The US Department of Justice has launched a dangerous attack on all adult webmasters, not just extreme ones. This article offers a couple of ideas on how we can fight back.
In XBiz News 9/25/03 Editor in Chief Stephen Yagielowicz reports DOJ lawyers are preparing the next wave of assaults - 49 more obscenity prosecutions on top of the one pending against Extreme Associates. Potential penalties are as high as 50 years in prison.
That may be just the beginning. Stephen points out that prosecutors are now shifting their aim from extreme content to mainstream porn. There is pre-election pressure from Congress to crack down hard. Elsewhere it is reported that one of the head prosecutors says even Playboy may be considered obscene in some parts of the country. Even softcore pictures of nude women, it seems, can put us in the crosshairs.
This is happening under the guy who spends thousands of our dollars to cover up statues of partially naked women in his department. He has reportedly hired dozens of new attorneys and told them to offer few plea bargains.
The Justice Department is starting to resemble the Taliban, one of the Middle Eastern religious governments that make it a crime for a woman to show any skin at all, punishable by whipping. The Department has fought against the Taliban in the War on Terror, but now they seem to be joining the Taliban for a War on Porn.
It is time to for action. There are at least two steps we can all take right now to help defend ourselves.
The first step is simple: support and join the Internet Freedom Association and the Free Speech Coalition, two organizations leading the fight against censorship.
The second step is bigger, but I have come up with an easy way to get started. We need to get the word out that porn actually has positive benefits for society, and that history shows repression of porn has bad side effects for civilization.
That’s why I wrote an article, "Attackers Ignore Porn Benefits," which is available for anyone to reprint free of charge in accordance with the copyright permission notice at the end of the article.
The article reviews the substantial evidence that non-violent porn makes a society healthier: it reduces the rates of sex crimes including rape, it raises the status of women and increases their freedom, it helps bring health benefits by raising the frequency of orgasm, it can help reduce marital stress, and it helps facilitate the advancement of civilization and progress. If you don’t believe it, read the article.
If more people understood the positive role porn plays in a free and progressive society, the anti-porn rants of religious zealots and politicians would start to look like the backward ideas they are. If more people were aware of the benefits of porn, more people would be willing to speak out as an antidote to the repressive tendencies of government officials.
To get the word out, you can write your own article or you are free to reprint mine anywhere on your sites. It can have the side benefit of helping any visitor who might read it feel better about enjoying your content. It also adds text to your site that the search engines can read. All I ask is that you include the credit link I placed at the bottom of the article. The link does not have to be prominent, just present. The article does not sell or promote anything, except common sense about porn.
Our greatest enemy is silence. Many people are understandably embarrassed to speak out publicly in favor of porn. Many folks were raised to think their fascination with sex and naked women or men is somehow dirty. But all it takes is a few people beginning to talk about how porn is a good thing for society, not a bad thing, and the ongoing positive shift in public attitudes can accelerate.
A few of your visitors added to a few of everyone else’s visitors can raise the level of public opposition to censorship. Many people already want the government out of our bedrooms. Even in places where community standards are conservative, most of us have customers, maybe especially in those places. That is where the DOJ is most likely to bring action, thinking they can win more easily. If we reach just a few people in those communities with the truth about porn, we can help change the standards.
The political pressure against porn will fast intensify with an election year around the corner. The situation is urgent.
Adult material is an easy target now, not just extreme hardcore but even softcore nude women. But people of all political persuasions can agree on the desire for freedom and progress. We must make public officials fear a backlash if they are seen to be dragging the country back into darkness and repression. If we shine the light of truth bright enough, reasonable people will agree the War on Porn is misguided.
Reprinting my article, or writing your own, and finding other ways to speak out, are small steps each of us can take. Small steps add up to big steps. We urgently need a big step in public relations for our industry. It is up to all of us to make it happen.
John C. Boseman (pen name) holds an M.A. in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology. He writes about sex, humor, naked women, and porn at Nude Women of Bojiggly. Bojiggly is a trademark of Benala Vista LLC, as is its main tag line, “Saving the World from Excess Clothing on Beautiful Women.”
