LOS ANGELES - Karen and Barry Mason were an average couple living the 1980s Southern California dream — a humble home in West Hollywood, three healthy children, weekly services at a synagogue in the San Fernando Valley and a small business to call their own.
That business, unbeknownst to friends at barbecues and PTA meetings, was at one point the largest distributor of gay pornography in the country, and a cultural safe haven for the queer community amid the draconian moralism of the Reagan era.