YNOT – With the next U.S. presidential election little more than a year away, every organization with a cause is jockeying for space in the national debate about which values political parties and individual candidates will bring to the forefront of the campaign. Backers on both sides of issues including the economy, joblessness, taxes, the national debt and social welfare programs all want a spot at the table.

Just to ensure no one forgets the issue that’s uppermost in the minds of average Americans, Morality in Media — a champion of religious tolerance, free speech and personal liberty — has ramped up the anti-pornography rhetoric coming out of its Washington DC headquarters.

MIM’s Coalition for the War on Illegal Pornography on Wednesday launched a new campaign demanding 2012 presidential contenders state their position about “obscene pornography.”

“The Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to the harm of pornography and has not initiated a single new federal obscenity prosecution since President Obama was inaugurated,” said MIM President Patrick Trueman, one-time chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and a master of the fine art of conflating definitions of legal terms like “obscenity” and “pornography.” “We need presidential leadership on this issue.”

Yes, because looking at porn is so much worse than allowing fellow citizens to die of starvation because they can’t find jobs or waste away of disease because they can’t afford health insurance.

According to Trueman, peer-reviewed research presented at the MIM website PornHarms.com indicates harm from legal adult pornography has reached “pandemic levels.”

“Consumption of adult pornography is leading to addiction among many children and adults and is a significant cause of broken marriages and the sexual exploitation of children and women,” a MIM statement released Wednesday proclaimed. “It leads to violence against women and an increase in child pornography and increases the demand for sexual trafficking and child exploitation.”

Leaving aside the argument that the legitimacy and veracity of much of the research presented at PornHarms.com has been challenged or outright debunked, one is overcome with rapture invoked by MIM’s impassioned plea.

Occasionally, just to prove they can, Trueman and company slip in a bit of information that mostly adheres to the facts … before diving head-first from another fanatical cliff.

“Current federal laws, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, prohibit distribution of hard-core [sic] obscene pornography on the internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops, through the mail and by common carrier,” Peters noted in MIM’s Wednesday missive. “But, the laws are simply not being enforced.

“We want assurances that the next President will agree to make the prosecution of illegal hardcore pornography a priority of the U.S. Department of Justice. Only then will the harm begin to subside.”

Trueman, who was in charge of adult obscenity prosecutions during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, said vigorous prosecution of the top pornographers in the U.S. back then not only led to a dramatic decrease in pornography, but also to a significant change in the nature of pornography. The porn industry stopped producing violent material such as rape films, as well as themes involving children, he said.

For the record: The legitimate adult entertainment industry has never knowingly produced material depicting child sexual abuse, and “rape” depicted in legitimate adult films is fictional and consensual, not literal. For that matter, so is the “violence” Trueman claims to have eradicated during his prosecutorial tenure under Reagan and Bush.

The bottom line: MIM wants Americans to demand presidential hopefuls take a public stand on the pornography issue by mass-emailing a canned note to the lot of them:

[QUOTE]Will you agree to vigorously prosecute illegal adult pornography if elected president? Federal obscenity laws prohibit distribution of hardcore “obscene” pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops, through the mail, and by common carrier. Pornography is causing great harm to America. It is causing addiction to children and adults and increasing violence against women. It is a contributing factor to sexual trafficking and causing an increase in child pornography. It is a leading cause of divorce and harming many marriages. Please tell me your position. Will you order your Attorney General to make adult obscenity prosecutions a priority?[/QUOTE]MIM has promised to publish the candidates’ responses on its War on Illegal Pornography website, which leaves us wondering…. What if someone started a war and nobody came?