FC: Rep. Steve Largent wants prosecutions of "illegal Net porn"

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[Rep. Steve Largent (R-Oklahoma) -- http://www.house.gov/largent/ -- 
represents Tulsa in one of the most Republican districts in the state and 
is a ardent Christian conservative. He also, dangerously, sits on the House 
telecom subcommittee. --Declan]

*********

The Washington Times
Politics of porn

Steve Largent
Published 8/17/00

     There's a monster lurking in our homes and schools — and the
administration refuses to protect citizens from it. In fact, we're now
learning that the Clinton-Gore administration is actually catering to this
monster — illegal pornography. Two separate studies released this summer
revealed that while young children feed the growth of the Internet, they
also encounter pornography and unwanted sexual advances. In addition,
adolescent males ages 12-17 are among the largest consumer groups of
obscenity, according to separate national commissions impaneled to study
the effects of illegal pornography. So what's the response of the
Clinton-Gore administration? This spring, a Justice Department official
told the House Telecom Subcommittee that the administration long ago
stopped prosecuting obscenity cases. A week later the administration
dispatched a delegation to the U.N. Women's Conference with orders to
soften criticism of the pornography industry. That same month, Playboy
magazine featured a
photo of Bill Clinton, arm in arm with Hugh Hefner at a Democratic
fund-raiser.

     Meanwhile, Al Gore protégé and Democratic National Committee
co-chairwoman Loretta Sanchez reluctantly agreed to drop the Playboy
mansion as the site of a planned convention-week fund-raiser. This, hours
after the White House admitted to "a recent uptick in incidents" of
employees using White House computers to download pornography over the
Internet. The record speaks for itself: The Clinton-Gore administration has
become the apologist for an industry whose victims are women and children.

     In 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court held that illegal pornography, or
obscenity, should remain illegal. In Roth vs. U.S., the Supreme Court
likened obscenity to other types of speech — slander, false advertising and
child pornography — deliberately left unprotected by the Bill of Rights.
That decision has withstood the test of time.

     But in recent years, the gap between identifying obscenity and
prosecuting it has become a canyon. U.S. attorneys now in office, all of
whom were appointed by President Clinton, refuse to prosecute obscenity. As
Adult Video News, the trade magazine for the porn industry, crowed in March
1998, "It's a great time to be an Adult Retailer." Today's obscenity law
violators include the owners and operators of porn web sites, as well as
those who control web chat rooms and allow such material to continue
unchecked.

     In May, I called for a hearing before a House Commerce Subcommittee in
which a Justice Department official admitted that his agency places no
priority on stopping obscenity. Other witnesses at the hearing testified
that children have ready access to obscenity over the Internet at home (and
even in public schools and libraries) while the Justice Department looks
the other way.

     As a result, offenders have become emboldened — enlarging their
empires to the point of being publicly traded. Unimpeded by
law-enforcement, material readily available on the Internet now includes
depictions of torture, bestiality, bondage and rape of women and teen-agers
— material that is unquestionably  prosecutable under federal and state
obscenity laws, if only our federal
authorities exercised their authority to uphold the law.

     Failure to prosecute can translate into headaches for local police,
who often discover obscenity on the trail of sex offenders. In their arrest
of a suspected serial killer who lured his victims over the Internet,
Kansas City area police in June confiscated dozens of photographs of women
at the suspect's home. This fits an important profile: according to
separate studies conducted on convicted sex offenders, more than 85 percent
admitted regular use of obscenity, most of these offenders admitted they
imitated pornographic scenes in the commission of sex crimes.

     Today, this national scourge has begun to find its way across our
phone and cable lines into our homes, libraries and even public schools.
"Exposure often begins at age thirteen," observes psychologist and author
Archibald Hart. Obscenity will continue to spread like a cancer, creating
new addicts, extending its reach to every corner of our culture, provided
the Justice Department
continues with its current policy and does absolutely nothing.

     Before adjourning for the summer, the House approved a bill that I
introduced to get the Justice Department back on track in the war to
protect our families from obscenity. It's time to draw a line in the sand.
Our families cannot afford to throw away their future over the failure of
one administration. We have the laws. Now let's enforce them.

Rep. Steve Largent is an Oklahoma Republican.