People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals announced plans to launch a porn website to promote animal rights and vegan diets.

PETA spokesperson Lindsay Rajt said on Tuesday that PETA has applied with ICM Registry to launch peta.xxx. Apparently, the site will feature “tantalizing” videos and photos, that will lead users into animal rights messages.

The site is said to allow PETA to reach a broader audience, which makes additional publicity important. She said:"I think the bottom line is we live a in a 24-hour news cycle where over the years we've found our racier actions are kind of a fast track way to get people to stand up and pay attention about the plight of animals". Of course, helping hunger stricken countries and dying humans is not something PETA will make a porn site over.

Critics claim that PETA’s move is a wrong one, as it may ultimately estrange other devoted fans of the group. General counsel of Morality in Media anti-porn group Robert Peters said:”Metaphorically speaking, they're getting in bed with hard core pornographers to prevent cruelty to animals. That borders on insanity.”

To be fair, there are few better ways to promote something than chucking it onto a porn page. Some would even go as far as saying that we wouldn’t even need all this bandwidth if there wasn’t for porn, but I'm sure they'll be happy to help the animals. Or whatever. (Kinky Kelly and the sexy stud anyone? sub.ed.)

More here.