In an effort to educate its members and the public about next month’s mid-term election choices, Free Speech Coalition, trade association of the adult entertainment industry, has announced the posting of its first Congressional Report Card online.
The report, compiled from numerous online sources and Congressional Roll Call voting records, uses a numeric rating system to calculate an average voting record which is then converted to an alphabetic grade for the incumbent in each United States House and Senate race in contention this fall.
“Our goal is to inform FSC members how votes in Congress can affect their access to adult entertainment products and to encourage them to vote their ‘erotic interests’ as well as their economic and security interests in this year’s critical mid-term elections,” said FSC Legislative Affairs Director Kat Sunlove. “With the hostile attitude of this administration and this Congress toward our industry, we felt that our members and our consumers needed this data in order to cast an informed vote.”
The Report Card project faced a huge challenge, Sunlove said, in finding Roll Call votes on which to base their ratings since most legislation which impacts adult entertainment either does not come up for a recorded vote or is buried in unrelated bills, such as the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (H.R.4472) passed in July. That new law focuses almost entirely on child sex offender registry rules with only one section referring to adult material.
As a result, a vote for that bill, most of which FSC favors, would not be a good measure of a legislator’s attitude toward legal adult sexual material. Instead, the Report Card relies on votes related to broad free speech, free press, privacy rights and separation of church and state issues for judging the voting patterns of members of Congress. The report also identifies Key Races, in which there is no clear favorite and each vote can change the outcome.
“We strongly encourage our members and fans to register to vote and to educate themselves on the issues,” commented FSC’s Executive Director Michelle L. Freridge. “We certainly hope that this Report Card will help them become more informed voters this fall but our main goal is simply to urge our members to get out and vote.”
