Page 63 - AVN October 2016

of the Internet-enabled sexual exploitation of children by
the implementation of updated corporate policies and viable
technology tools and solutions.” (Wow! Maybe they could take
a top-level domain like, for instance, .xxx, and require that all
sexual content on the Web be under that domain, making it all
the easier for ISPs to block access—just as former Prime Minister
David Cameron wants to do in the United Kingdom!)
But as legitimately worried as most might be about a Trump
presidency, its main problem may not be Trump himself but
rather his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana.
In his early life, Pence, an attorney, worked for a right-wing
think tank before becoming a radio host in the style of Rush
Limbaugh. He spent a couple of years in Indiana’s House of
Representatives before managing a decade in Congress, toward
the end of which he was the chair of the House Republican
Conference. A Tea Party supporter, Family Research Council rated
him “True Blue” as a legislator, meaning that he supported all of
FRC’s reactionary political agenda. He’s also a frequent speaker
at right-wing events such as the Values Voter Summit, where he
told attendees, “Our present crisis is not merely economic and
political but spiritual,” and the Faith & Freedom Coalition, where
he made similar comments.
Pence has long been an opponent of abortion rights,
sponsoring a bill to defund Planned Parenthood and requiring
abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges—and to
bury or cremate aborted fetuses—and of church/state separation:
he actually tried to get a bill through Congress that would take
away the Supreme Court’s power to hear cases involving certain
favored winger religious issues. He is perhaps best known of late
as a supporter of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act,
which would allow anyone to discriminate against gay, bi and
transgendered people in everyday commerce. That little piece of
business lost Indiana 12 large conventions that were to be held in
the state, and an estimated $250 million in revenue.
Considering all that, it’s particularly troubling that Donald
Trump Jr., who is said to have vetted all of the potential vice-
presidential candidates for his father, reportedly told an advisor
of John Kasich, who by then had dropped out of the presidential
race and was angling for the VP slot, that while The Donald
was busy “making America great again,” the elder Trump would
be putting the VP choice in charge of all “domestic and foreign
policy.” Of course, that VP choice is Pence. And remember: If
anything happens to Trump while he’s in office, Pence becomes
the official presidential office-holder rather than just a virtual
one.
And while we’re taking about people not to support, guess
who’s running for Congress in California’s 44th Congressional
District? Yep, it’s Isadore Hall, the guy who went to the mat for
AIDS Healthcare Foundation with AB 1576, yet another in a
string of mandatory condom bills that California legislators were
too smart to pass. (Now, if the voters can just demonstrate the
same intelligence with Prop 60...)
But lest anyone get the idea that only Republicans pose a
threat to the sex-positive speech community, let’s not forget the
other side of the aisle, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
By upbringing, Clinton is a Methodist, and when younger,
she taught Methodist Sunday school, as did her mother before
her. The church she attended in D.C. was the Foundry United
Methodist Church, which describes itself as a “reconciling
congregation,” but although it invites the LGBT community to
attend, Methodism considers homosexuality to be “incompatible
with Christian teaching”; likewise abortion, gambling and
alcohol use. During her college days, Clinton was a Republican,
working for the election of Barry Goldwater as president in ’64. She also attended biweekly
anticommunist meetings and later served as president of Wellesley’s Young Republicans chapter.
Of course, people do change, and it’s probably not fair to hold all that against her at present.
Most troubling, however, was Clinton’s participation in “conservative Bible study and prayer
circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship,” according to
Jeff Sharlet, author of the important study of right-wing religious politics, The Family: The Secret
Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. The Fellowship was “a network of sex-segregated
cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to ‘spiritual war’ on behalf of Christ.
... The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for
his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God’s plan. ... The
Fellowship’s long-term goal is ‘a leadership led by God—leaders of all levels of society who direct
projects as they are led by the spirit.’”
Clinton’s D.C. Bible study group, which she joined even as her husband took high office in
1993, had as members the wives of conservative senators Jack Kemp and Bill Nelson (though
Nelson was nominally a Democrat).
“Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former
Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection,” Sharlet wrote in an article for
Mother Jones in 2007.
All of that should be very troubling to the sex-positive/pro-porn community—but sadly, for
that community, she’s the only game in town, since neither Libertarian Gary Johnson nor Green
Jill Stein stand any chance of winning—and the Dallas Morning News, for the first time in 75 years,
is endorsing a Democrat: her.
Many conservative groups and blogs claim to have taken their “scientific” data from a book-
length report issued this past spring by the Barna Research Group, titled The Porn Phenomenon—
which in fact contains little science but one hell of a lot of surveys. In fact, the scare headline on
the book’s back cover—”THE PORN CRISIS IS NOT COMING... IT IS HERE”—may easily have
been the genesis of the new “porn is a health crisis” meme.
But even Barna can’t help but admit that viewing porn is incredibly popular with one hell
of a lot of people, with one-third of the 3,000 Americans they surveyed (some of whom were
under 12 years of age) viewing it at least once a month, and with 72 percent of “not-practicing
Christian” males 13-24 and 55 percent of the same over age 25 using it “regularly”—and 41
percent and 23 percent of practicing Christian males of the same age groupings also using it. And
guess what? More than two-thirds of those who do use it are doing so for “personal arousal.”
What a surprise!
While we’re taking about people not to
support, guess who’s running for Congress in
California’s 44th Congressional District?
Yep, it’s Isadore Hall, the guy who went to
the mat for AIDS Healthcare Foundation with
AB 1576, yet another in a string of
mandatory condom bills that California
legislators were too smart to pass.
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