JESUSLAND—No one could ever accuse the ultra-conservative Walton family of being friendly to adult entertainment, but the family-owned Walmart stores just took that antipathy to sexually oriented media a step further this week when it decided to take popular women's lifestyle magazine Cosmopolitan off of the racks by its checkout counters and relocate it to Walmart's book/magazine section elsewhere in its stores.
The reason appears to be a long-running campaign by the website CosmoHurtsKids.com, created by Victoria Hearst, a granddaughter of the late William Randolph Hearst, whose company Hearst Publications publishes Cosmo. The younger Hearst (well, she's 62) has been taking out ads for her website in emailed "news"letters like Glenn Beck's "The Blaze"—and her claims on the site are frightening.
"COSMO seduces underage girls into reading the magazine by putting teen and 'tween' idols on the cover, and by printing articles listing the best colleges to go to to have sex," Hearst claims, adding that among her problems with the magazine are "Drawings of naked men and women in sexual positions; photos of full rear male nudity; articles glorifying group sex, anal sex, married couples swinging parties, sex with strangers, and more; a 'Sex Q & A' section where female readers ask graphic sexual questions and receive graphic sexual answers; and a 'Sex Toy of the Month' feature."
(AVN covered the flak over Cosmopolitan as far back as 2006.)
Hearst's ads were picked up by Utah Senator Todd Weiler, infamous for introducing the "Pornography Is a Public Health Crisis" resolution, which was signed by Utah's governor in 2016. Since then, Weiler has continued to be active in attempting to rid the state of porn, despite the fact that Utah gets top marks for the number of subscribers to sexually explicit websites. Just last October, for instance, Weiler attempted to revive Utah's "Porn Czar" position even as other legislators were attempting to wipe the position, which has been vacant for several years, off the books.
"I've received some complaints ... that stores are selling Cosmo at eye level to a child," Weiler said at the time. "There's no blinder rack on it, even though we have some blinder rack language in the state code."
A lot of Weiler's proposed and enacted legislation, including the "Porn Is a Public Health Crisis" one, was written by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), the organization formerly known as Morality in Media and founded by a trio of clergymen in 1962—and whose current president is federal lobbyist and "true believer" Patrick A. Trueman—and sure enough, they're the ones taking credit for relegating the popular Cosmo to the magazine aisle.
"You can go through and buy your groceries with your family knowing you don't have to be exposed to this graphic and often degrading and offensive material," NCOSE Vice President of Advocacy and Outreach Haley Halverson said in a Facebook live session Tuesday. "Instead, all of these magazines will be moved, in isolation, to the magazine racks."
Fact is, since famous author/activist Helen Gurley Brown took over its editorship in 1965, Cosmopolitan has served an important purpose in helping women deal with their sexuality and relationships with articles that would seem tame by adult entertainment standards, but which are eminently approachable by everyone from housewives to top-level executives who are put off by the explicitness of Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler and the like.
But of course, as far as NCOSE is concerned, women don't need to know about how to improve their sex lives.
"This is one less drop of hyper-sexualized media that is going to be bombarding people in their everyday lives, which does make a difference, especially in this Me Too culture that we're living in, where we really want a culture that will respect women and ensure their dignity is understood," Halverson said. Of course, Halverson and NCOSE are less interested in "respect[ing] and ensur[ing] their dignity" than in removing every vestige of human sexuality from mass media, in keeping with the organization founders' ultra-conservative religious views.
Sadly, the late Sam Walton would likely be proud of his 5,000 stores' decision.
