Phil Harvey, Adam & Eve founder & civil liberties
champion, dies at 83
by Zachery Eanes, 12/02/21, Raleigh News & observer

Phil Harvey, the founder of the Hillsborough NC-based
adult entertainment giant Adam & Eve and a longtime fighter
of censorship, died on Thursday at his home in Maryland.
He was 83.

Harvey’s death was first reported by The News of Orange County,
& it was also shared by the Cato Institute, a libertarian
think tank in Washington, D.C. Hillsborough Mayor Jenn Weaver
called him a “legendary” business leader, & the free-speech
group the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
mourned the loss of a “staunch free speech defender.”

As a student at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Global Public
Health in the 60s, Harvey first began what would become
Adam & Eve as part of his graduate thesis focused on the
distribution of contraception, The News & Observer
previously reported.

The company, originally launched as a mail-order condom
company, focused on providing cheap means of birth control,
& used the profits to make birth control more available in
low-income countries. Before enrolling at UNC, Harvey spent
5 years in India working for the nonprofit CARE International,
helping feed hungry children. The experience made him an
advocate for expanding birth control availability.

Though it was illegal at the time to sell contraception &
other “obscene” items via the post, as The Economist magazine
put it, the mail-order company became a success, after it was
founded in 1971. And though its customers likely had no idea,
a portion of all their purchases would go to sending cheap

contraception around the world.

Harvey & his co-founder, classmate Dr. Tim Black, used profits
from the catalog business to fund their own nonprofit, which
sold contraception below cost to low-income countries. Later
in life, Harvey started DKT International, a nonprofit that
increased the availability of contraception and conducted
educational campaigns around family planning and HIV/AIDS
prevention.

By 2004, Harvey would be putting around $2 million per year
of Adam & Eve’s profits into DKT, The Economist reported,
helping distribute some 348 million condoms to countries in
Africa, Asia & Latin America, where they'd be used as a
contraception & HIV preventative. In 2014, The N&O reported
that over the years Harvey had donated some $50 million total
of his Adam & Eve profits to his family-planning work.

“I was very taken with the idea that I could sell sexual
accoutrements to relatively wealthy Americans & use the
proceeds to support family planning in developing countries,”
Harvey told the magazine Mother Jones in 2002. “I’ve certainly
taken a great deal of pleasure from the sort of Robin Hood
effect that’s resulted.”

In an effort to ensure the longevity of the original
mail-order company, Harvey expanded its focus beyond
contraception to other sex-related items.

The arrival of VCR technology, in particular, was transformative
for the company, turning it into one of the largest retailers
of adult entertainment in the country, The N&O reported.
Pornographic movies, once mostly viewed inside of X-rated
movie theaters, could now be watched at home, thanks to VCR.
And Adam & Eve would thrive because of it.

By selling pornography, however, Adam & Eve attracted the
attention of federal regulators under the administration
of President Ronald Reagan.

The Dept of Justice sent 37 agents to raid the company’s
offices, which were then located in Carrboro, and charged
the company with selling obscene items, The N&O reported.

A self-described libertarian, Harvey fought the charges &
sued the federal govt for harassment & violation of free
speech, The Economist reported.

The legal battle went on for 8 years & cost him $3 million
in legal fees, the magazine Mother Jones reported.

But, in 1993, he beat back the charges from the govt, a
journey he'd later detail in his 2001 book, “The Government
Vs. Erotica: The Siege of Adam & Eve.”

The victory would be a boon for the adult entertainment
business, The Economist noted, helping not just Adam & Eve
but also its competitors.

The company would not just face backlash from the feds,
though. Even locally, Adam & Eve faced pressure.

When it relocated from Carrboro to Hillsborough, protests
around the move quickly began.

Some local ministers warned at the time that Hillsborough
could become the “pornography capital of the South,” & as
many as 400 people protested the planned move, The N&O
reported. At public hearings, the company was compared to
a hog, a moral cancer and a toxic chemical plant.

After a court overruled the town’s denial of needed permits,
the company opened its Hillsborough facility in Nov 1994,
The N&O reported.

The protests faded away, & the company became one of the
largest employers in Orange County. PHE Inc., the parent
company of Adam & Eve, is now the 14th largest employer in
Orange County, according to the N.C. Dept of Commerce, & it
employs around 350 people, The N&O reported.

In 2005, the Hillsborough/Orange County Chamber of Commerce
named it the company of the year.

In recent years, Harvey split his time traveling between
Hillsborough & the suburbs of Washington, D.C., where his
nonprofit was founded.

Despite its success, Adam & Eve never really advertised
that some of its profits would go to a nonprofit. Harvey
didn’t believe it would've made a difference.

“My hypothesis,” he told The N&O in 2014, “is when people
are making a purchase to make their sex lives better, it’s
a different part of the brain than the charitable guy.”

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article256339892.html