Next Conservative Target: Hotel Porn
Despite massive politlcal setbacks in the conservative movement, with Democrats looking in the best shape in many years for the fall, the culture war seems to continue unabated. Last year newly appointed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales started a renewed war on porn, the first major clamp down on American pornography since the heyday of Ed Meese. Now conservative groups have decided to push the war another step, by demanding hotels remove porn from available selections in room.
A coalition of 13 conservative groups -- including the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America -- took out full-page ads in some editions of USA Today earlier this month urging the Justice Department and FBI to investigate whether some of the pay-per-view movies widely available in hotels violate federal and state obscenity laws.
[...]
"These are places that you take your family -- these are respectable institutions," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. "Anything that brings porn into the mainstream is a concern. It just desensitizes people."
It's not entirely clear what having "porn in the mainstream" desensitizes people to. Except maybe idiotic, puritanical taboos about sex that have lingered in American consciousness for centuries. The arguments made for keeping porn in hotels is eminently reasonable, while the argument against it just.... confounds logic. Observe.
Both Kathy Shepard of Hilton and Roger Conner of Marriott said the bulk of their hotels are operated by franchise-holders who make their own decisions about in-room programming. They made clear, however, that their companies consider adult movies to be an acceptable option because they can be ignored or blocked out by guests not wishing to view them.
"Really ultraconservative groups try to target the hotels in their zest to eliminate porn," Shepard said. "In their zest to have their personal morals prevail, they're eliminating choice for others."
Conner said none of the programming offered by Marriott is illegal, and he depicted adult movies as a standard part of today's hotel business.
"In-room movies are a revenue stream," he said. "This is a business matter."
Makes sense, right? No one is forcing it on anyone else, it's a purely business decision made by the hotel chains, and if parents don't want their kids watching porn they can ask the hotel to block the movies.
The leader of the campaign against in-room porn is Phil Burress, a self-described former porn addict who heads the Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values.
Burress and his allies have had some success regionally, pressuring about 15 Ohio and Kentucky hotels to stop offering adult movies. But he says a nationwide pressure campaign would be difficult because nearly all the big hotel chains have similar policies -- porn is available at some but not all of their affiliates.
Though unable to cite specific cases, Burress contended that the availability of in-room porn is making hotels more dangerous.
"As more and more of these (hardcore) titles become available, we're going to have sexual abuse cases coming out of the hotels," he said. "Hotels are just as dangerous as environments around strip joints and porn stores."
I'm going to quote his last line again, in case people missed it the first time.
"Hotels are just as dangerous as environments around strip joints and porn stores."
This may be one of the dumbest arguments ever made. And this man may be one of the dumbest people to ever live. The most dangerous things that jumps out at me from reading this isn't the threat that pornography in hotel rooms poses, but the fact that mouth breathers like this guy have the ear of powerful Washington politicians who just might decide to listen to him.
With any luck, nothing at all will ever come of this, and even zealots like Gonzales will realize that even states with strict obscenity laws are going to have a hard time regulating what types of movies people watch in the privacy of their own hotel rooms.
Democracy can only thrive in a "marketplace of ideas." That is, when many different options are presented and people can pick and choose what they like, while disregarding what they don't. Something these groups just don't understand. If they believe pornography to be a bad thing, then by all means, tell people why (and giving a bit of evidence and logic to go along with it might not hurt either.) But don't restrict their choices because of your own, personal, warped sense of morality. It's fundamentally opposed to the very idea of a free and democratic society.
PAGE:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Comments
steve626
Tarentum, PA
February 2005
AUG 23, 2006 07:42 PM
GuyIncognito
Minneapolis, MN
September 2004
AUG 23, 2006 07:43 PM
noirkiss3
Minneapolis, MN
April 2006
AUG 23, 2006 07:46 PM
Andvari
Calgary, AB
April 2005
AUG 23, 2006 07:57 PM
seanvegas
Lincoln, NE
December 2004
AUG 23, 2006 08:02 PM
jake_lex
Lexington, KY
February 2003
AUG 23, 2006 08:10 PM
TheFuckOffKid
NEWSWIRE
Australia
AUG 23, 2006 08:13 PM
Eta
Portland, OR
November 2005
AUG 23, 2006 08:16 PM
mamet
Charleston, SC
March 2005
AUG 23, 2006 08:16 PM
Adroitbeing
I'm lost
September 2003
AUG 23, 2006 08:21 PM
Emperor_Norton
Phoenix, AZ
February 2006
AUG 23, 2006 08:31 PM
Emperor_Norton
Phoenix, AZ
February 2006
AUG 23, 2006 08:31 PM
Holden_Caulfield
Ann Arbor, MI
April 2004
AUG 23, 2006 08:34 PM
DhD_No_Pants
Katy, TX
May 2006
AUG 23, 2006 08:35 PM
Coliwali
I'm lost
February 2003
AUG 23, 2006 08:38 PM
PAGE:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5