YNOT – In a day an age when pornography has so permeated the cultures of most developed nations that citizens can surf porn all day on the Internet and never see the same image twice, some of the old battles still haven’t stopped repeating themselves; as an officer told his general in the movie Gladiator, people should know when they’re conquered, something the anti-porn zealots in the United States have not yet realized.For the moment at least, proponents of campus freedom at the University of Maryland have held off an onslaught against their ability to watch porn on campus. The Board of Regents for the University of Maryland, under intense political pressure from lawmakers, declined to issue a policy prohibiting the display of porn on campus grounds.
“On Wednesday, it was time for the grown-ups in the system to show some courage — and they did, sort of,” wrote Eva Rodriguez for the Washington Post. “The Post’s Daniel deVise reports that after some hemming and hawing, the Board of Regents declined to even formulate a policy, saying that any such policy would be difficult, if not impossible, to implement and enforce. The regents also cited the opinions of its legal experts that Harris’s mandate posed significant constitutional challenges.”
Harris, in this case, is Maryland state lawmaker Andrew Harris (R) who, along with colleague Thomas Miller (D) has threatened to withhold state funding for universities that allow screenings of porn on campus. Whether they would actually resort to hurting the quality of education for all students at University of Maryland just because the school chose not to capitulate remains to be seen.
The state General Assembly has the next move. Columnist Andy Green at The Baltimore Sun had this to say in response to the ongoing saga of pirate sex.
“There’s probably little chance, given that it will be an election year, that the General Assembly will just let this issue go when it reconvenes in January,” Green wrote. “State Sen. Andy Harris, a Baltimore County Republican who crusaded against the University of Maryland College Park’s plan to screen a pornographic film in the spring, is almost certainly running for Congress again, and there’s no doubt he believes this is an issue that can win him votes. He’s probably right. Other lawmakers shouldn’t take the bait. The legislature has plenty more important things to do, and besides, revisiting the issue could have exactly the opposite of the desired effect. After all, what can make something more attractive to college students than forbidding them to do it?”
