WASHINGTON – While I’m sure there are those who are saddened to hear Orrin Hatch will not be seeking reelection when his current term ends, I’m equally certain somewhere between very few and none of those people work in the adult entertainment or video gaming industries.
In his lengthy career, the Senatorial portion of which began in 1976, Hatch was a frequent critic of video games (violent games in particular) and pornography, often taking the position that such products had serious detrimental effects on the minds of those who used and consumed them.
To Hatch’s credit(?), though, at least he was consistent in agitating for more obscenity prosecutions, regardless of whether a democrat or republican occupied the Oval Office at the time (although, so far as I’m aware, Hatch has been uncharacteristically silent about President Trump’s lack of follow-through on his campaign pledge to crack down on porn).
For example, when the Ashcroft DOJ didn’t file as many obscenity prosecutions as social conservatives had hoped, Hatch was among those who expressed their disappointment.
“It takes over your mind,” Hatch said of porn at the time. “There are a lot of people who are addicted to pornography. I have seen where homes and lives have been ruined. I have seen dozens of marriages — good, decent, religious people — who have gotten into pornography, and their marriages have broken up.”
The insidious, mind-corrupting nature of porn is a theme Hatch struck many times throughout his career – and which he used as a particularly blunt rhetorical bludgeoning instrument when criticizing the Eric Holder DOJ under President Barrack Obama.
“Last June, an important briefing in the Capitol outlined how pornography has changed, becoming more harmful, addictive, and available, and linked to other crimes,” Hatch wrote in a 2011 letter calling for the Holder DOJ to aggressively prosecute obscenity crimes. “Researchers, scholars, and other experts explained, for example, how today’s hardcore pornography is typified by extreme violence against women and how pornography consumption can contribute to sexual harassment and sexual violence. Another expert warned that Internet adult pornography normalizes sexual harm to children, while another addressed the growing connection between pornography and sex trafficking.”
When the Holder DOJ didn’t spring to attention and respond with obscenity indictments targeting adult pornography (Holder prosecuted child pornography cases just as vigorously as any of his predecessors), Hatch went on the offensive in the media.
“Attorney General Holder told the Judiciary Committee last year that this task force was the centerpiece of the strategy to combat adult obscenity,” Hatch told Politico 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.”
In announcing his retirement, Hatch seemed to want to make it clear giving up without a fight is not his style.
“I’ve always been a fighter. I was an amateur boxer in my youth, and I brought that fighting spirit with me to Washington,” Hatch said in the video announcing his retirement. “But every good fighter knows when to hang up the gloves. And for me, that time is soon approaching.”
From an adult industry perspective, all I can say is I hope the Jeffrey Sessions DOJ takes the view hanging up the ‘obscenity prosecution gloves,’ so to speak, is an idea whose time has come, as well.
Without Hatch hanging around the Senate, the DOJ will certainly have one voice loudly calling for them to take up the fight.
