News

Friday January 8, 2010


US Pro-Family Advocates Call on Gov’t to Enforce Pornography Laws

By Patrick B. Craine

January 8, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – While Australia, India, and China are implementing tighter internet filtering to prevent the dissemination of illegal pornography, American pro-family advocates are asking why the United States is not cracking down as well, reports Citizen Link.

Hardcore pornography, which pro-family advocates maintain constitutes most of the pornographic material available now, has been illegal since the 1973 Miller v. California Supreme Court decision. In addition, federal obscenity laws were amended in 1996 to clarify that obscene material is also prohibited on the internet.

However, according to Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family, the Justice Department has simply not enforced the law.

“Everything that’s in our video stores, our hotels and everything being sold by the cable companies that they call ‘adult’ is hardcore pornography,” he told Citizen Link, “and thus, illegal and prosecutable.”

While proponents of pornography claim that pornography is protected as free speech, the Miller decision states that it has been “categorically settled” that “obscene material is unprotected by the First Amendment.”

Roger T. Young, a retired FBI agent who spent most of his career investigating pornography-related crimes, told Citizen Link that those who claim pornography is protected are “out of line.”

“Once a jury or a judge declares a material obscene,” he said, “obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.”

The rise of pornography has been a significant part of the push for “sexual liberation,” but in a December 27th blog post, former porn star April Garris exposes the myth that pornography is “liberating.”

“Porn enslaves people, those who watch and those who make it,” she writes.

Pornography is certainly not liberating for the female porn stars, she explains further. “There is sexual and physical abuse that occurs, and girls are often coerced into doing things that they don’t really want to do. There is nothing liberating about being in porn, no matter what some may tell you.”

Daniel Weiss, Focus on the Family Action’s sexual analyst, told Citizen Link that not enforcing the pornography laws has done grave damage to American society.

“If the law is a great teacher,” he said, “then non-enforcement of the law teaches something too: Namely, that violent pornography is legal and not harmful, and this is devastating our society, particularly our young people.”


See April Garris’ “10 myths exposed”.