A View From Riverside Drive

Commentary by Ed Hynes
November / December 2007

Big Porn blusters into a small town unbidden and unwelcome

A sleaze merchant slipped into town on October 7 and set up shop on Springhill Road in Staunton, Virginia, in the beautiful and historic Shenandoah Valley.

Within weeks, Staunton residents reacted as citizens in other towns have done repeatedly in this circumstance: they organized (as "Citizen's Task Force Against Pornography") to let it be known they don’t want so-called “adult” video stores, or any other sex-oriented business, in their community.

Soon the local prosecutor, Raymond C. Robertson, investigated and filed obscenity charges against the merchant, Rick Krial, and his shop, After Hours Video.

That’s when Big Porn huffed into action.

Mr. Krial’s defense counsel, Tate Love, a local attorney, filed a motion in Staunton Circuit Court to bring in Paul Cambria, a well-known porn industry lawyer, to help with the defense.

Then Jeffrey Douglas, an attorney in Santa Monica, California, and chairman of the “Free Speech Coalition” – which does PR for Big Porn – told the Staunton Newsleader November 15, "[Cambria’s] just an absolutely spectacular trial attorney. . . He's an extraordinarily formidable opponent."

Mr. Douglas went through his standard talking points: there’s nothing wrong with adult pornography, it’s what the Founders had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment, and the public wants it.

Every bit of that is wrong.

- There’s a long record of the harm done by obscene hardcore pornography

- Obscene hardcore pornography is not protected by the First Amendment.

- In two polls the vast majority of the American people – more than 80% – have expressed their desire for vigorous enforcement of federal laws that ban the distribution of obscene hardcore pornography.

Then Mr. Douglas told the Newsleader that Americans “have spoken with their wallets in support of the adult industry.”

It’s good that he said that. Dollars spent for pornography are so slight a part of consumer spending that the data not only fail to support his point, they disprove it. If dollars spent is the test of porn’s acceptability to the public, Big Porn loses.

Begin with the number reported in The Newsleader story: “[E]stimates often point to more than $10 billion a year in annual [pornography] sales.”

Then, put that $10 billion in the context of the American economy as a whole, which generates 14 TRILLION DOLLARS in gross national product. Ten billion dollars for porn? That’s just seven hundredths of one percent (0.0007) of GNP.

Our 14 TRILLION DOLLARS of GNP amounts to something around $46,000 per person on average. Ten billion dollars for porn amounts to just about $33 per person on average.

Data from the U.S. Commerce Department show that we spend, on average, seven times as much for tobacco, and most of us don’t smoke; four times as much for lawn and garden supplies, twice as much for ice cream, 17 times as much for religious and welfare activities.

The list could go on. The point is that of all the money spent in this country, more than 99.9 percent goes for anything and everything except porn. People have voted with their wallets, alright, but it’s not in support of porn.

The pornographers operate in the gutter but want respectability, which does more than feed their egos or soothe their consciences. It would pay off in court if they can convince a jury that porn is “mainstream.” But the relatively small amount Americans spend for porn demonstrates that porn is way outside the mainstream.

However, while porn itself is not mainstream, porn-like imagery in the fashion, entertainment, advertising and publishing fields has become a commonplace, familiar to everyone, even children. In this way, our highly sexualized pop culture has been laced with byproducts of the porn merchants. Women and girls are valued for their body parts and men are portrayed as predators. That can’t help but have a corrosive effect on society, particularly impressionable young people trying to make sense of the world and find their place in it. This obvious connection between pornography and our sexualized pop culture may be the biggest reason most Americans want the obscenity laws enforced. They get it.

In Portland, Maine, 17 pregnancies among middle school girls in the last four years has prompted school officials to make birth control pills and patches available to girls as young as 11. Parents will be notified only if the child agrees to let them know.

Explain that to parents, if you can.

In a letter to parents posted to the school web site (http://king.portlandschools.org), King Middle School principal Michael J. McCarthy gave it a try. He wrote about “misinformation out in the national media” and explained, “To prevent pregnancy the [school] Health Center needs to have contraception as an option when a student admits being sexually active. Contraception would only be prescribed in rare cases after counseling about abstinence and postponing sexual behavior was not productive. Every effort is always made to encourage the student to join with her parents in making this decision.”

He went on to explain two further points:

First, “proper authorities” would be informed if it was determined in the health center that a girl was being abused or coerced to have sex. But there was no mention of notifying her parents, even in that event.

Second, “If the student does not wish to inform their parent – the doctor is required by Maine State Law to keep the diagnosis confidential. This is also the case if a private physician treats a student.”

Nothing’s easy in this situation. Not even for the principal. Or the students. Or their parents.

It won’t get easy anywhere in the country until the messages children take from our pop culture get cleaned up. That can’t begin to happen until the Justice Department gets back to enforcing the obscenity laws and choking off the filth coming out of Porn Valley in California.

Meanwhile, something needs to be done to let parents know what the schools know about their children’s behavior.

Citizens groups are not buying the lie that Big Porn is selling.

In mid-November, just weeks after the Big Porn propaganda machine was spreading the lie in Staunton that Americans are “voting with their wallets” for porn shops and other sexually oriented businesses, a citizen group protesting such businesses was putting up a billboard on Interstate 65 in Indiana, just across the Ohio River from Louisville, with the message: “XXX – Someone’s Daughter”. It was the group’s second billboard in the last few months.

Other citizen protests have forced the closure of porn shops elsewhere, most recently in Nyack and Port Chester, New York.

The Louisville group, Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana, or ROCK as it is commonly known, wants to drive the commercialized sex industry out of the southern Indiana-northern Kentucky area. ROCK has the support of the business community as well as churches and civic groups because they all know what Big Porn wants to ignore or deny: Porn shops and other SOBs negatively impact the local economy as well as real estate values and the quality of life in the community.

Will Michael Mukasey do the needed job as Attorney General?

A Reuters story out of Washington September 19 focused on the failure of George W. Bush’s Justice Department to “curb adult pornography in the United States.”

The headline was, “FBI reluctance stalls Bush anti-pornography push.” The Los Angeles Times ran a similar story October 9, and this was echoed by a piece in California Catholic Daily online at www.calcatholic.com.

The overwhelming majority of Americans think the Justice Department should vigorously enforce the federal laws that ban the distribution of obscene hardcore pornography on the Internet and elsewhere, something the Department hasn’t done much since the Reagan/Bush administrations in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Will new Attorney General Michael Mukasey do what John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez failed to do? Will he vigorously enforce the federal laws that ban the distribution of hardcore obscene pornography?

Senator Orrin Hatch (R- Utah) put the issue directly to Judge Mukasey in the Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on October 17. The Q & A bears repeating.

Senator Hatch: Turning to the issue of obscenity enforcement, the Justice Department's record of enforcing the laws against adult obscenity has been criticized almost continuously for more than a decade. These cases essentially stopped altogether during the Clinton administration, and, unfortunately, there is not much more to show during the Bush administration. . . . In my view, the Justice Department's obscenity enforcement strategy has been misguided. It focuses on prosecuting too narrow a range of obscene material. Now, in my view, there are too few FBI agents and too few prosecutors around the country initiating investigations and cases in this area. So I am asking you personally to review this policy decision about prosecuting extreme rather than mainstream obscenity and to consider changing it. Would you give some consideration to that?
Judge Mukasey: I certainly will.
Senator Hatch: I would be grateful to you if you would.
Judge Mukasey: I certainly will, and I do so because I recognize that even what is referred to conversationally as "mainstream material" can have an effect of cheapening society, of objectifying women, and of endangering children in a way that we cannot tolerate. . . .
Senator Hatch: Will you review the allocation of resources and discretion in the FBI field offices to ensure that this area of law enforcement is given the priority it deserves?
Judge Mukasey: I will.

“Mainstream” in this context might be misunderstood to mean material that is widely used and accepted. But, as the Commerce Department economic data show, pornography simply is not a “mainstream” product. “Mainstream” here means pornography that may be more widely available than “extreme” obscenity, and may be less shocking but still obscene. “Extreme” in this context speaks for itself, but written descriptions of it suggest you’d have to have the nasty experience of actually seeing it to understand what “extreme” in this context really means.

At the state and local level, law enforcement is soldiering on

Alabama’s ban on sex toy sales went into effect in October when the Supreme Court let stand a lower court’s ruling that the ban is constitutional. That ended a nine-year court challenge. Alabama Attorney General Troy King said through a spokesman that now “local district attorneys and local law enforcement will be able to enforce the law.” The challenge was initiated by Sherri Williams, who operates sex shops in Huntsville and Decatur. She called the outcome “further evidence of religion in politics” and vowed “They are going to have to pry this vibrator from my cold dead hand.” She may be wrong, but she is not in doubt.

A federal judge in Tampa October 4 upheld three new ordinances that regulate sexually oriented businesses in Hillsborough County. The SOBs say through their attorney that they’re “disturbed” by the ruling and will appeal. But for the time being, at least, dancers at “bikini bars” will have to stay six feet or more away from customers, putting an end to lap dances; drinking alcohol in “adult” businesses is prohibited, and private viewing booths are banned in “adult” video shops.

Maximum sentences for soliciting minors for sex and for possession of child pornography were tripled to 15 years in Florida October 1.
The Associated Press reported, “The law also requires offenders to register e-mail and instant message handles with authorities. That information will be shared with social networking sites like Myspace.com.”

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Facebook announced an agreement October 17 to protect those who use the social networking Web site from nudity, pornography and sexual predators. An “Independent Safety and Security Examiner” approved by the attorney general's office will oversee Facebook's compliance for two years. The agreement calls for Facebook, which has about 47 million users, to begin addressing complaints of offensive sexual content or unwelcome contact within 24 hours, and to report to the complainant within 72 hours on how it will respond.

A “petition drive” grand jury in Johnson County Kansas, has issued obscenity indictments against three porn shops in suburbs near Kansas City. The SOBs are: Spirit Halloween in Overland Park, accused of displaying “adult” costumes in places where minors could view them; Hollywood at Home, Overland Park, accused of possessing and intending to sell four different obscene DVDs, and Priscilla’s, in Olathe, charged with possessing and intending to sell an obscene DVD and obscene sex toys. The Kansas City Star reported September 25, “The jury was called after an anti-pornography group — the Kansas City chapter of the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families — succeeded in citizen petition drives requesting grand juries to investigate targeted businesses. The same effort also created grand juries in several other counties across the metropolitan area, including Wyandotte, Clay and Platte.” I am a military spouse finding it harder and harder to live with the sexuality and pornification of our military installations. I can't take my 4 daughters to the PX, commissary or even the on-post library without being bombarded by sexually suggestive items and magazines. It is very hard feeling helpless as a mom…I want a better world for my girls.

The Maryland State Liquor Board in recent months has fined at least five strip clubs on “The Block,” a stretch of East Baltimore Street in Baltimore that became famous a hundred years ago for its burlesque houses and has been home since the 1950s to strip clubs, pornography shops, prostitution, drug dealing and general crime. The Liquor Board cited the clubs for underage drinking, prostitution and health code violations. The Baltimore Sun reported October 11 that the violations were uncovered by members of the city Police Department's vice squad.

A civil case demonstrates that hotels can lose money on in-room porn. Unrestricted access to hardcore pornography on TV sets in its guest rooms has cost a Value Lodge motel in Artesia, California, $85,000.

That was the amount awarded by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury October 12 to Edwina McCombs, whose two daughters, age 8 and 9, turned on the unblocked porn channel in their Value Lodge room while Mrs. McCombs was taking a bath. The children were exposed to close-ups of people engaged in various sexual acts. Traumatized, they knocked on the bathroom door and told Mrs. McCombs, “Mommy, something’s wrong.”

Mrs. McCombs attorney, Elliot Krieger, said, "The jury did the right thing and are sending a message to other hotels."

But Max Chiang, the lawyer for motel owner Charles Su, didn’t get it. He told the Los Angeles Times, “We offered to settle for $50,000 before the case, so it's just $30,000 more. We're OK."

He’s not much good at math, either.

A criminal charge of distributing obscenity would get his attention, and the motel/hotel industry’s, too, but there was no sign of interest in any of this by the U.S. Attorney or any local prosecutor.

Here’s a gift idea for Christmas.

The DVD of Christmas at Maxwell’s is available from the independent production company Laufer Film at http://www.christmasatmaxwells.com.

We mentioned this movie a year ago, just after it opened in theaters. It is a beautifully told story of how faith is tested when bad things happen to good people, in this case Cleveland wine merchant Andrew Austin (Andrew May), his beautiful wife Suzie (the actress Jack Hourigan), and their children (Charlie May and Julia May). Suzie has cancer and seems about to die.

Jack Hourigan gives a stunning performance as Suzie Austin both in vibrant good health and in sunken-eyed illness. Andrew May is excellent as Andrew Austin, angry at the doctors, falling short on Suzie’s need for emotional support, and struggling to come to terms with the meaning of faith in the face of horrendous adversity.

They decide to spend Christmas at Maxwell House, their summer home, knowing it may be their last Christmas together. Being there, in the company of old friends, helps them heal. But they need a miracle. That’s where an elderly gentleman from a local social service agency comes in. You have to see this.

Total running time is 86 minutes. The originating footage was shot in HiDefinition. The film was shot in North East Ohio. The movie is rated MPAA PG.

The "official" DVD of the movie has new bonus material that includes a behind-the-scenes featurette, commentary track, filmography, deleted scene and filmographies.

Christmas at Maxwell’s was produced by filmmakers William C. Laufer and his daughter, Tiffany Laufer. William Laufer is the writer, director and co-producer. Tiffany Laufer is the cinematographer and co-producer.

- end -