First Amendment attorney Paul Cambria has released an open letter regarding the Justice Department’s new Obscenity Prosecution Task Force.
The letter follows:
I have been reading for several months that the Feds have stepped up their program to prosecute adult entertainment, no doubt as a result of pressure from special interest groups that believe that they or the government should be entrusted with the decision as to what an adult should be able to read and view when it comes to entertainment. Well, do not think for a moment that those of us who have successfully defended such prosecutions in the past are not also stepping up our efforts to defend such prosecutions. We are dedicated to preserving for adults the ability to choose their own entertainment material free from a stamp of governmental approval.
It is hard to believe that our government can bend to such radical forces in exchange for a promise of votes, and ignore that the vast, vast, vast majority of adults in America are perfectly capable of making their own choices ... and choose to do so. It is even harder to believe that our government can divert the forces of the FBI and other crime-fighting divisions of our government away from protecting our physical security and the security of our public possessions and cause them to chase after an adult book or movie. That our courts, which already move at a snail's pace, can be clogged with cases designed to rob adults of the ability to make their own choices when it comes to what they can read or view, is beyond reason.
How many millions of dollars will they squander in attempting to control our adult thought process when that money could be put to better use. Medical research for cancer, for example, which surely and positively harms us, could be funded, as opposed to targeting adult entertainment, especially when there is no evidence at all that an adult book or a movie has taken even a single life.
It is a true tragedy that such resources can be wasted, but those of us who have been fighting this battle for more than 20 years are prepared to demonstrate, as we have with many jury verdicts in the past, that the average adult finds that adult material made for adults by adults is an acceptable form of entertainment. There could be no better barometer of acceptance than the billions of dollars spent by adults every year for adult entertainment.
There once was a time when the government argued that only perverts bought adult material. Clearly, that is a bogus argument or else there must be some pretty rich perverts out there. The reality is, it is not a handful of billionaire perverts buying the material; it is everyday adults from all walks of life who, by the millions, are consuming adult material because they are finding it acceptable as a form of adult entertainment. When will the adult voters in this country turn the Joe McCarthy types out to pasture?
