WASHINGTON, D.C. – A previously postponed hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution on the subject of pornography was rescheduled for Wednesday, March 16th at 3:00 pm. One new anti-porn witness has been added to the lineup of anti-porn activists. Pat Truman, a former Justice Department official and head of the American Family Association’s Washington bureau, will speak to the Committee. As before, no speakers friendly to adult entertainment will be allowed to speak.Organized by Senator Sam Brownback (R – KS), who ironically was exposed earlier today in a CREW report that listed outwardly anti-porn Members of Congress who accepts political donations from companies that sell pornography, the hearing will take place at 3:00 p.m. in room 226 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building. It has been titled “Obscenity Prosecution and the Constitution.”
The hearing was originally scheduled for last month, but was later postponed for unknown reasons.
The hearing itself appears to be a reaction to the recent decision by U.S. District Court Judge Gary Lancaster in the case U.S. v. Extreme Associates. Judge Lancaster dismissed all obscenity charges against Extreme Associates last month while citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2004 decision to strike down Texas sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas. According to a press release issued by Senator Brownback’s office, the Wednesday hearing “will illustrate the negative impact this [Extreme Associates] decision can have on prosecuting producers of obscene material.”
Besides Truman, other speakers will include Robert Destro, a Professor of Law at Catholic University of America, William Wagner, a Professor of Law at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, and Frederick Schauer, a Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard University. All four speakers have favored strict restraints on adult entertainment.
Senator Brownback, considered a possible candidate for president in 2008, surprised the adult industry in November of 2003 when he held Senate hearings on the supposed “addictive” nature of pornography. That hearing also featured testimony exclusively from one side of the debate, with dissenting testimony not included in the proceedings. During the hearing, one “expert” compared the effects of pornography on the brain to the effects of crack cocaine.
“The false idea of porn addiction is key,” Michelle Freridge, Executive Director of the Free Speech Coalition, told YNOT earlier. “There has to be a really, really compelling interest to infringe upon Americans’ Free Speech rights … if porn addiction were true, if a large enough percentage of the population were addicted because of addictive qualities in the product, if it had a negative effect on peoples’ lives that were compelling enough, then they would have [their argument] to say Free Speech can be infringed upon in this case for these reasons.”
“I don’t think you’re going to find anybody who died from watching too much pornography,” added Freridge.
