According to an article in yesterday's Los Angles Daily News, "adult entertainment moguls" Larry Flynt (of Hustler and Barely Legal fame) and Joe Francis (of Girls Gone Wild fame) are asking "Washington for a $5 billion federal bailout" to offset the decline in "U.S. adult- entertainment industry revenue" from $18 billion three years ago.
MIM President Bob Peters had the following response:
Perhaps the two "adult entertainment moguls" are figuring that if they can keep Congress and the next President laughing abut the "U.S. adult-entertainment industry," neither will do much if anything to ensure that the U.S. Justice Department vigorously enforces Federal obscenity laws against commercial distributors of hardcore "adult" pornography.
Hardcore "adult" pornography does not depict actual children under age 18, but it does include depictions of sex with persons who look like children, sex with animals, sex with excrement, sex with siblings, sex with multiple partners, sex with prostitutes, sex with she-males, sex with someone else's spouse, and the degradation, rape, torture, and murder of women. Hardcore pornography is also the predominant form of pornography available in the marketplace.
Generally speaking, of course, Congress and the next President should do all in their constitutional power to keep people working and getting the unemployed back to work. But not all "employment" is helpful to society. Huge government subsidies for casinos would also keep people working and provide new jobs, but at what costs? I also suspect that a Federal law legalizing prostitution nationwide and providing $5 billion in subsidies to maintain and launch brothels, massage parlors and escort services would generate far more jobs than providing $5 billion to the likes of Larry Flynt and Joe Francis, but at what costs?
In contrast, by vigorously enforcing Federal and state obscenity laws, "Washington" and the States could over time save far more than $5 billion and put that money to truly good uses.
Despite the propaganda about obscenity crimes being "victimless," there are tremendous social costs associated with the production, distribution and consumption of hardcore pornography. These include the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (including AIDS), abortions and children born out of wedlock, divorce, sexual exploitation of children, rape and other sexual assaults, trafficking in women and children, neighborhood deterioration, on the job sexual harassment, and loss of worker productivity due to misuse of computers to view pornography.
