Fast on the heels of the May 18 "Victims of Pornography Summit," and the earlier Senate subcommittee hearings on "Obscenity Prosecution and the Constitution" and last year's "Science Behind Pornography Addiction," religious reactionaries are pushing ahead with their anti-adult agenda – and unsurprisingly, they have no problem using lies to do it.
At the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend, two prominent pro-censorship activists, former Justice Department prosecutor Patrick A. Trueman and Meese Commission witness "Dr." Judith Reisman, reached out to their constituencies with misleading claims and outright lies regarding the adult industry, in an attempt to further blacken the industry's reputation in the public's mind.
On Friday, subscribers to Focus on the Family's e-zine CitizenLink were informed that "U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales recently signed rules that force producers of pornographic material to keep a record of the names and ages of their performers."
"The effort comes in response to charges that a lot of pornography includes minors - and the belief by many porn producers that ignorance will keep them out of trouble."
Perhaps CitizenLink's writer, Kim Trobee, can be forgiven for being ignorant of the fact that the legislation underlying the record-keeping requirements, 18 U.S.C. 2257, was introduced way back in 1988, and that the regs have been in effect since 1995 – and that if the Justice Department actually thought that they served any purpose other than harassment of the adult industry, it might have conducted even one single investigation in the 10 years before the regs' official update last week – but it didn't.
Moreover, the only ones making "charges that a lot of pornography includes minors" are the anti-adult zealots, some few of whom are on the Justice Department's payroll, but most of whom staff pro-censorship groups like Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council (FRC) and American Family Association (AFA).
One such zealot is Trueman, who was one of the three witnesses at Sen. Sam Brownback's "Obscenity Prosecution and the Constitution" hearing on March 16. Since Trueman's leaving the Department of Justice in the early 1990s, he has worked for several pro-censorship organizations, including the FRC and AFA.
"The problem is, for the pornographers, most of those films have no records whatsoever," Trobee quoted Trueman as saying. "That allows the FBI to charge with a crime the seller of that material as well as the producer."
Admittedly, Trueman has been out of the Justice Department loop for so long that he would not have had any official contact with either the original 2257 regulations or their update, but if he knew anything about the adult video industry, he would know how assiduously such records are kept. There's a very good reason for that: Adult producers know that violators of even the original regulations stood to spend five years in federal prison for each improper or missing record.
So for Trueman to claim that "most of those films have no records whatsoever" betrays either an incredible ignorance on the part of a person who has been intimately involved in the anti-adult fight for more than 15 years, or a deliberate lie (unless he has been misquoted by Trobee).
Similarly, "Dr." Judith Reisman – her doctorate is in communications, not any branch of science, psychology or sociology – vented her own anti-adult spleen in a May 27 article for WorldNetDaily, which Alexa.com described as the "No. 1 most-visited conservative Internet site," and whose founder, Joseph Farah, an ex-employee of arch-conservative Richard Mellon Scaife, has called for the destruction of the ACLU, and has prescribed, "The very first step in my program to take America back is to get down on our knees and ask God for revival and renewal in our lives."
Upset that Mary Carey and producer Mark Kulkis will be attending a fundraiser for President Bush, Reisman opined that, absent a White House revocation of Kulkis' and Carey's invitation, "The public might conclude we are compromised, financially and legislatively. The public might think someone gets paid off to keep the Erototoxin flood flowing. The public might conclude we talk tough, but are soft on sexual crime, exposing ever more millions of women and children to sexual violence, disease, despair and death."
("Erototoxins," of course, are Reisman's paranoid version of endorphins, the natural substances released by human brains experiencing pleasure.)
"Maybe Laura Bush' speech writers can use some Mary Carey jokes," Reisman wrote. "Like the one where Carey says 'a little girl-on-girl action' might appeal to 'sexy' Karl Rove. However, pornography is no joke. Thousands of children are kidnapped each year and forced into sex slavery – commonly preserved as pornography."
Reisman, of course, knows that the adult industry doesn't use or record children having sex, whether forced or not, and a more honest statement would have inserted the word "child" before "pornography" – but Reisman's apparent purpose is to blur the lines between adult industry product and recorded child sexual abuse. Moreover, her language supports the latest right-wing smear that adult performers are "sex slaves" when in fact all perform voluntarily and are well-paid for their efforts.
Just a few lines later, Reisman claims that a "typical news item" relates that "WTOL News in Toledo, Ohio, reported the way pornographers commonly secure 'girl-on-girl action.' Two teenage girls were abducted in East Toledo. The kidnappers took 'the girls to several truck stops and forced them into prostitution.'"
Exactly how "kidnappers" in Ohio who "forced" teenage girls into prostitution have anything to do with adult video producers, mostly based in California, who pay established, willing performers to act in sexually explicit videos, is never explained. Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea, as Reisman claims at the beginning of her article, if "the administration would screen us [Reisman and her fellow anti-adult zealots] for mental illness."
Still later, Reisman charges that, "Despite present denials, pornographers would like to see us legalize prostitution and child pornography, as well as all mind-altering drugs like marijuana, LSD, cocaine." While various adult industry professionals have spoken out against America's insane drug policies, and in favor of the right of consenting adults to engage in and pay for prostitution services, none advocate employing minors in sexually explicit productions.
"The pornography business lobbies for its interests and against the public interest," Reisman concludes. "These callous racketeers appear to spend their money on Republicans they support, and against those they want to remove. Don't look for a crackdown on pornography very soon. It has been my experience that the Sex Industrial Complex has friends in high places."
To which we can only respond: "WHO? WHERE?"
