A letter sent to President George Bush by Morality in Media achieved it’s desired result. Well, almost. On Friday, Bush signed a watered down version of their requests and proclaimed October 26 through November 1 of this year "Protection From Pornography Week".
The proclamation opted to rename Pornography Awareness Week, as the week beginning on the last Sunday of October has been named for at least 15 years by anti-porn activists, likely because the White House staff noted the obvious double meaning of “Pornography Awareness Week” that had been sarcastically seized by adult entertainment businesses including Adult DVD Empire and Playboy Radio.
This is believed to be the first time that a president has recognized the week with a proclamation, though several states legislatures and city councils, including the Los Angeles City Council, have recognized the event in the past.
While suggesting that pornography can have “effects on communities, marriages, families, and children,” the president concentrated solely on tying the adult industry to the obvious crime of child pornography, referring to the PROTECT Act of 2003 and the Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Predator, an initiative to fight child pornography.
The president made no mention of exactly how pornography can debilitate marriages, families, or communities.
The proclamation fell short of announcing Bush’s support for placing the prosecution of obscenity cases at the top of national priorities. “We have committed significant resources to the Department of Justice to intensify investigative and prosecutorial efforts to combat obscenity, child pornography, and child sexual exploi-ta-tion [sic] on the Internet,” the proclamation reads in the only reference to programs seeking to combat the legitimate adult entertainment industry.
The proclamation ended with the president call for “public officials, law enforcement officers, parents, and all the people of the United States to observe this week with appropriate programs and activities.”
The American Family Association claims to have started Pornography Awareness Week in the early 1980s. Since 1987, it has become associated with White Ribbon Against Pornography (WRAP), a campaign that calls for people to wear white ribbons in an attempt to “raise awareness about pornography”, according to literature on the AFA Website.
Morality and Media picked up the WRAP campaign and spread the concept nationally. While this is the first year the president of the United States has signed a proclamation recognizing the annual event, state legislatures in
WRAP was launched in Butler, Pennsylvania. Butler is located in Western Pennsylvania, where Rob Black and Lizzie Borden are currently being prosecuted for allegedly violating federal obscenity laws.
