Don't think that ideas like sending porn care packages to the troops – an idea proposed by at least two Internet denizens – will go over without a whimper of protest. Not if groups like Focus on the Family and Concerned Women For America have anything to say about it.
DirectLink Media Group's Aaron Gordon created a Website where any soldier can get free porn videos if they're willing to pay just the shipping and handling. And Internet radio performer DJ of DjandNikka.com has offered to try arranging for the top adult video stars to send their best images gratis for the troops. And both Focus on the Family and the CWA would like them to put a cork in those plans.
"This is an abominable marketing trick by pornographers who care nothing about our troops," said CWA's Jan LaRue to Focus on the Family's Website, which also quoted a retired soldier, Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis, as saying Gordon and those with similar ideas just don't understand life in the field.
"I don't know a commander that would allow this to be shown in a troop unit situation," said Maginnis, who also works as a Fox News military analyst. "I don't know a commander that would allow this to be shown in a troop unit situation," Maginnis said, adding that watching porn would demean women serving with men in the field – assuming, of course, that the men weren't too busy for that kind of distraction.
LaRue raised another sensitive issue – the Muslim religion. American soldiers in the first Gulf War had enough trouble carrying Jewish or Christian Bibles without their having to worry about getting caught with porn in a Muslim country which frowns officially on that kind of entertainment.
It isn't known yet how much response DJ has gotten to his idea of porn star volunteering choice images for the troops in Iraq, but Alliance Defense Fund attorney Benjamin Bull has called for DirectLink Media to face a federal investigation.
"The interstate distribution of obscene material is a criminal violation, and U.S. attorneys and even the FBI should investigate this guy if he's violating the law," Bull said to Focus on the Family.
On the other hand, there was a Florida pastor, Rev. Martin Drummond of Miami Shores Christian Church, writing Gordon a quiet enough letter asking him to cease and desist for safety's sake. "Do you realize that one of the reasons the radical Islamic movement so dislikes America," Drummond wrote, "is because of its tolerance of pornography? What kind of support will our troops find in Middle Eastern countries if the soldiers are seen as porn-starved trigger jockeys?
Gordon replied just as respectfully on his site. "(I)f I were to change anything I did because the 'radical Islamic extremist movement' did not approve of it," he wrote, "then I would have to forgo most of my beliefs in a free society, my way of life in a free society, and together, we would be forgoing the freedom of people who live in this society."
Drummond's answer to that, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, is that Gordon's position equals shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. "Sometimes, enough is enough," Drummond told the newspaper. "This kind of stunt is not going to help our troops. This is just going to pour gasoline on the flames of hatred that they already face over there. . . . Sure, we have freedom of speech. But sometimes we have to restrain ourselves, if, by exercising our freedoms, we can get other people hurt."
Porn for the troops or for anyone isn't just a testy issue in the Islamic Middle East. As the porn-for-the-troops issue was bristling American conservative groups, Israel's High Court of Justice agreed to hear a petition by Playboy's representatives in Israel to return PlayTV broadcasts to the Yes satellite television carrier.
Those broadcasts were stopped in 2002, and the Israeli high court has to consider whether freedom of expression that "is not included in the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom…nevertheless is among (Israeli) constitutional rights," as Ha-aretz put it, because presiding Justice Aaron Barak had said himself that freedom of expression is at the foundation of human dignity.
PlayTV and its harder-core sister channel Blue were taken off the air after the Knesset amended Israel's Communications Law to bar the broadcast of "sexual relations that include violence, abuse, degradation, humiliation or exploitation; sexual relations with a minor or a person perceived as a minor; the presentation of man or any of his organs as an available object for sex." Not to mention those featuring women as "objects." Israeli women's groups have generally opposed restoring the broadcasts.
