The Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights has rescheduled its hearing on obscenity prosecution for Wednesday under a new title, "Obscenity Prosecution and the Constitution."
The original hearing was titled “Obscenity Prosecution of the First Amendment.”
The hearing will be chaired by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), who, with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Ut.), wrote an op-ed piece that appeared in the February 10 Washington Times criticizing Judge Gary Lancaster's opinion that dismissed federal indictments in the case of United States v. Extreme Associates.
Although the official Judiciary Committee Website no longer discloses the witnesses who have been invited to appear at the hearing, Patrick Trueman, has reportedly been substituted for one previously-announced witness.
Trueman is the former head of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice under President George W. Bush. Now he is Senior Legal Counsel for the reactionary Family Research Council (FRC).
Trueman has also served as Legal Affairs Director for the American Family Association (AFA), another vocal pro-censorship group.
The list of witnesses reportedly still includes Robert A. Destro, professor of law at the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law; and Frederick Schauer, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard University, both of whom have strong conservative credentials, with Destro also having ties to right-wing religious groups as well.
Although both the Adult Freedom Foundation (AFF) and the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) have requested the opportunity to provide additional witnesses who are intimately familiar with both federal and state obscenity prosecutions and with the general workings of the adult entertainment industry, to date all such requests have been rebuffed.
"The history of this is that when they had originally scheduled this hearing, we sent a letter on behalf of AFF to Senator Brownback, and first of all we asked if we could supply experts on the issue," Paul Cambria, general counsel for AFF, told AVN.com on March 10. "We were told we were too late, and they had already selected the experts. Then we were told who they were, and each of them had a history of basically being against adult material. They had a history of having a clear bias against adult entertainment."
"As soon as we heard this was back on," Cambria continued, "we fired this letter up, and we want to widely publicize it because we’re hoping this will cause them to at least invite other experts other than the house crew."
Cambria's letter states, in part, "At the last scheduled hearing when AFF and other First Amendment groups offered to present experts with insight into the adult entertainment industry, we were told the witnesses had already been selected and no other witnesses would be allowed to testify in person. Now, with the new hearing date, AFF respectfully requests you allow us to provide witnesses who will testify on First Amendment issues of vital interest to the adult entertainment industry."
Even if adult-friendly witnesses are not permitted to testify live, several attorneys have indicated their intentions to submit written testimony to the subcommittee.
AVN.com has previously written about witnesses Destro and Schauer, noting that Destro is co-counsel, with former FRC head Ken Connor, to several groups attempting to prevent the husband of severely brain-damaged patient Terri Schiavo from removing his wife from life-support systems, and that Schauer was an advisor to several U.S. senators involved in creating the anti-adult industry portions of the PROTECT Act which was passed by Congress in 2003.
However, Patrick Trueman is clearly the witness with the most anti-sexual-speech experience. Since leaving the Justice Department, Trueman has worked almost exclusively for right-wing religious pro-censorship groups as well as groups intent on erasing the constitutional boundaries between church and state.
For instance, Trueman was present for the U.S. Supreme Court arguments in two cases involving Ten Commandments monuments on public property. Following the arguments, he stated, "The arguments today were encouraging for those who wish to preserve our religious heritage in America... To require removal of Ten Commandments displays would show hostility to religion and nothing in the U.S. Constitution requires such an extremist viewpoint."
As to sexual speech, Trueman is staunchly against that freedom. While employed by the AFA, he conducted a long-running campaign against Internet service provider Yahoo! for allowing sexual speech and explicit images to be posted on the service's message boards.
More recently, Trueman has hailed the passage in the U.S. House of the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005, which increased the fines that the FCC is allowed to levy on "indecent" broadcasters by 1700 percent. He also decried the resignations of two FCC commissioners, including chairman Michael Powell, claiming that their leaving "could jeopardize even further the quality of programming on radio and television," adding that "commissioners who are 'pro-decency' are desperately needed to fill the two spots."
Of Judge Lancaster's decision in the Extreme case, Trueman charged that the jurist "is giving the Supreme Court an opportunity to eliminate anti-pornography laws. If higher courts fail to overturn this decision, it will be yet more proof that the often-mocked 'slippery slope' argument is alive and well.
