COLORADO SPRINGS, CO – Although heartened by the response of Americans to the scandal involving former Congressman Mark Foley, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson says he’s disappointed that so much of the discussion surrounding Foley’s now-infamous emails and instant messages is political in nature, rather than focusing on the real issue.What is the real issue, in Dobson’s view? Why, “obscenity,” of course.
“If any lasting cultural good could come out of this awful incident,” said Dobson in a press release issued today by Focus on the Family Action, “it would be Americans discarding the politically correct notion fed to us by those on the left that obscenity is just another form of free speech.”
In the release, Dobson says “the fact that so many Americans are outraged and sickened by his alleged actions indicates that as a society we do understand there are limits to ‘tolerance’ of our culture’s anything-goes view of sexuality” while lamenting what he deems the “political” nature of discussions surrounding the incident.
“The lives of real families have been devastated by the conduct Mr. Foley stands accused of – so it’s sad that so much of the dialogue today is so political in nature,” Dobson stated. “Those truly interested in protecting children from online predators should spend less time calling for Speaker Hastert to step down and more time demanding that the Justice Department enforce existing laws that would limit the proliferation of the kind of filth that leads grown men to think it’s perfectly OK to send lurid e-mails to 16-year-old boys.”
While Dobson’s release did not specify precisely what “kind of filth” he was referring to, Dobson’s organization has adopted a very broad standard for what materials should be considered “obscene” under the law.
In remarks made at the “Summit on Pornography: Obscenity Enforcement, Corporate Participation and Violence against Women and Children,” conference May of 2005, Daniel Weiss of Focus on the Family related his own interpretation of the obscenity test elucidated to in Miller v. California and the federal government’s enforcement of obscenity laws.
“Although the Supreme Court was clear in Miller v. California that hardcore pornography enjoys no First Amendment protection, lax federal and state law enforcement has essentially given obscenity the protection denied to it in the Constitution,” Weiss asserted at the conference, according to a transcription of his remarks published on the Focus on the Family website at www.Family.org.
The contention that all “hardcore pornography” lacks the protection of the First Amendment is, at best, a severe oversimplification of the Miller test, if not an intentional misrepresentation of the standard.
Whether material is “obscene” according to the Miller test is reliant upon the application of “community standards,” and even material deemed offensive by those standards can be saved from being deemed legally obscene if the work as a whole is found to have any “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
Given the subjectivity of the evaluations made under the test, most experts on the First Amendment find the Miller test to be less definitive with respect to the legality of “hardcore pornography,” and characterize the scope of the definition of “obscenity” under the test to be less expansive than Weiss asserted it to be in his comments.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, for example, expressed a somewhat more nuanced take on the question during his confirmation hearings earlier this year.
Alito noted that “constitutional law draws a distinction between obscenity, which has no First Amendment protection but is subject to a very strict definition, and pornography, which is not obscenity but is sexually related materials,” adding that “with respect to minors, the Supreme Court has said it’s permissible for a state to regulate the sale of pornography to minors.”
Focus on the Family representatives were among dozens of signatories on a letter sent to President George Bush in September encouraging more vigorous enforcement of obscenity laws, and in which religious and family organizations requested a meeting with Bush on the issue.
Thus far, there has been no public response by the White House with regards to the requested meeting, and none of the organizations or individuals who have signed the letter have announced such a meeting having been scheduled or held.
