When pro-censorship attorney Bruce Taylor was rehired by the U.S. Department of Justice last month, it was unclear just what form his employment would take.
Now, according to an article in the Association of Club Executives Newsletter (ACE), "Taylor has the title of 'senior counsel' within the criminal division at Justice, with a focus principally on federal adult obscenity issues.
"The department's obscenity chief, Andrew Oosterbaan, who has been drawing much of the flak from conservatives, will retain his position. But instead of reporting to him, Taylor will answer to senior-level assistant attorney general Bryan Sierra."
However, a search of the Justice Department's Website finds Sierra listed only as a "Public Affairs Specialist" in the Office of Public Affairs, and he has been previously quoted in the press as an official DOJ spokesman for information regarding the Enron investigation. So perhaps the mystery continues.
The ACE article also notes that the Justice Department has assigned a team of FBI agents to work with Taylor, to focus exclusively on adult obscenity cases.
Religious conservatives have supported the rehiring on one or more of their number ever since the current president took office. Taylor was an obvious choice, and his partner at the anti-porn National Law Center for Children and Families, J. Robert Flores, was tapped for a position as head of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention more than two years ago.
But Attorney General John Ashcroft could easily have opted for any of a number of former DOJ prosecutors such as Patrick Trueman or Rob Showers (the architect of the multi-jurisdictional indictment scheme); Meese Commission veteran Alan Sears, who now runs the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund (commission head Henry Hudson having already been appointed to a federal judgeship); Jay Sekulow, head of Pat Robertson's American Center for Law & Justice; Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, who has been active in the attempt to prevent San Francisco from performing same-sex marriages; or even Jan LaRue, currently chief counsel for the reactionary Concerned Women for America, who recently described adult video producers as "terrorists."
But concern continues to grow in the adult entertainment community.
"I have a problem with any public servant who has an axe to grind," noted prominent First Amendment attorney Paul Cambria, who's come up against Taylor several times. "I feel that federal prosecutors should be objective and Bruce has dedicated his legal career to being right-winged and one-sided on adult product."
Denver attorney Michael Gross agreed.
"I've been in a number of cases where he's been on the other side and he's an ideologue," Gross assessed. "He believes one thing and you're not going to change his mind. But on the other hand, he's pleasant to deal with; he's not an asshole, or at least, I've never found him to be."
But Cambria also noted that America has changed drastically since Taylor was last in office.
"People now are much more sophisticated about adult material and feel that Government should spend its limited resources keeping peace around the world and at home rather than [targeting] consensual actions between adults including the watching of erotica," Cambria said. "It is a shame to think of the millions and millions of dollars that this administration has spent on war, space exploration and now forcing its morals on free-thinking adults, when all this money could be channeled into something more worthwhile, like finding a cure for cancer."
