WASHINGTON – Trump has pledged one, but took no action in the first year of his presidency; one wasn’t expected, promised or enacted under Obama; one which was anticipated and half-started under George W. Bush never fully materialized.
Given the above, it seems reasonable to ask: Are “porn crackdowns” a thing of the past?
When I first began working in the adult industry just over 20 years ago, the industry wasn’t far removed from the last widescale government effort to prosecute adult entertainment into submission. It began under the administration of Ronald Reagan and continued under the one-term reign of his former vice president, George H.W. Bush.
While there were several high-profile obscenity prosecutions under George W. Bush, and a reconstituting of the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force in 2005 under then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, obscenity prosecutions under George W. Bush never came close to the number, scope or aggressiveness they reached under the Reagan administration.
Reagan made no secret of his contempt for the porn industry, warning back in 1987 all those involved in the manufacture, distribution and sale of smut that their “industry’s days are numbered.”
Of course, back then, the commercial internet had yet to develop, and porn was far less ubiquitous a than it is now. To the average person who wasn’t a porn consumer, it was something men shuffled into windowless stores to obtain, or even to consume, feeding coins into private viewing booth slots.
In the late 80s, porn was rarely written about or discussed in the mainstream media, outside of analysis (and occasional mockery) of the Meese Commission’s work, or news of communities trying to block the establishment of adult businesses in their neighborhoods – something we still see popping up in the news from time to time, for as much as things have changed over the years.
While the crackdown on porn lost its steam with Bill Clinton at the helm in the White House, legislation passed during the Clinton years seemed at the time like an effort to set the table for reviving obscenity prosecutions for the internet age.
Before anyone could act on the provisions of the Child Online Protection Act or the Communications Decency Act, however, the courts had their say – and what they said was key portions of both acts (or perhaps I should say all three acts, since Congress tried to revise and relaunch COPA) were unconstitutional.
It has been reported the George W. Bush DOJ would have expended more energy and resources on obscenity prosecutions, had it not been for the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, which led to a rather urgent reassessment of priorities — and reasonably so, I think. As one former prosecutor put it, in the wake of 9/11, “Would you rather be chasing terrorists, or some guy who reads Hustler?”
Under Barrack Obama, the focus of obscenity prosecutions was shifted toward child pornography, as then-Attorney General shut down the task force established under Gonzales in 2005, and moved all handling of obscenity crimes to the DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. At the time, congressional Republicans pointed at Holder’s decision as evidence the Obama administration was soft on porn.
“Attorney General Holder told the Judiciary Committee last year that this task force was the centerpiece of the strategy to combat adult obscenity,” Sen. Orrin Hatch said at the time. “Rather than initiate a single new case since President Obama took office, however, the only development in this area has been the dismantling of the task force. As the toxic waste of obscenity continues to spread and harm everyone it touches, it appears the Obama administration is giving up without a fight.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hatch and other republicans have issued no such statements about Donald Trump taking no action (thus far, at least) to make good on his pre-election pledge to “aggressively enforce existing federal laws to prevent the sexual exploitation of children online, including the federal obscenity laws,” as the text of the pledge signed by Trump put it.
As noted in a new piece from The Daily Beast, there are other ways Trump’s mere presence in the White House have impacted people working in the adult industry, but thus far, his pledge to crack down on porn seems to be among his lower priority campaign promises. While Trump has signed multiple executive orders designed to curb immigration and reduce the number of refugees entering the country, pushed through a tax cut and followed through on his intent to abandon or renegotiate several international agreements to which the U.S. is a signatory, his anti-porn actions have numbered precisely zero, to-date.
“Sorry to say for all the alarmists out there, but the administration had no impact on any of it,” Evil Angel CFO Adam Grayson is quoted in the Beast piece. “We’re hoping 2018 is even more exciting and profitable.”
Is Grayson’s celebration premature? Will Trump follow through on his pledge?
Only time will tell, of course. About the only thing Attorney General Jeffrey Sessions has had to say on the subject is that he’d “consider” reconstituting the obscenity task force disbanded under Holder – which is hardly a pledge to return us to the days of the Meese Commission and nationwide prosecutions.
