Tuesday, Mar 31, 2009    Text size: 

In a recent 24-page missive entitled "'Adult Industry' Is No Friend of Children or the Family, Despite ASACP Effort to Curb Child Abuse and Label Smut," Peters seeks to minimize the great work done by ASACP to protect children and its proactive response to Congressional demands that the adult industry self-regulate in the form of the Restricted To Adults (RTA) website label.

Peters goes to great lengths in an effort to concoct an association between the legitimate adult entertainment industry and the heinous crime of child sexual abuse, often referring to "pornography" (a legal, constitutionally protected form of expression) as "obscenity" — a term denoting illegal materials — and inferring that there is no distinction between legal materials and illegal imagery depicting children in sexually explicit situations.

Questioning the credibility of the industry at all levels and comparing ASACP to the mafia, Peters neglects to mention that ASACP is likely responsible for more actual CP site closures than any other NGO — all while drawing questionable statistical references and mischaracterizations into the mix.

Socially aberrant behavior is everyone's concern when it hurts children and Peters seems to miss the fact that tens of thousands of people employed in this industry, many of whom have families of their own, do indeed care about child abuse and find repugnant the notion of it being part of their professional lives.

The fact that a child molester also owns legal adult pornography isn't necessarily a cause-and-effect relationship anymore than is the fact that a very large percentage of pedophiles are active members of their church and often involved in youth ministries, 'troubled teen' counseling, and the like. Does this mean that religion or community service inevitably leads to child molestation? According to Peters' logic, the answer would be "yes."

Peters also cites the relatively low penetration of RTA as evidence that adult industry self-regulation is inadequate and calls into question the naming of David Ogden as the new Deputy U.S. Attorney General, given Ogden's support of free speech rights.