The groups had called on Congress and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to appoint a committee to review adult materials being sold to troops. The panel was asked to determine if they complied with the Military Honor and Decency Act of 1996.
“They're saying 'we're not selling stuff that's sexually explicit,’ and we say it's pornography," head of Christian anti-pornography group American Family Association (AFA) Donald Wildmon said.
In reaction to the Pentagon’s statement, the AFA and dozens of other groups launched a letter-writing campaign on Friday to convince Congress to "get the Pentagon to obey the law," Wildmon said.
In all, the Pentagon's Resale Activities Board of Review looked at 473 different titles, including video/DVD content, finding 67 percent to be noncompliant with Congress’ ban on sexually explicit materials.
"The [Pentagon's] lawyers determined that for a magazine to be found lewd and lascivious, a certain percentage of the content would have to fall under that category," said Steve Sellman, former chairman of the resale board, who is now retired. “We looked to see how much of [a magazine] was articles or advertising that had no sexual content.”
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., said that the Pentagon is downplaying the issue, as well as creating a potentially hostile environment for female military personnel.
“They say, ‘well, 40 percent of this magazine is sexually explicit pictures, but 60 percent is writing or advertising, so the totality is not sexually explicit,’” Bartlett said. “That's ridiculous. If soldiers want to read that stuff, they can walk down the street and buy it somewhere else. I don't want [the military] to help.”
Head of the American Civil Liberties Union Nadine Strossen said, “We're asking these people to risk their lives to defend our Constitution's principles and they're being denied their own 1st Amendment rights to choose what they read.”