A View from Riverside Drive
Commentary by Ed Hynes
March 2005
With porn barbarians at the gates, Washington begins to rouse itself
The urgent need for effective law enforcement against obscenity during the second term of the George W. Bush administration was underscored in a story by James L. Lambert distributed by Agape Press on January 14. Mr. Lambert uses a statement by retired FBI agent William P. Kelly to make the point crystal clear: "If we [as a society] do not soon make some progress, we will not be able to keep these barbarians from completely coming over the walls of our civilization. . . . [I]f progress is not made against adult obscenity in the next few years, the struggle to [limit and restrict] the industry will be [forever] lost."
Does Washington get it? Well, maybe.
In a speech February 28, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spoke of the war on terrorism and his other law enforcement priorities, including "the aggressive prosecution of purveyors of obscene materials."
General Gonzalez told a meeting in Washington of the Hoover Institution Board of Governors, "I am strongly committed to ensuring the right of free speech; the right of ordinary citizens and of the press to speak out and to express their views and ideas is one of the greatest strengths of our form of government, but obscene materials are not protected by the First Amendment, and I am committed to prosecuting these crimes aggressively."
He added, "As an example, recently, the Department announced our appeal in an important obscenity prosecution in Pittsburgh, which involved materials that depicted rape, sexual assault, and a variety of other degrading conduct. I have directed Department officials to carefully review federal laws to see how we might strengthen our hand in prosecuting obscenity."
In Pittsburgh, what should have been a slam-dunk win for the Department turned out to be a win for the hardcore pornographers—thanks to an activist federal district court judge who would rather rewrite the constitution to reflect his personal ideological views, than abide by it.
Prompted by the Pittsburgh case, Senator Sam Brownback has weighed in on the issue of obscenity prosecutions with a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. His media advisory about the hearings said, "In the decision of U.S. v. Extreme Associates, U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster…created an unwritten 'right to possess and view sexually explicit material in the privacy of one's home.' The hearing will illustrate the negative impact this decision can have on prosecuting producers of obscene material."
Senator Brownback and Senator Orrin Hatch wrote a scathing criticism of Judge Lancaster's decision for the Washington Times of February 10. They wrote, in part:
U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster of Western Pennsylvania, said that the indictment against Extreme violated not the First Amendment's right to free speech, but an unwritten constitutional "right to sexual privacy, which encompasses a right to possess and view sexually explicit material in the privacy of one's own home." He could only come to this bizarre conclusion by stitching together bits and pieces from inapplicable precedents (and making a few things up altogether) to form a Frankenstein's monster of judicial activism.
It's no wonder Judge Lancaster wanted to avoid the First Amendment, because the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that there exists no First Amendment right to do what these Extreme defendants did, namely, produce and distribute obscenity. The Supreme Court has also held, even more specifically, that the right to consume obscenity privately—established in a 1969 case—does not create a right to distribute. That would seem to place in a real bind those, like the Extreme defendants, who admit to producing and distributing obscene material. Not to worry, said Judge Lancaster, since this is really not about the First Amendment at all.
Having set the alarm bells ringing in Washington, Judge Lancaster's decision may turn out to be good for the cause of public morality. That would be particularly ironic because of the judge's finding that "public morality is not a legitimate state interest sufficient to justify infringing on adult, private, consensual sexual conduct even if that conduct is deemed offensive to the general public's sense of morality."
Key to victory: Seeing porn for what it is
Why fight to rid the world of pornography? Because it hurts people. Badly. That, simply put, is the immorality of it. Pornography is addictive. Addicts lose their jobs and homes. Children lose their fathers. Wives lose their husbands. All too many pornography addicts act out in a criminal manner (sexual abuse of children, sexual assault and rape). Addicts create a demand for prostitutes. That demand is met by criminal gangs who trap and trade hundreds of thousands of women and girls each year for the brothels of the world.
At each step in the addiction, pornography creates victims: first the addicts themselves, then their families, then strangers, the victims of sexual assault who are merely targets of opportunity or the women and children trafficked into sexual slavery as prostitutes.
When enough people understand that pornography is not a harmless diversion, but a plague, the tide will turn against the barbarians slamming themselves into the walls of our civilization.
An important step in that direction will be taken at a conference of experts in Chicago March 13 to March 15, sponsored by Captive Daughters, and by the International Human Rights Law Institute of DePaul University. Captive Daughters is a non-profit organization committed to ending the sex trafficking of girls and adolescent females.
The sponsors say "the conference aims to promote public discussion and provide media education regarding the issue of demand in international sex trafficking. The purpose of this conference is to share information about the connections among trafficking, pornography and demand and to develop a toolkit to empower activists working to address pornography's role in creating demand for sex trafficking."
People don't want it, so Adelphia drops its plan for triple-X movies
There was a time, not long ago, when Adelphia Communications Corp. was notable among cable television companies for its no-porn policy. But the company began offering what are known as single-X and double-X "adult entertainment" in 2003, and by the end of 2004 it had quietly begun distributing triple-X material produced by Playboy Enterprises. News of this development was reported in a Los Angeles Times story on February 2.
Adelphia spokesperson Erica Stull told the Times, "People want it, so we are trying to provide it… The more Xs, the more popular."
But by February 23 the story, and the spokesperson, had changed. Broadcasting & Cable magazine reported that Adelphia "is retreating from its plan to sell triple-x films to cable subscribers, responding to criticism…" In a prepared statement, Adelphia's Paul Jacobson told the magazine, "Some concern has been expressed over this type of adult programming… Adelphia will remove it from all of its systems."
Take a bow, critics!
How much better it would have been for the communities Adelphia purports to serve, however, had it dropped the X and XX stuff, too.
Disney said to be worried a Christian lion king will offend
Let's put it this way: Hollywood has a great record when it comes to offending people.
Now Hollywood observers think Disney is worried about how to make an offense-free movie out of C.S. Lewis's classic "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the witch and the Wardrobe." The problem, it seems, stems from the fact that Aslan, the lion of the story, does for the residents of Narnia what Jesus Christ did for the world. The witch is a stand-in for the devil.
The New York Times (February 20) reports, "the pros at Disney are wrestling with a special challenge: how to sell a screen hero who was conceived as a forthright symbol of Jesus Christ, a redeemer who is tortured and killed in place of a young human sinner and who returns in a glorious resurrection that transforms the snowy landscape of Narnia into a verdant paradise. [This] presents the company with a significant dilemma: whether to acknowledge the Christian symbolism and risk alienating a large part of the potential audience, or to play it down and possibly offend the many Christians who count among the books' fan base."
Have the folks at Disney—like the Oscars judges—forgotten Mel Gibson's huge box office success with "The Passion of the Christ"?
Noticing Hollywood's influence on youthful behavior
The American Lung Association of Sacramento announced its tenth annual "Hackadamy Awards" on February 16, a week and a half before the Academy Awards. The Association's laudable goal is to raise awareness of how tobacco use in movies can promote smoking among teens and pre-teens.
Cate Blanchett was awarded a Thumbs Up Hackey for her non-smoking portrayal of Katherine Hepburn, who was a cigarette smoker, in "The Aviator."
Thumbs Down Hackeys went to the movies "Hellboy," "Ocean's Twelve," "Ladder 49" and "Saved!" Jude Law was given a Thumbs Down because of his tobacco use in "Closer," "Alfie" and "The Aviator."
A Thumbs Up went to "Mean Girls," a PG-13 movie in which an innocent teenager, new to the school, struggles to fit in with classmates for whom sex is the number one topic, and being a virgin is seemingly unacceptable. There's a joke about lesbian kissing. A pregnancy test is funny. One youngster watches "Girls Gone Wild" and imitates the breast-baring antics she sees. And so on. Smoking is not one of the things these girls do, and that was good enough for a Thumbs Up for "Mean Girls."
Too bad Hollywood's influence on youthful sex gets so little attention
FCC on 'adult' content: Shield the children
Reuters reported from Washington February 16 that the Federal Communications Commission's wireless bureau is urging the mobile telephone industry to educate parents on how they (the parents) can shield children from pornographic material that is available via wireless services. Bureau chief John Muleta was quoted as saying, "With adult content available from a myriad of sources, now more than ever it is important for carriers, content providers, and parents to know what is being done by industry to prevent access to adult content by minors."
It would, of course be wonderful if carriers and content providers took effective steps voluntarily to keep kids away from the smut, but what if they don't? Will the FCC turn a blind eye and ear, as it does with the dial-a-porn problem, despite the existence of a federal law requiring persons who, by means of telephone, provide indecent communications for commercial purposes to restrict children's access?
Pornography sales on these wireless large-screen Internet-capable mobile devices will reach $1 billion worldwide this year—up 50 percent from 2004—and then double to more than $2 billion by the end of the decade, according to Juniper Research.
Dr. Phil tells it like it is
We have this from our friends at the Parents Television Council.
Dr. Phil had some good comments today (3/1/05) on pornography.
A man who is about to be married has an addiction to pornography. His fiancé is worried about it and doesn't know if she should marry him. The man tells Dr. Phil that he thinks looking at porn is a normal thing for guys to do. Dr. Phil tells him why it is not normal.
Let me tell you why it's not normal . . . You are looking at someone's daughter who has taken a wrong turn and is being exploited and demeaned by people who are funded by you.
It is a sick, demented, twisted world and you are going into it over and over again to the point that it is eroding your relationship with this girl right here.
It is NOT healthy. It is NOT normal.
-30-30-30-30-