A View from Riverside Drive
Commentary by Ed Hynes
April 2005
Justice Department launches ‘DOJ – Obscenity Prosecution News’
Bruce A. Taylor, Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, has sent us the Spring 2005 issue, Volume 1, Number 1, of “DOJ – Obscenity Prosecution News.” The very fact that this newsletter has been published says a lot about the Department’s renewed determination to go after the porn racketeers.
The newsletter reports that the Department has obtained 40 obscenity convictions since the beginning of 2001, and has obscenity indictments pending in 19 other cases. Most of these cases, however, did not and do not involved commercial distribution of “adult” obscenity, which is where the battle for a safe and decent society will ultimately be won or lost.
In one especially noteworthy case, John Kenneth Coil pleaded guilty to obscenity and tax fraud charges and forfeited “all his enterprise properties within the State of Texas, amounting to over 40 pieces of realty and hard-core pornography stores throughout the state. He was sentenced to serve 63 months and forfeit over $8 million in properties… Seven of his employees or family member associates also pled guilty to committing or facilitating various tax or tax evasion offenses. Two received jail terms, one for 42 months and another for one year and one day, and the other five received probation for three years.”
The newsletter adds, “This was a major victory for the Department’s obscenity enforcement efforts and the policies of the President and Attorney General. The effect of these convictions and forfeitures will be an undeniable message of deterrence to the hard-core obscenity syndicates and those associated with them in obscenity offenses, as well as an encouraging message of determination for the public, the courts, and the law enforcement agencies.”
The newsletter also reports that
- the Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) conducted the third annual symposium on obscenity law enforcement last September for Federal prosecutors and investigators,
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the FBI has formed a new squad on obscenity, and
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the creation of the High Tech Investigation Unit gives CEOS a valuable in-house capability to identify and analyze the activities of offenders and seek indictments against them.
“DOJ – Obscenity Prosecution News” provides hyperlinks to
The newsletter also contains hyperlinks to the public online complaint "tiplines" of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (www.cybertipline.com) and Morality in Media (www.obscenitycrimes.org).
In the 33 months from its start in June 2002 through this February, Morality in Media’s obscenitycrimes.org tipline took in 50,399 reports from concerned, alarmed, or outraged citizens who saw what they believe was hardcore obscene pornography on the Internet. The Justice Department is using these reports to build a criminal database of value in the prosecution of pornographers.
Joan Irvine strikes again
When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales pledged in February to include adult obscenity law enforcement among his priorities, Joan Irvine, a spokesperson for something called the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection said, as she’s done before, that the federal government should focus exclusively on child pornography. Ms. Irvine put it this way in an interview with the Baltimore Sun (March 8, 2005): “Why is he wasting limited government resources on trying to prove legal adult entertainment is obscenity when there is so much work to be done on combating child pornography?”
Meanwhile, prosecutors at Michael Jackson’s child molestation trial in Santa Maria, California, have presented evidence that the King of Pop used adult pornography to seduce a young victim, beginning when the boy was just 10 years old.
Legislate morality? Of course not. However…
Those who are opposed to laws that affect behavior are quick to say, “You can’t legislate morality.” In the case of laws against obscenity and indecency, this criticism tends to come mostly from people who make money from obscenity and indecency, though they’ll tell you it’s because of their devotion to the First Amendment.
Still, of course, they’re right. We can’t legislate morality. We already know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. We value fair play and honesty. We’re motivated by duty to family, friends, country. This is the stuff of morality. All of it has come to us from a higher authority. Call it the Natural Law.
But if the critics mean that morality should have no place in the enactment and enforcement of man-made laws, they’re wrong.
Most of us don’t live up to the Natural Law as faithfully as we should, which is why we need man-made laws. If these laws are enacted and enforced without reference to right and wrong, good and evil, we confront the question: Why bother?
The Swedish Foreign Ministry has developed a strategy for dealing with global trafficking of persons, mostly women and girls who are enslaved to feed the demand for prostitutes. That demand is stimulated by the global traffic in child and adult pornography, mostly through the Internet. Here are excerpts from this example from Sweden of how good government planning involves moral principles. The language of morality runs through it.
- Approach and treat human trafficking largely as a poverty and gender equality issue…
- Emphasize that every person has the right to be protected against human trafficking …
- Seek to improve conditions for the rehabilitation and re-integration of trafficking victims into the community, where they can live in dignity.
- Consider preventative measures: Job creation programs… Improving labor conditions… Improving education for girls… Promoting gender equality… Promoting the sexual health of girls and boys… Giving greater prominence to children and young people… Contributing to the establishment and maintenance of social safety nets…
- Consider curative measures such as: Making it easier to report instances of human trafficking… Helping to ensure that victims are treated with dignity and respect and that they receive immediate legal, medical, social, and economic support… Promoting the long-term development of structures for the systematic delivery of social services… Heightening the respect of police and law enforcement officers for human rights and enhancing their social skills…
- Help to promote global awareness of the problem, particularly in areas or communities where it has not yet been highlighted or is controversial.
- Contribute to the expansion of knowledge and the systematic analysis of human trafficking …
The Swedish plan can be found at http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/574/a/20262
Librarians honor a novelist whom parents would like to ban
The American Library Association, dogged champions of unfiltered Internet access for all, young and old, has managed to outdo even itself in the libertarian librarian department. .
From the New York Times (February 23) we learn that the ALA’s Young Library Services Association has given its Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement to novelist Francesca Lia Block. Ms. Block, the Times tells us, writes about a character named Weetzie Bat who “has a boyfriend she calls ‘My Secret Agent Lover Man.’ They live with Dirk, Weetzie’s gay best friend, his lover, Duck, and Weetzie’s daughter, Cherokee, possibly conceived during group sex with Dirk and Duck. There is also Witch Baby, Lover Man’s child with a witch. The family works in the movie business. And they become involved with seamier elements of Los Angeles: rough sex, pimps and drugs.”
Some family.
The award was sponsored by School Library Journal, despite the fact that, as the Times points out, Ms. Block’s work “may not seem like a conventional young-adult book or something to be promoted by your local library.”
In fact, in Virginia, Parents Against Bad Books has tried unsuccessfully to have several of Ms. Block’s books removed from school libraries.
Yet the Edwards Award “recognizes an author's work in helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world.”
Cindy Dobrez, a public school librarian in Holland, Michigan, and chairwoman of the award committee, told the Times Ms. Block’s “is a voice so unique that nobody will ever be able to imitate it.”
We can only hope.
Ms. Dobrez went on to say “[Ms. Block] took up subjects like homosexuality and out-of-wedlock sex and presented them in a nonjudgmental way.”
Great. Let the kids sort it out for themselves.
Meanwhile, at Simon & Schuster. . .
The venerable Simon & Schuster is taking orders for “Rainbow Party,” a by Paul Ruditis that will be available June 28. The book is about boys and girls engaged in group oral sex. The “rainbow” refers to lipstick colors. The book is being marketed for “young adults” ages 14 and up.
And at Milton Academy in Massachusetts
Five boys were expelled after it came out that a girl student had allegedly performed oral sex on them in a school locker room in January. The girl was said to have done it as a birthday present for one of the boys. She was placed on indefinite “administrative leave.” The boys are between 16 and 18 years old; the girl is 15, which is under the age of consent in Massachusetts. Police were investigating.
Porn’s got an edge: it pays
The economics of the entertainment media change radically when programmers shift from scripted, costumed and staged drama to set-em-up and roll-em reality shows. Reality wins. Viewers lose. The numbers change again when cable networks, or satellite systems, or hotel in-room TV systems shift from higher-priced theatrical movies to dirt-cheap porn videos. Porn wins. Everyone for decency takes a bath – and wants a shower.
Broadcasting & Cable magazine (March 14) describes the discomfort among cable and satellite system operators, caught between political pressure from Washington to clean up their act and numbers B&C says come down to this:
“Including adult pay-per-view channels in a government anti-obscenity campaign would threaten what is by far cable and satellite operators most profitable product line. [They] are pulling in revenue of just under $800 million a year from adult movie subscriptions and pay-per-view orders, roughly 40% of pay-TV on-demand revenue. That may not sound like much for an industry expected to tally $62 billion in revenues this year, but the take from adult pay-per-view is almost pure profit. Cable and satellite operators’ margins for sex channels, according to several analysts’ estimates, run between 70% and 90%. By comparison, cable and satellite operators get to keep only 40% of the retail price of theatrical movies.”
Madam to judge: Porn producers sell sex, too
It was bound to happen. In a Manhattan court the other day, a high-priced Madam told the judge she’s no different from a porn producer – they-re both getting paid for sex – and no one’s putting handcuffs on porn producers, so why her? Jenny Paulino’s lawyer filed papers contending, according to the New York Daily News of March 14, “there is ‘no rational, moral or legal difference’ between running an escort service and funding a for-profit sex film, for instance. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has several weeks to respond in writing to the legal argument.”
DA Robert Morgenthau will have trouble with this. His jurisdiction includes what may be the porn capital of the east coast, but since the early 1980s he has not, to our knowledge, prosecuted even one obscenity case.
Jenny Paulino and her lawyer do make one good point. Porn flicks are prostitution in another form.
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