A View from Riverside Drive

Commentary by Ed Hynes
May 2003 issue

State employees in Arizona are being put on notice that they can be fired if they use government computers at work to look at pornography. The legislation, signed into law April 18 by Governor Janet Napolitano, was proposed by The Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), a private pro-family organization headquartered in Scottsdale. CAP explained: “Surfing for porn on taxpayer time and with public computers was a problem identified by a number of public employees, and this new law will deal with it.” Similar legislation was killed in the Arizona House several years ago. But it passed with broad bi-partisan support this time, with a push from CAP and growing awareness among employers in both the public and private sectors that hardcore pornography has become a costly and damaging presence on the Internet. Virginia enacted similar legislation in 1996.

Across the U.S., people are on the Internet an average of 76 hours a month while at work, nearly three times the at-home average, according to Nielsen//NetRatings as reported by CyberAtlas.

An estimated 30% or more of workers’ time on the Internet is not work-related, running the cost to employers into the billions in lost productivity, technical support and bandwidth consumption. When the Starr report and the Clinton grand jury video were released on the Internet, for one extraordinary example, the cost to business was estimated to be more than $450 million. The ordinary distractions include online shopping, trip planning, game playing, stock trading and pornography. Lost productivity is not the only issue where pornography is involved, since the presence of porn can lead to suits by employees alleging sexual harassment in the workplace.

Twelve librarians in Minneapolis have sued the Minneapolis Library in federal court, alleging that the library system’s refusal to restrict public access to the Internet through the library’s computers attracted large numbers of men whose behavior created a sexually hostile work environment. The librarians contend they endured humiliation, emotional distress and anxiety as a result. They seek damages of $5.4 million, or $450,000 apiece.

The Minneapolis 12 had filed a complaint in May 2000 with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Commission investigated and in 2001 announced a finding of probable cause that the librarians were subjected to a sexually hostile work environment in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

One significant irony in the case: Had the Minneapolis Library been willing to utilize Internet filters these 12 librarians would probably have been spared the hostile work environment, and the library system itself would not be on the defensive in court.

One other thing: library patrons, young and old, would probably not have been shut out repeatedly from computer access by porn-hungry men, would not have been exposed unwillingly to onscreen pornography, and, if the allegations are correct, would not have endured the appalling experience of seeing men masturbate at the computer stations. Why weren’t these men arrested, you ask? Darn good question.

Several of the librarians claim they were stalked by the porn users. One said she was followed home on the bus by one of the men.

UCLA Law School professor Eugene Volokh, in writing about the Minneapolis 12 case in 2001, just after the EEOC finding of probable cause, titled his article Squeamish Librarians. Squeamish? Well, so much for their problems.

Relying on the slippery slope rationale much favored by First Amendment absolutists, Professor Volokh described the sexual harassment case as a threat to the First Amendment. He wrote: “It’s easy for even initially narrow speech restrictions to grow dramatically over time…” and so forth.

He conceded that, “Maybe the library could and should take steps to boost employee morale, even if that means constraining patrons in some measure; as I said, that’s a tough constitutional question…” The man is a paragon of restraint.

He continued: “Remember that the law the EEOC is using against the Minneapolis libraries also applies to private libraries, such as libraries at private universities – and, for that matter, to private cyber-cafes and other access points, such as Kinko’s. The federal government has no right to pressure all these organizations to suppress their patrons’ Internet access. Librarians’ offense, even understandable offense, can’t justify restrictions on First Amendment rights.”

You see how this works, of course. Where will it all end?

One point worth noting, there is a high probability that the misbehaving men in the Minneapolis library were watching hardcore pornography that is obscene and unprotected by the First Amendment that Professor Volokh contends is threatened by this case.

There surely is a slippery slope at issue in the virtual civil war over free speech. But that slope runs downhill toward more offensive speech, not the other way, toward less legitimately protected free speech.

The fact is a little porn leads to a lot more.

Federal prosecutors stopped going after the hardcore porn distributors when Bill Clinton appointed Janet Reno to run the Justice Department a decade ago. The failure to enforce the obscenity laws since then has had a ripple effect beyond the hardcore pornographic video and magazine markets as entertainers, fashion designers, mainstream movie makers and others have little by little “pushed the envelope” of what is acceptable. Sexual expression once generally recognized as taboo has become commonplace.

We’ve gotten ruder and cruder in our ordinary daily discourse, public as well as private. An American shirt company, for example, ran an ad last month attacking its foreign competitors, using this for a headline: “F_ _ k the brands that are f_ _ king the people.” They spelled it out. No dashes. And they did it twice in one sentence. Saying it just once doesn’t work any more. With shock you’ve got to keep upping the ante. Next time they may say it three times. And after that, who knows? They may eventually decide that their case will have to be made without shock. But it takes real talent to do that.

What we see in all this is the slippery slope that Americans really should be worried about. Polls tell us they are.

Have you noticed that some schools have begun to enforce dress codes? No more bare belly buttons in the hallways and classrooms, if you please. Dress codes may be a welcome out for many teenage girls who would be happy to dress with the decency and wholesome charm of young ladies rather than in the trampy image of pop stars.

“Burlesque is back in Hollywood and throughout the country,” said a story in USA Today on April 11. The headline writer gave it a light touch: “Risque burlesque takes off everywhere.” That story and others about the same time made it all sound almost innocent; just a little good dirty fun, if you can get past the oxymoron.

Well, some would say, it’s not prostitution in massage parlors and escort services; it’s not live sex in swingers clubs; it’s not hardcore video shops with peep show booths designed for anonymous sex; it’s not lap dancing in strip joints. In other words, it’s not the worst thing that could happen. How bad could it be?

Then we remembered the slippery slope. And we noticed that Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss showed up at the Australian Stock Exchange to help promote the initial public offering of The Daily Planet Ltd.—a bordello in Melbourne with plans to open a “sex Disneyland.”

Moviegoers keep voting with their dollars for family movies and against elitist garbage, like the travesty film titled “The Real Cancun,” which made its theater debut in April and bombed with gross ticket sales of just $2.3 million. It wasn’t worth that. The movie was shot in Cancun, Mexico in ten days with 16 college-age “cast” members acting out the orgiastic revelry of spring break for an audience of voyeurs. As Megan Lehmann of the New York Post (April 25, 2003) described the film, “there’s plenty of nudity and cursing, a wet T-shirt contest that quickly devolves into a writhing free-for all, and sneak peeks into the bedrooms via an infrared surveillance camera.” Hollywood, please take note.

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