Charitable donations from the sleaze meisters in the porn racket have begun to catch the attention of the news media. But the January 14 issue of Newsweek magazine reported, with worrisome credulity, an outrageous new wrinkle in the pornographers' cynical and transparent effort to convince the world that they and their poisonous products are okay. Never mind that obscene material (or “hard-core” pornography) is unprotected by the First Amendment and that it is harmful to individuals (young and old), to families and to society as a whole. Never mind too that hardcore “adult” pornography is often used by pedophiles to seduce their young victims.
All of that notwithstanding, Newsweek told its readers that a group calling itself Adult Sites Against Child Pornography (ASACP) "will soon start reviewing their members' sites and - if no child porn is found - bestow what [Joan] Irvine [of ASACP] calls a 'Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval' so visitors know there's nothing illegal on the site."
The words "nothing illegal on the site" were volunteered by Newsweek, not Ms. Irvine.
While it's easy, because of the lack of obscenity law enforcement, to get the precisely wrong impression that there is "nothing illegal" about hardcore pornography -- and the porn producers and distributors do what they can to perpetuate that misconception -- Newsweek should have known better and should not have let ASACP's statement go without providing certain essential points of information for background. Like these:
- Federal obscenity laws are to be found at 18 USC, Chapter 71, sections 1460 through 1470.
- 40 of the 50 states have their own obscenity laws.
- People have gone to jail for obscenity law violations, on the Internet and elsewhere, and have had their property confiscated through the application of the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) law to obscenity crimes.
- Attorney General John Ashcroft has given every indication that the Justice Department will soon resume vigorous enforcement of the obscenity laws.
But Newsweek mentioned none of this. Instead, the reporter and his editors limited themselves to a series of softball questions that Ms. Irvine proceeded to hit out of the park, including these:
"Why would owners of adult porn sites care about child porn?"
"Are people who produce adult pornography misunderstood?"
"Does your organization get respect from law enforcement?"
Among Ms. Irvine's home runs:
"[Adult site] owners want the public to know they are legitimate businesspeople who are doing their business within the letter of the law... "
"These are technology people, they're business people, they're your next-door neighbors, they're married, they have kids, they pay taxes, they go to church... "
"People would be surprised to hear that people in the adult industry are working with the FBI."
She might have added, "They're the folks responsible for all that porn spam flooding your computer." But she didn't.
Child porn is a filthy kettle, but the pot in this case is disgusting, too.
Pornography producers gathered in Las Vegas January 9-12 for the annual Adult Video News awards program. The sleaze meisters take themselves very seriously, and hope the public at large will, too. The event apparently is patterned after the Academy Awards. With stars, starlets, producers and directors. Tuxedos and gowns were everywhere. But the similarity ends with a look at the list of award winners and the 90 or so categories in which they won. Among them: "Buttfaced! 3" (Best Anal-Themed Feature); "The Violation of Aurora Snow" (Best All-Girl Feature); "Throat Gaggers" (Best Oral-Themed Feature); "Babes in Pornland" (Best Anal Sex Scene - Video), and "Lady Fellatio in the Doghouse" (Best Oral Sex Scene - Video). Even in tuxedos and gowns, these folks are not pillars of the community.
And no, the place wasn't raided by federal and state prosecutors. Pity.
While the glitterati of porn were partying in Las Vegas, the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation was sounding an alarm. Their web site carried this warning: "Chlamydia is winning the battle. We have a serious problem within the industry... Many popular actors and actresses have been diagnosed with chlamydia in the last month, contracted from one popular actor who works often. Potentially, 1st and 2nd generation exposures could infect 198 people in about five days." That's a lot of popularity. This sexually transmitted disease causes discomfort and pain and, if left untreated, infertility.
The Guardian in England reported on January 13 that two Members of Parliament are under investigation and 1,300 other persons have been arrested, including teachers, doctors, care workers and policemen, in Operation Ore, the British end of the U.S. Justice Department's Operation Avalanche. Arrests in England began last May and are expected to continue for months as police work their way through a list of some 7,000 names turned over to them by U.S. authorities. The suspects are alleged to have subscribed to an Internet child pornography distributor in Texas that provided access to material at locations in Russia and Indonesia.
Pravda On-line reported on December 4 that a high-ranking police official in Moscow has released a statement saying that profits from Internet pornography sites are "being used to fund extremist and terrorist organizations."
Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Chepchugov, who was identified as "the chairman of the department for the struggle against high-tech crimes of the Moscow Central Directorate for Internal Affairs," told Pravda that up to 75% of all "kiddie porn" is distributed on the Internet and that about 90% of Interpol's computer crime investigations relate to child pornography.
In the same report, Pravda quoted an article in WorldNetDaily about Morality in Media's "new website http://ObscenityCrimes.org, where Net users can file reports against possible obscenity-law violators." Pravda added this: "Our heartfelt desire is that the Russians follow this example of citizen's action and prompt the Government to harsh measures against porn dealers and other figures of loathsome business.”
Right on, comrade Colonel.
A few days after the pornographers left town, the magic-comedy team of Penn & Teller performed a stunt that was both pornographic and sacrilegious. The stunt was staged on January 13 during a four-day convention of magicians at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. Columnist Norm Clarke of the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that "Teller, dressed as Christ on a full-sized cross, entered the room on a cart. A midget dressed as an angel performed a simulated sex act on the near-naked Teller.”
Most of the 400 people in the audience were offended and many walked out. One said, "Where do you draw the line. This was beyond bad taste."
But one magician spoke out against the majority view. Amazing Johnathan -- that's his stage name -- told the paper, "I know that Penn is a practicing atheist and I agree with him that Christianity can be dangerous. Look at the Trade Center. That was done in the name of religion."
How's that for deep thinking? Let's see now. Jesus Christ said the first commandment is to love God, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Okay so far? Next, out of hatred, the 9-11 terrorists turned jet airliners full of fuel and people into weapons to bring death and destruction on New York, Washington and a field in Pennsylvania. So there you have it. Christ was religious, and so were the terrorists. Therefore, Christianity is dangerous. And mocking Christ is okay.
It is reassuring to note that Mr. Clarke's column generated more letters to the editor at the Journal-Review than any other current topic, topping even a difficult state budget, tax increases, and prospects for war with Iraq.
Religion is very important to 59% of people in the U.S., a far higher percentage than in the other wealthiest countries, according to a survey released in December by the Pew Research Center For the People and the Press. The percentage of self-avowed religious people was 33% in Great Britain, 30% in Canada, 27% in Italy, 21% in Germany and 11% in France. There were much higher percentages in Africa, with Angola (80%) at the low end and Senegal (97%) at the high. Similar high percentages were found in Asia except for Korea (25%), Vietnam (24%) and Japan (12%). In Latin America, the range was from Argentina (39%), then Mexico (57%) and on up to Guatemala (80%)
One American is putting his money - and whatever money other people contribute - where his mouth is on the importance of religion. The Los Angeles Times reported on December 28 that George Kelley, a retired flower shop owner in Nashville, worried that "the nation has lost its moral conscience," is giving a check for $10 to every child under age 16 who can memorize and recite the Ten Commandments. Mr. Kelley's wife, Marion, said, "We hope someday that it won't be the $10 that's important, but that they'll have God's word in their hearts." The Kelleys have gone through nearly $70,000 so far in rewards to some 7,000 children over the last five years and hope to run that up to 10 million children (and $100 million!) eventually. Mr. Kelley explains: "if you have a small dream, nobody pays any attention to it."
News of an anti-prostitution education campaign in Portland, Oregon, is a reminder that in 1987 the Supreme Court of Oregon held that obscenity is protected by the state constitution’s freedom of speech provision. The impact of that court decision and one that followed, which made it much more difficult to zone “sexually oriented businesses,” led the Sunday Oregonian of May 7, 1995, to report as follows:
"Portland, a city of 500,000, now has 20 times the number of nude entertainment businesses as Los Angeles, a city of 3 million... [People in Portland] fear Oregon is being overrun by a pornography and adult entertainment industry gone wild, an industry, critics charge, that is running up a big, unpaid bill in the form of increased crime and sexually transmitted diseases, damaged neighborhoods and ruined lives."
The anti-prostitution campaign includes advertising posters at city bus stops, specialized training for professionals who work with violent men, and an informational web site, www.prostitutionrecovery.org. The bus route ads carry this message: "Don't believe the lies. Prostitution hurts everyone."
The campaign was announced on January 9 by the Lola Greene Baldwin Foundation, a non-profit organization named for the first woman police officer in the United States. The Foundation notes that, "Baldwin worked as a Portland police officer in 1908, protecting single, working women from various types of 'big city' exploitation, especially prostitution... The majority of [the Foundation's] clients are women, but men and young people also come to the foundation to escape the sex trade."
In the run-up to last November's elections, Adult Video News ran an article advising its readers to "Vote AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT." That was the headline. The writer, Mark Kernes, warned that, "The hyper-religious nutcases, the ones that would like to nuke the adult industry and burn any survivors at the stake, are out there in full force beating the drums for their candidates, and often illegally handing out campaign literature in churches to do it." Mr. Kernes fired that broadside in support of only one candidate: "Theresa A. Reed, better known as 'Darklady,' who's running on the Libertarian ticket for the Oregon House of Representatives, District 42."
Well, the broadside just wasn't enough. "Darklady" lost. Diane Rosenbaum won and is now serving her third term in that seat. Among her most important legislative accomplishments described on Rep. Rosenbaum's web site was the enactment in 2002 of a funding bill "to create a statewide approach to address the epidemic of domestic violence and sexual assault in the state. State Attorney General Hardy Myers hailed the bill as one of the most significant achievements this session."
Are the voters of House District 42 in Portland "hyper-religious nutcases" or people who know what's wrong and what's needed in their community? Talk about a softball question.
In late December, Pennsylvania's Supreme Court held (link to PDF version) that the state constitutional guarantee of free expression provides more protection for “juice bars” (strip joints where no alcohol is permitted) than does the U.S. Constitution. [One can only wonder how any court -- federal or state -- could rationally and honestly conclude that the term “freedom of speech” was intended to provide any protection for businesses that pay young women to disrobe in a lewd, lascivious and indecent manner before an audience of adult men.]
The case began eight years ago when the City of Erie adopted an ordinance using adverse secondary effects as a basis for closing a strip club or requiring that dancers at the club wear pasties and g-strings. The club's owner sued, won at the state level, lost at the U.S. Supreme Court -- which ruled in 2000 that restrictions based on deleterious secondary effects associated with “adult” businesses did not violate the U.S. constitution—and now has won again in Pennsylvania, to which the case had been returned for reconsideration.
For Pennsylvanians, the only option now is to amend the state constitution to clarify that it provides no less and no more protection for strip joints and other “sexually oriented businesses” than does the U.S. Constitution.
An estimated 259 billion pieces of spam -- unsolicited commercial e-mail messages -- clogged the computer in-baskets of Americans at home and work in 2002. And a lot of it was marketing pornography.
The Denver Post provided these details in its December 22 edition:
"About 38.8 billion porn messages poured into American e-mail boxes in 2002... Those messages made up 15 % of all spam this year, up from 5.3 % last year, according to Brightmail, which sells anti-spam filters... Experts say such explicit e-mail, sent indiscriminately to people of all ages, threatens to traumatize children and could prompt people who inadvertently open the messages at work to lose their jobs or companies to be sued for sexual harassment."
Internetnews.com added to the story on December 31: "There's far more pornographic spam... hitting inboxes - many with increasingly graphic subject lines and often graphic images enclosed. It's a trend that is offensive to many users. And many IT and human resource leaders fear that the increase in pornographic e-mail messages is creating a hostile work environment, leading many companies down a slippery legal road."
Harris Interactive, the worldwide market research and consulting firm, reported on January 3 that 74 % of American Internet users would like to see spamming outlawed altogether. Harris Interactive also found that 80 % of consumers find spam very annoying, up from just 49 % two and a half years ago. While people "are annoyed by many different kinds of spam, messages selling pornography (91%)…annoy the largest number of people," the company reported.
Many Internet Service Providers automatically block spam for their customers. In addition, spam-blocking software for home and office computers is available from McAfee, Brightmail and others.
In addition to installing the software, Brightmail advises taking these common sense steps to avoid getting spammed. Well, it will help.
- Don't enter chat rooms that display your e-mail address. If you do, use an alternative e-mail address if you can to protect your home or work account.
- Don't register on web sites. If you must, open a second e-mail account and use it for this purpose.
- Do be creative when setting up a second account; think up an unusual name that a spammer would not randomly guess.
- Don't unsubscribe. If you respond to a spammer to have your name removed from the mailing list you only verify that your e-mail address is correct.
- Do ask your ISP to block e-mail from insecure servers. More than 50% of all spam is sent via insecure servers worldwide.
- Do send complaints of e-mail scams to the Federal Trade Commission at www.ftc.gov.
Do send complaints of e-mail that may be obscene to your local law enforcement officials or to www.obscenitycrimes.org, Morality in Media's hotline connection to your United States Attorney and to the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section in Washington.
The U.S. Department of Education reported last September that 87% of the nation's public elementary and secondary schools used blocking or filtering software to control student access to inappropriate content on the Internet. The report showed that 98% of the schools used at least one of the following technologies and procedures, and 96% used more than one of them.
Teachers and other staff members monitor student access - 91% of schools did this.
Used blocking or filtering software - 87%.
Had parents sign a written contract - 80%.
Had students sign a written contract - 75%.
Used monitoring software - 46%.
Had honor codes - 41%.
Used their intranet - 26%.
The department also reported that public schools have expanded Internet access in schools from 35% in 1994, the survey's first year, to 99% in 2001. Access in instructional rooms, such as classrooms, labs and libraries, went from 3% in 1994 to 87% in 2001.
The National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE), a government agency in Ireland, reported last summer that 24 % of eight- to 17-year-old children in Ireland, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Greece have accidentally encountered pornography on the Internet. According to NCTE, 65% of Irish children said they have obtained Internet safety information from their parents, but 48% said they were never supervised while online, and 86% of those who use chat rooms said they have been asked for a face-to-face meeting with someone they met online.
It may be worse in the United States: 70% of 15- to 17-year-olds have stumbled onto pornography while online, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation (link to PDF version) in the fall of 2001. Kaiser also found that 57% of the youngsters believe "being exposed to pornography would have serious impact on kids under 18," and 63% said they favor the federal law requiring Internet filters on computers in federally funded schools and libraries.
National Review Online senior writer Rod Dreher put up a story January 14 about home sex-toy parties that attract housewives the way Tupperware parties once did. “[Y]ou see married women partygoers eagerly anticipating that the lotions and machines will return excitement to their sex lives (for some it’s a preemptive strike…),” says Mr. Dreher. “However,” he continues, “when the novelty of the technique wears off and the expected bliss has not arrived in the marital bedroom, what will you do to fend off boredom? Pornographic videos? Bondage gear? Swinging? Another spouse?”
Mr. Dreher places much of the blame on media, including women’s magazines like Redbook, Cosmo and Marie Claire and TV programs like Sex and the City, which promote women’s use of sex toys. We might add that the above named magazines and TV program also promote sex divorced from marital love, intimacy and commitment.
Just before Christmas, Chicago Cardinal Francis George contrasted "the great sadness [that] pervades the life of someone addicted to pornography" with the "joy [that] is the sign of God's presence in our lives." The Cardinal made clear that he meant not just sexually explicit hardcore pornography but also "mildly pornographic material [that] can be found in newspapers and TV programs. Advertising often exploits the human body. Many songs and music videos are designed to arouse people sexually. Most recently, the Internet has begun to furnish a steady supply of pornographic images. The studies that are available show that the use of pornography tends eventually to lead to sexually aggressive action towards others. The sexual abuse of minors is often prepared by a predator's showing a child pornographic films or pictures." The Cardinal's statement appears in his column in the December 8 issue of The Catholic New World, which is published bi-weekly by the Chicago archdiocese.
Citizens for Community Values (CCV) in Cincinnati announced in mid-December that it would survey hotels in every major city in the country by telephone in the first half of 2003 and identify "clean" hotels that do not offer pornographic pay-per-view movies in guest rooms. Stay current with this important effort at CCV's CleanHotels.com.
CCV estimates that "Approximately 40 percent of hotels in America are pandering hard-core sexually explicit pornography (dirty movies) in their rooms through pay-per-view services under categories such as 'adult movies' or 'adult desires'...
Hotel chains that are believed to prohibit pay-per-view porn are Crossland, Drury Inn, Extended Stay, Jameson Inns, Motel 6, Omni Hotels, Studio Plus and Signature Inns.
Rock star Tom Petty told Rolling Stone last October a few things that have been on his mind, none of it complimentary to the music business and a host of other taste-maker businesses. This was after he had put some of his views to music in a new album, "The Last DJ" ... and after some radio stations responded by banning the album. The stations are free to do that, of course, but you have to wonder why we haven't heard from the politically correct opponents of “censorship” among us.
In its October 23 edition, Rolling Stone said, "The Last DJ... takes a hard look at the lack of moral grounding in the music business. The title track has kicked up considerable controversy, with some radio stations seeing the song as a slap in the face and banning it."
Here's some of what Mr. Petty said in the interview:
"Radio is not even worth listening to... I've tuned out. But I was elated when my song was banned. I mean, nothing could have complimented me more than to hear they just banned it at such-and-such a station because it's anti-radio. Now, in 2002 to have a song banned that doesn't have a dirty word, doesn't advocate violence - it's fascinating, you know. Like, what are you afraid of?
"All anyone thinks about is making money... Everywhere we look, we want to make the most money possible. This is a dangerous, corrupt notion... Everything -- morals, truth -- is all going out the window in favor of profits.
"Filthy lyrics make me sick... When I was a young rock & roll star, I was really fascinated and shocked at times by the power that I had, by the power of my words, and shocked that it can be taken wrong. I don't believe in censorship, but I do believe that an artist has to take some moral responsibility for what he or she is putting out there. And I think a lot of these young kids are going to have to learn the hard way before they realize that you can actually do some damage if you're being careless or frivolous in what you're saying.
"Only a sick culture would sexualize young girls. It's disgusting. It's not just pop music, it's fashion, it's TV, it's advertising, it's every element of our culture. Young women are not being respected, children aren't being respected. Why are we creating a nation of child molesters? Could it be that we're dressing up nine-year-old women to look sexy? And even if we're wrong, let's not do it anyway. I really don't put it past these advertising people to say, 'Well, Look, we made a lot of money when we brought out the nine-year-old and made her look like a hooker. Let's do it again.'"
Way to go, Mr. Petty.