WASHINGTON, D.C.—As AVN noted back in September, Senate Majority Leader "Moscow Mitch" McConnell has been on a crusade to make sure Trump doesn't leave office without having filled every available federal judgeship with a dyed-in-the-wool, Federalist Society-approved conservative, so that no matter who gets elected President over roughly the next 20 or 30 years, or which parties have control of the House and Senate, all official governmental actions will have to have the approval of a majority of so-called constitutional "textualists." They're nothing of the sort, of course; they're simply ultra-conservatives with agendas that include supporting corporate power over that of the citizenry, promoting Christian-centric "religious freedoms" over simple civil rights, and making sure the government doesn't make the country's billionaires (the top 20 of whom have more money combined than the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. population) too much (or any) poorer.
In fact, confirming those "friendly" judges has taken up so much of the Senate's time that McConnell hasn't seen fit to bring the 298 bills the House has passed over the past year, covering topics as diverse as the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, the Save the Internet Act, which would reaffirm net neutrality, and the Climate Action Now Act, which would require actions to reduce global climate change, to the Senate floor for a vote.
In fact, it's to the House's great credit that it's passed so many bills, considering how much time has been taken up over the past several months with figuring out which impeachable offenses the President has committed—and how much time House Republicans have spent trying to obfuscate such presidential wrong-doings by bringing up irrelevancies, attempting to change the subject of the debate, and just spouting empty rhetoric.
So one can't help but assume that it's the House Republicans' wish to divert attention from the impeachment inquiry that's impelled four of them—Jim Banks (R-IN), Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Brian Babin (R-TX)—to send a letter (.pdf) to Attorney General William Barr, urging him to begin enforcing existing federal obscenity laws.
The letter, dated December 6, states in part, "The internet and other evolving technologies are fueling the explosion of obscene pornography by making it more accessible and visceral. This explosion in pornography coincides with an increase in violence towards women and an increase in the volume of human trafficking as well as child pornography."
Can we just say: BULLSHIT?
First of all, the writers had to say "obscene pornography" because pornography as a general rule has the full protection of the U.S. Constitution's First and Ninth Amendments, and can only be suppressed (as "obscene")—at least according to the Supreme Court's (unconstitutional) decision in Miller v. California—if the work, considered as a whole and applying contemporary community standards, would appeal to the "prurient interest"—that is, a morbid, degrading and unhealthy interest in sex or excretion—of the average person, and if the work depicts or describes sexual conduct "specifically defined" by applicable state law in a patently offensive way, and if the work, taken has a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. (Those "and"s are important because, at least theoretically, in order to win an obscenity conviction, all parts of the definition must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.)
Point is, that's a tough barrier to overcome, which explains why there wasn't a single obscenity prosecution begun during the Obama administration, though a couple of previously filed cases were held over from Bush II's reign for trial.
Moreover, in the letter writers' apparent rejection of the scientific truism that "correlation is not causation," the fact that there's a lot of porn out there has absolutely nothing to do with an (as it turns out bogus) increase in violence against women, a (bogus) increase in human trafficking or the amount of child pornography that's out there. Pornographers, at least in the established adult industry, make sexually explicit content that's consensual, that doesn't involve trafficked women, and doesn't use anyone under 18 years of age.
But according to the Republicans, it's not just those non-existent porn-trafficked women and kids that are exploited, but "society writ large." We're guessing that would include all the clergypeople and politicians who've been caught with child porn on their computers, but for these letter-writers, the porn "phenomenon is especially harmful to youth, who are being exposed to obscene pornography at exceptionally younger ages." Leaving aside the claim of "obscene porn," yeah, many kids under 18 are seeing porn, though it's impossible to know how many, but so what? Sadly, more than half the states (including the ones "served" by these Reps) don't require comprehensive sex education, which would give kids enough background so they wouldn't assume that commercial porn scenes/DVDs, which are fantasies—it says so right on the label—are supposed to be real-life depictions. Beyond that, these pols are fighting simple biology: as soon as kids reach puberty, they are likely to begin to be interested in sex, and if schools and parents don't deal with that phenomenon head-on, the kids will seek out porn.
The letter goes on to talk about how when Barr was the Attorney General under Bush I, he "effectively shut down the pornography industry"—HAH!!!—"and dramatically reduced child pornography in America." Let's recall that between 1989 and 1992, the period when Barr was AG, the internet barely existed, and it was pretty difficult to trade any kind of sexual material, child or adult, with the clearly illegal stuff having been relegated to being sold under the counter at sex shops.
The letter writers also claim that under Barr, laws "prohibit[ed] distribution of obscene pornography on the internet, on cable/satellite TV [and] in hotels/motels," but as noted, the internet barely existed in 1992, satellite TV was still in its infancy, and hotels and motels were too scared to put explicit material on their in-house TV systems, opting for softcore movies instead. Those facts had little to do with the laws themselves and more with people being scared of being targeted for obscenity prosecutions no matter what they showed.
The letter then talks about how "then-candidate Donald Trump signed the first-ever anti-pornography pledge." That would be the same Donald Trump who fucked Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal and who-knows-how-many other women involved in porn. But leaving that aside, the letter writers note that Trump has fallen down on the job of targeting porn, and that his pledge "has so far been ignored in the Trump administration with the result that the harms of illegal pornography have continued unabated."
Well, aside from the fact that the porn is legal, doesn’t harm anyone, and that camming and clips are the primary ways people get their commercial sexual jollies... what's the problem? (Hint: There isn't one.)
But still ...
"Given the pervasiveness of obscenity it’s our recommendation that you declare the prosecution of obscene pornography a criminal justice priority and urge your U.S. attorneys to bring prosecutions against the major producers and distributors of such material," the four writers urge—but perhaps Mr. Barr might want to wait on that at least until his boss survives the impeachment trial (if he does) and is re-elected (if he is).
But of course, the letter inspired plenty of comment, both in favor and against. Matt Walsh of DailyWire.com wrote not one but two screeds about why the feds targeting porn is a good idea, noting, "Personally, I’d hope that this is a first step towards a wider-ranging war on hardcore porn, though that’s not what the lawmakers are advocating."
"The most common defense of porn is that it’s a matter involving consenting adults and has no effect on anyone else," Walsh claims. "If this were true, I’d probably agree that the government has no place in restricting it, even if it is morally objectionable. However, this is not only untrue — it is laughably untrue. First of all, the link between the sex trafficking industry and porn is well established. The porn viewer may assume that the figures on the screen are acting consensually, but the fact is that, at least some of the time, they are not.... The viewer simply has no way of knowing whether he’s watching the rape of a trafficked woman, or the abuse of a minor, or a consensual act between sober and clear-minded adults."
Actually, of course, he does, if he's watching a legitimate adult industry product. Walsh goes on in that vein for a couple dozen paragraphs, and those interested can read it all here ... and its follow-up here.
The New York Post, a Murdoch publication, also ran an op-ed about why porn is so terrible, claiming at the end that, "'Real originalists,' as Harvard Law School’s Adrian Vermeule quipped recently, 'uphold obscenity convictions... under the common-law rule,' the broad definition that prevailed for most of the nation’s history: Obscenity is any material with a tendency to 'deprave and corrupt the morals of those whose minds are open to such influence.'" (Trouble is, that's exactly what the Supreme Court struck down in Miller.)
On the sane side, there's Reason magazine's Elizabeth Nolan Brown, who debunks five of the letter writers' claims, noting that as porn viewing has increased, rapes and sexual assaults have decreased, that porn-watching teens are actually less likely to engage in sexually risky behaviors, and that porn simply isn't addictive. Some of her co-correspondents at Reason also posted an article and link to a podcast today titled, "Are We Really Gonna Do Another War on Porn?" ( Hopefully not.)
And then there's DailyDot.com's Ana Valens, who wrote about how a new war on porn would adversely affect the immunities of ISPs under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, noting that, "Matthew Schmitz, senior editor for conservative religious publication First Things... argues that conservatives should force internet service providers to create a 'default' internet with no porn, push adult sites into online zoning laws, and rewrite Section 230 altogether." Older folks may remember that back in the late '90s/early '00s, there was a big push for ICANN to adopt a .xxx top level domain and for the U.S. government to force all sexual material into that. Somehow, that didn't quite work out—but it does show that this sort of censorship has been going on for a very long time.
Photo courtesy of Roy Smith/Wikimedia Commons
