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"Not really. Just because people have used Mill to give themselves a philosophical backing to indulge their own basest desires, doesn't necessarily reflect badly on the man himself. I suspect he'd be rather horrified to find out the kind of activities that are being endorsed using his philosophy."

I misspoke, and I apologize for doing so. I should have said, not that you do a disservice to Mill, but that I believe you misrepresent some of the details of his particular variety of Utilitarianism.

I suspect you are thinking of the philosophy Bentham, and of other Utilitarians in his vein, not of Mill.

They differ is some significant ways. Mill's system would have put VM-esque trash on the level of a pig's desires, and given them very low weight in his calculus. Bentham was dealing with, essentially, the physical intensity of the pleasure of pain, to give weight to various pleasure of pain, and so his system is very easily accommodating for things like VM. Most famous Utilitarians today are of Bentham's vein (Singer, for one).

You may not believe that Mill's system was a justifiable form of Utilitarianism, given the premises of Utilitarianism, but it is his system, so it is what he says it is. And what he says it is is a system where base pleasures get few points and higher pleasures get more points, without central regard to the physical intensity of those pleasures. Base and higher defined to mean, essentially, what an educated, civilized man like himself thinks they mean (his standard for higher vs. base is, which would an educated man, with knowledge of the full range of possible pleasures, prefer). Thus the famous Socrates quote.