A View From Riverside Drive
Commentary by Ed Hynes
October 2005
Come for the fishing. Stay for the strip clubs
The Portland Oregonian reported September 22 that a T-Shirt retailer, Hot Topic, is selling an “Oregon” shirt bearing this slogan: “Come for the fishing. Stay for the strip clubs.”
The company says Oregon has 93 strip clubs, or 2.6 per 100,000 residents, putting it second among the states behind West Virginia, which has 53 such clubs, or 2.9 per 100,000 residents.
How Oregon came to be in this position is a story that goes back to the late 1980s, when the Oregon Supreme Court decided (in State v. Henry and Portland v. Tidyman) that the state’s constitution protects adult obscenity and a host of sexually oriented business that are illegal in the rest of the country.
Word went out quickly to pimps, prostitutes, lap dancers, strippers, and all the rest that there was an opportunity for steady work in Portland and elsewhere in the state.
Some eight years later, on May 7, 1995, The Sunday Oregonian gave this assessment of what followed from that decision:
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 Oregon Supreme Court today is still protecting the sex trade. The Portland Oregonian of September 30 this year reported that the state’s high court struck down a state law banning live sex shows and a local nude-dancing ordinance, despite the Oregon Justice Department's “plea to trim what are considered the nation's most expansive protections of speech and expression.”
In a strong dissent in the live sex case, Justice Paul De Muniz wrote, ". . . the idea that the Victorian-era drafters and ratifiers of the Oregon Constitution sought to bring public masturbation and sexual intercourse within the purview of constitutional free-speech protection is difficult to comprehend."
On October 1, the Oregonian published the editorial opinion that this latest decision “continues to move Oregon's concept of free expression well beyond that of any other state. It's an honest and fair reading of the constitution but comes at a cost. The court's course since its landmark 1987 decision in State v. Henry also has helped make Oregon a national mecca for the sex industry and its unsavory side effects.“
Law enforcement paid off in Oklahoma City
Oklahoma City’s experience in the 1980s differed sharply from Portland’s. In a statement to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, former Oklahoma City district attorney Robert H. Macy testified that an obscenity law enforcement campaign he led from 1984 to 1989 had these results: 12 of 13 pornographic bookstores were closed; 75 topless and bottomless bars were closed; 21 houses of prostitution were closed; 27 out of 42 escort services were closed, and 3 hardcore porn theaters switched to the edited-for-TV versions.
Mr. Macy told the committee that "... [While] the number of reported rapes in the State of Oklahoma continued to increase... in five years, the number of reported rapes [in Oklahoma City] dropped by 138, or almost 25 percent, and the only thing we had done different in Oklahoma County was the crackdown on obscenity and pornographic, sex-oriented businesses."
Attorney General Gonzalez to the media: We can do two things at once
At a conference with police officials in Miami Beach on September 26 and at a meeting later that day with editors of the Miami Herald, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez laid out the Justice Department’s law enforcement priorities, including the war on terror, the war on drugs, corporate fraud, official corruption, violent gun crime, and the renewal of the war on obscenity.
The Herald reported that Mr. Gonzalez “cautioned top police officials about the escalation of cybercrime and talked about fighting terrorism, drugs and pornography in an interview with The Herald. . . . Gonzales also took umbrage at those in law enforcement, including the FBI, who have questioned the Bush administration's new war on porn."
Mr. Gonzalez told the Herald that Congress “made the decision that dollars should be spent to fight obscenity. When they appropriate money in order for the department to fight crime, we have an obligation to do that. And that's what we're doing here. People get the idea that somehow the department with all of its talent can't do more than one thing at a time. . . . In fact, we can fight the war on terror. . . . And at the same time, we can go after corruption, we can go after corporate fraud, we can go after drugs, we can go after violent gun crimes and we can go after obscenity.''
Mr. Gonzalez was making a point not just with his audience in Miami, but also with those in the media and elsewhere who had ridiculed the Bush administration’s initiative to renew obscenity law enforcement, which was virtually abandoned under Attorney General Janet Reno during President Clinton’s tenure.
The Daily Business Review in Florida and the Washington Post had published stories heavily weighted with sources who were critical of the obscenity initiative.
The Washington Post put it this way on September 20: “The FBI is joining the Bush administration's War on Porn. And it's looking for a few good agents. . . . Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing the initiative as ‘one of the top priorities’ of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and, by extension, of ‘the Director.’ That would be FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.”
The Post’s story took a derisive turn in the second paragraph:
Mischievous commentary began propagating around the water coolers at 601 Fourth St. NW and its satellites, where the FBI's second-largest field office concentrates on national security, high-technology crimes and public corruption.
The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography -- not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.
"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."
Among friends and trusted colleagues, an experienced national security analyst said, "it's a running joke for us."
In its tone and substance, the Post story was much like the piece published by the Daily Business Review in Florida August 30. In that story, we read that the new United States Attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, “has angered federal and local law enforcement officials, as well as prosecutors in his own office” by telling them that “a top prosecutorial priority” will be “obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults. . . . [These officials] say there are far more important issues in a high-crime area like South Florida, which is an international hub at risk for terrorism, money laundering and other dangerous activities.”
The Daily Business Review ignored the fact that from June, when he took the job, through September 1, Mr. Acosta sent the press 79 news releases revealing that his case load included terrorism, firearms, civil rights, money laundering, narcotics and pretty much everything else you might think of except obscenity.
Consenting adults? Well, okay then
It seems that the pro-porn profiteers have produced a new set of talking points, and that people in and around the media are going with it, perhaps thoughtlessly.
Notice the use of the term “consenting adults” by both the Washington Post and the Daily Business Review. Here they are again:
The Washington Post: “. . . pornography -- not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.”
The Daily Business Review: “. . . obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults. . . .”
This language has shown up in a number of places recently. The wording suggests that there’s no problem as long as the obscenity is exhibited or sold only to “consenting adults,” which is nonsense, of course.
As the Supreme Court noted in the 1973 Paris Adult Theatre I. v. Slaton case, “there are legitimate state interests at stake in stemming the tide of commercialized obscenity, even assuming it is feasible to enforce effective safeguards against exposure to juveniles and passersby…These include the interest of the public in the quality of life and total community environment…and, possibly, the public safety itself.” [Italics mine]
The Court went on to say that there is a “‘right of the Nation and of the States to maintain a decent society.’” Addiction to pornography has also destroyed countless marriages and ruined more than a few promising business and professional careers.
Furthermore, we have failed miserably in keeping children away from pornography.
Please. This industry is a racket
Calling the porn racket an “industry” has become commonplace. “Industry,” like “consenting adults,” serves the purposes of the porn profiteers, who need to keep the public at least neutral. But this “industry’s” constant violation of federal and state obscenity laws in the ordinary course of distributing and exhibiting its products makes “racket” (a fraudulent scheme, enterprise or activity; an illegitimate enterprise…) more accurate.
News stories that dignify the porn racket by calling it an “industry” suggest a measure of acceptance by the news media that most of the public does not share. In polling done for Morality in Media, for example, Wirthlin Worldwide has twice in the last three years found that more than 80 percent of Americans believe the federal laws against Internet obscenity should be vigorously enforced.
Google will give you 840,000 hits for “adult porn industry” in an amazing two tenths of a second, but only 18,000 hits for “adult porn racket” (six one-hundredths of a second).
The “industry” hits include this New York Times headline on May 13, 2004: “Sex Film Industry Lifts Moratorium.”
Another was The U.S. Centers for Disease Control Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report for September 23, 2005: “HIV Transmission in the Adult Film Industry.”
Both the Times story and the CDC report had to do with outbreaks of HIV infections among porn film performers.
And it’s anything but a responsible industry
Commenting on the HIV outbreaks, porn publisher Larry Flynt has written, “The adult film industry has been very effective at and responsible in voluntarily regulating itself.” This appeared April 23, 2004, in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece (“Porn World’s Sky Isn’t Falling - it Doesn’t Need a Condom Rule”) and posted on the web site of the Adult Industry Health Care Medical Foundation.
But sexually transmitted disease is a way of life - and death - in the “adult film industry.”
In January 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported that of 483 porn performers tested by the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation between October 2001 and March 2002, “about 40% had at least one [sexually transmitted] disease.”
In August 2003, Adult Video News reported that hardcore porn producers are “in the midst of a sexually transmitted disease epidemic of unprecedented proportions.”
In May 2004, Reuters reported the “largest outbreak of the AIDS virus in Southern California’s porn industry in six years.”
And on September 22, 2005, some 16 months later, Reuters reported, “Investigators at the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services recently became aware of four cases of HIV infection related to work in the adult film industry. The infections occurred despite a widely adopted voluntary program of HIV and STD testing in the industry.”
In the midst of the 2004 outbreak, one executive in the porn racket, a man named Jeff Mullen of a company called New Sensations, told Adult Video News, “The simple fact is that our audience likes to see completely naked sex and we are in the business of pleasing our customers. The girls in this business are a lot safer than the ordinary girl on the street and we feel with the improved and expanded testing now required we are at the highest level of safety ever.” Translation: The “talent” does not use condoms at New Sensations.
How’s that for being “responsible”?
During the 2004 outbreak, Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation director Sharon Mitchell told Reuters that a woman found to be infected “did realize that HIV was an occupational hazard.”
So much for the “industry” taking “responsibility.” It was the woman’s problem, you see.
In an article in Adult Video News in September 1999, Ms. Mitchell commented favorably on the making of a porn movie featuring HIV-positive performers. Her point? “Everyone who watches porn learns something from it, right? It could be a new technique…even a new kind of fantasy. Right? So let’s just call this an instructional tape for safety awareness and for the HIV-positive to realize there’s ways to have sex safely.”
So there we have it - the porn “industry” doing what it can for the public.
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