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Pornographic Politics: Santorum Pledges To Prosecute The Country Into a Better Moral State

Rick Santorum is continuing his faith-based campaign with a pledge to wipe out pornography in his Administration. The problem is that pornography is lawful and now a multi-billion dollar industry. It is obscenity that can be criminalized, but what is obscene remains exceptionally vague and ill-defined. Indeed, many may find parts of this presidential campaign to border on the obscene.

Santorum has proclaimed “The Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws.” He pledges that he will “vigorously” enforce laws that “prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier.”

What constitutes obscenity remains maddeningly vague. Indeed, many find laughable Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s test for pornography in his concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964): “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

Santorum shows the dangers of the fluid test described by Stewart. What Santorum would consider obscene is obviously far greater than millions of Americans who either work or patronize porn sites. Federal courts are reluctant to define movies or pictures as obscene based on such different opinions in society. For that reason, Santorum’s view of the standard appears to fall well outside of the accepted view of the case law. Prohibitions have focused on areas like child pornography, snuff films, and animal abuse. Sexual films of consenting adults that are watched by consenting adults are generally presumed to be pornographic but not obscene. The Court has also emphasized the difficulty in determining what is obscene and what is artistic or literary. For many years, great novels were defined as obscene under the community standards that Santorum appears to favor.

However, the Supreme Court’s poorly conceived precedent in the area has left the standard of obscenity ill-defined — creating an opening for someone like Santorum to seek to limit what adults can view as part of new crackdown on immoral lifestyles and values.

Santorum’s suggestion of a crackdown, however, ignores the fact that this material is widely available on the Internet with thousands of foreign sites. An attempt to prosecute standard pornography would result in bizarrely uneven enforcement. It would also attempt to criminalize an industry that is supported by millions of Americans much as prohibition sought to criminalize alcohol consumption. The difference is that today’s “speakeasies” are found in virtual space on the Internet. He may find that Wall Street would be a bit peeved with the attempt to eradicate an over $12 billion a year industry.

I would bet against such an expanded effort in the courts if it targeted explicit sexual acts between consenting adults. Such a crackdown was attempted under Ed Meese in the Reagan Administration with limited lasting effect.

Ironically, the more promising avenue for regulation would not be to try to widen obscenity laws but to extend prostitution laws. There has always been an odd contradiction in criminalizing prostitution between consenting adults while allowing the same person to accept money to have sex before millions. For libertarians, the prohibition on prostitution by consenting adults is a denial of individual choice and freedom. I oppose laws that criminalize such personal choices on morality grounds. However, if prostitution laws are valid, it would seem easier to extend them to sex for money in pornographic settings. I would argue against such laws on constitutional grounds, but I would likely be in the minority. I believe that such films have first amendment protection beyond the privacy protections afforded to consenting adults. (Privacy itself is hard to maintain when you are filming sexual encounters for millions to view.).

Regardless of the approach taken by Santorum, what he is advocating is a return to the enforcement of morality codes through criminal prosecution. It would threaten tens of millions of adults to conform their conduct to the moral dictates of Santorum and his followers. It is the type of state-imposed morality that we have criticized in other nations. Indeed, a Santorum Administration might want to consider one more commission — a favorite reaction of Washington in appeasing the public. He could call it the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

Source: Daily Caller

74 thoughts on “Pornographic Politics: Santorum Pledges To Prosecute The Country Into a Better Moral State”

  3. Here’s more information on the Master of Morality:

    How Rick Santorum Ripped Off American Veterans
    A controversial land deal by the presidential candidate robbed a vets’ home of tens of millions of dollars.
    —By Andy Kroll
    Wed Jan. 18, 2012
    http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/how-rick-santorum-ripped-off-american-military-veterans

    Excerpt:
    Like any good presidential candidate, Rick Santorum heaps praise on America’s soldiers and veterans. He’s pledged to “make veterans a high priority” if elected president, adding, “This is not a Republican issue, this is not a Democratic issue, it is an American issue.” But as a US senator, Santorum engineered a controversial land deal that robbed the military’s top veterans’ home of tens of millions of dollars and worsened the deteriorating conditions at the facility.

    The Armed Forces Retirement Home, which is run by the Department of Defense, bills itself as the “premier home for military retirees and veterans.” The facility sprawls across 272 acres high on a hill in northern Washington, DC, near the Petworth neighborhood. The nearly 600 veterans who now live there enjoy panoramic views of the city—the Washington monument and US Capitol to the south, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to the east. At its peak, more than 2,000 veterans of World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War lived at the Home.

    But with the rise of the smaller all-volunteer military, the Home began to run into serious financial problems. It was clear that one of its primary sources of revenue—a 50-cent deduction from the paychecks of active-duty servicemembers—wasn’t enough to keep the Home operating fully. In the 1990s, the Home scrambled to find ways to avoid insolvency, trimming its staff by 24 percent and reducing its vet population by 800. Still, the money problems began to show, with its older historic facilities slipping into disrepair and decay. To grapple with its worsening shortfall, officials running the Home eyed a valuable, 49-acre piece of land worth $49 million as a potential financial lifeline.

    Under one scenario, by leasing the parcel of land and letting it be developed, the Home could pocket $105 million in income over 35 years for its trust fund, David Lacy, then-chairman of the Home’s board of directors, told Congress in 1999. Lacy stressed that the Home wanted to keep the property, and not offload it to a buyer. “Once land is sold,” he said, “it is lost forever as an asset.”

    Enter Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.). At the behest of the Roman Catholic Church, and unbeknownst to the Home, Santorum slipped an amendment into the 1999 National Defense Authorization Act handcuffing how the home could cash in on those 49 acres. The amendment forced the Home to sell—and not lease—the land to its next-door neighbor, the Catholic University of America. Ultimately, the Catholic Church bought 46 acres of the tract for $22 million. The Home lost the land for good, and by its own estimates, pocketed $27 million less than the land’s value and $83 million less than what it could’ve made under the lease plan. Santorum’s amendment sparked an outcry from veterans’ groups and fellow US senators, who barraged his office with complaints.

    Laurence Branch, then the executive director of the Home’s board, says Santorum’s amendment was “a travesty” and the Church’s lobbying for the land a case of “coveting thy neighborhood’s goods.” To this day, Branch says he blames Santorum for the Home not receiving more money for the 49-acre parcel of land. “I’m convinced Sen. Santorum is no friend of veterans,” Branch says. (A spokesman for Catholic University did not respond to a request for comment.)

    At the time, Santorum said the amendment was the product of “a consensus agreement” and “was certainly not an attempt to shortchange the veterans.” (A spokesman for the Santorum campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

  4. Or maybe Berke Breathed is being obscene? How does that work.? He can be prosecuted in the Red states but not the Blue?

    I think Free Corn (that federally subsidized GMO commodity stuff that passes for corn) is obscene. http://www.hulu.com/watch/255609/king-corn

    Talk about destroying traditional family values!!!

  5. God’s Will”?: Sarah Palin’s Secret Plot to Capture the White House in
    Anyone who has watched Sarah Palin closely in recent months can only marvel at the “magical thinking” she embraces with respect to the potential outcome of the Republican Party primary for president. It’s clear that Palin still has her sights set on the White House for 2012.

    In an interview with Sean Hannity in February, she declared:

    [A] brokered convention, I wouldn’t be afraid of that. The electorate shouldn’t be afraid of that. That’s a continuation of the process, and competition that perhaps would be, in the end, very good for our party, and good for the cause of defending our republic.

    In her widely reported interview with CNN on Super Tuesday, she openly stated that she would consider accepting the nomination at a brokered GOP convention:

    Anything is possible. I don’t close any doors that perhaps would be open out there, so, no, I wouldn’t close that door. My plan is to be at that convention. Huffington Post

  6. Rick Santorum’s Skeleton Closet: Scandals, Quotes, and Character

    http://www.realchange.org/santorum.htm

    “SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Rick Santorum came to Puerto Rico and promptly waded into the emotional debate over the role English should play in the island’s future, sparking a furor that led the former Pennsylvania senator to insist his remarks were misreported.

    Santorum was forced to repeatedly clarify remarks he made Wednesday, when he said English would have to be the “main language” for Puerto Rico to become a state.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/15/rick-santorum-puerto-rico-english_n_1349164.html?ref=elections-2012

  9. You forgot the most important one for him. It is called the Inquisition and his leader is the Pope.

  12. Raff – careful with that American Taliban stuff there. That has been ruled very rude by out moral betters at places like The Washington Post and even little Andrew Sullivan’s blehg. That it accurately reflects the wants & desires of Rick Sanctorum and friends is not a defense with these arbiters of permissible terms.

  15. In honor of WordPress allowing me to finally post after adding in a different email address, Santorum is an example of the American Taliban at work. It will be his morality that the country will be subjected to if he becomes President. I haven’t said this for years, but Canada is looking pretty good.

  17. Yes indeed, we need a war on pornography, because that war on drugs has turned out so well, you know. Also we still have some liberty in this country and we really need some more tools to stamp that out.

    So much work to do, sure glad we’ve got someone like Santorum to take it on.

  19. That’s Rick Sanctorum.

    Ya know if he starts pushing prohibition, Sunday ‘blue’ laws and eliminating divorce I think he may finally make it over the finish line.

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