Cawke" in X-rated movies like "Fetish World" and "Just Gone Gay 8," which were released in 2010.
When confronted with the accusations by Fox Undercover reporter Mike Beaudet, Hogan -- who also served as the school's crew coach -- only responded, “I don’t know what you’re talking about."
The school's business manager responded quickly to the reports with a swift e-mail to students' parents saying Hogan's references had been "superlative" at the time of his hiring, yet opinions on the controversy have been surprisingly mixed. A poll on the Fox News site finds a staggering majority (81 percent) of readers believe Hogan should be allowed to keep his job, compared with a mere 18 percent who feel he should be fired.
Beaudet has taken to his Twitter account in response:
Meanwhile, a Facebook page, "Support Kevin Hogan, FIRE Mike Beaudet," already had just over 250 users at the time of this report. "There is no allegation that Kevin Hogan's conduct in his job was other than exemplary," wrote one user. "In fact, this is thinly-disguised sexual orientation discrimination."
It's been a tough year for gay porn stars overall. In August, Florida’s Miami-Dade school district fired substitute teacher Shawn Loftis when it was revealed he act acted in gay porn under the name Collin O'Neal. Earlier today, it was reported that the Executive Director of the Southern California Scholarship Association -- a nonprofit that produces the Miss Hollywood pageant, an official preliminary to Miss California and Miss America -- resigned after it was revealed his partner, Ric Alonso, was a porn star and producer who operated three X-rated websites for gay men.