Page 70 - AVN October 2016

FEATURE
by CLYDEDeWITT
Revisiting Old Combat Zones
Mark Kernes writes this month about the
latest battle in the war on porn, including
Utah’s junk-science conclusion that
pornography is a health hazard. This is
really just a subset of the Republicans’ war on sex,
which has been going on since at least the Reagan
administration.
Popular wisdom teaches that, at the time of
Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election, the Republican Party
was controlled by wealthy individuals and large
corporations. The Republicans, however, came to learn
that, although money could purchase large amounts of
television time, that was not enough—especially down-
ticket.
The early 1980s also happened to be the time of the
strong emergence of the televangelist—Pat Robertson,
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and
a gaggle of others. The Republicans figured out that
they could capitalize on the enormous base of voters
that already was reeling from the Supreme Court’s Roe
v. Wade decision legalizing abortion and was looking
to insinuate right-wing Christianity into the federal
government.
The tactic worked, contributing to Reagan’s
1980 election. Realizing how well that worked, the
Republicans ramped up the recruitment of evangelicals,
contributing to the 1984 Reagan landslide.
After that, Reagan pandered to the evangelicals with
a vengeance. Religious conservative Edwin Meese
III was appointed as the attorney general, and his
Department of Justice orchestrated a war on porn—a
distraction from the that fact he would be unable to
deliver on his promise to rid the country of Roe v. Wade.
General Meese superintended the Attorney General’s
Commission on Pornography. From June of 1985 to
January of 1986, the Commission traveled around the
country putting on dog-and-pony shows in the image of
the Kefauver Commission on Organized Crime during
the early 1950s. Evangelicals were delighted with all of
this.
In July of 1986, Meese unveiled his two-volume,
nearly 2,000-page Final Report, soon to become a best-
seller at the Government Printing Office. The report
included scores of recommendations of what could be
done about the supposed problem of pornography—
notwithstanding the fact that it generally found porn
to be harmless. These included recommending that
Congress enact a series of regulations, one of which
would become the federal record-keeping and labeling
law, 18 U.S.C. §2257. Others involved increasing
the punishment for obscenity violations, including
forfeiture.
But the recommendations did not stop with
Congress. They also suggested that the Department
of Justice create a special unit to prosecute obscenity
violations on a nationwide basis. Before then, it had
been left to local United States attorneys. The idea was
for the feds to level the playing field against the First
Amendment Lawyers Association, as well as to push Meese’s agenda to overrule local U.S. attorneys who
thought that obscenity cases were less important than other regional problems. (That attitude got a couple
of them fired during the George W. Bush presidency.)
The recommendations went on to suggest measures that should be taken by local governments. That
included zoning, licensing and prohibitions against private video-viewing booths at adult bookstores.
Meese then went to work. The obscenity strike force was assembled, and the mission was to put every
adult video manufacturer out of business.
For starters, the “Unit” launched Operation Postporn, aimed at putting every adult mail-order company
out of business. Not all that long after that came Operation Woodworm, designed to put the adult video
companies out of business.
Now, closing down an entire industry may seem to you as an absurd proposition. However, in the mid-
1980s, the entire industry was cranking out a little over 1,000 titles a year—less than 100 titles a month.
These were created by a handful of video companies, almost all located in Los Angeles’ San Fernando
Valley—and they mostly had scripts back then. The standing joke was that the videos each included a
random eight of the same 25 people.
Accordingly, the idea of closing down all of these businesses was plausible. There just weren’t that many
of them.
The DOJ’s porn squad did substantial damage to the industry. Some companies were closed down, and
some good people went to prison.
Congress helped out with tougher obscenity laws, forfeiture provisions and 2257. And the Unit executed
them—until 1993.
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George W. Bush appointed evangelist John
Ashcroft, obviously intent on re-instituting what
Meese started a decade and a half earlier. But then
these two airplanes hit the World Trade Center.
So Bush II started some actual wars instead.
Meese’s anti-porn dynamo continued in stride under Meese’s successor, Dick Thornburgh, on into the
Bush 41 administration. However, Janet Reno, President Clinton’s attorney general, had no interest in
continuing it. Many of the porn squad prosecutors resigned. The others were re-directed to focus on child
porn, obviously a more noble purpose.
During the Clinton administration, two things happened: On the one hand, the federal government left
the porn industry alone. On the other hand, the video manufacturers that survived the Meese/Thornburgh
assault multiplied like rabbits—and the internet provided a whole new marketing avenue.
You know the rest: Bush 43 appointed evangelist John Ashcroft, obviously intent on re-instituting what
General Meese started a decade and a half earlier. But then these two airplanes hit the World Trade Center.
So Bush II started some actual wars instead. His administration dabbled in attacking the porn industry, but
never had much success. Then Obama took over; and it was back to the Bill Clinton approach.
Now the good part.
In the late 1980s, Jimmy Swaggart found himself embroiled in two sex scandals that got him defrocked.
Around the same time, Jim Bakker was indicted and convicted of fraud, which brought him a 45-year
prison sentence. Robert Showers, the first head of the Meese’s obscenity squad, was asked to resign after
being investigated in connection with alleged document destruction. Although later exonerated, he left the
Department of Justice shortly thereafter.
Republicans still court evangelicals with the zeal that started in the Reagan administration; you can
expect them to continue to exploit these voters to keep the wealthy in that station in life. And along with it,
expect more Republican stunts like the junk science in Utah.
Clyde DeWitt is a Las Vegas attorney, who is also licensed in California and Texas. Learn more at ClydeDeWitt.com.