The Single Most Important Issue Facing Adult Freedoms

Liberated Christians
Cyber Swing/Polyamory Resource Center
Promoting Intimacy and Other-Centered Sexuality

The Single Most Important Issue Facing Adult Freedoms
From www.avn.com - While this is about porn, it also applies to all forms of consenting adult sexual activity which the Bush Administration is attacking on many fronts based on their Traditional Anti-Sexual Christian Agenda

As a Democrat, Kerry (or long-shot John Edwards) is unlikely to squander precious Justice Department resources in this post 9-11 world on prosecuting legitimate (read: non kiddie porn) adult producers whose product is enjoyed by millions of Americans in the privacy of their homes.

Not to sound melodramatic or anything, but Bush's re-election could threaten the very survival of our industry. As if I need to remind you, during Bush's first term, his Attorney General John Ashcroft (a fundamentalist Christian, like his boss) instituted the first federal obscenity bust in more than a decade, against Extreme Associates, with 49 more such investigations in the works.

And then there's the ominous news, revealed in February, that former Department of Justice prosecutor Bruce A. Taylor, an anti-obscenity hardliner who was one of the founding members back in the late `80s of the DOJ's National Obscenity Enforcement Unit (NOEU), has been rehired by the DOJ as, depending on which glowing religious right report one wants to believe, either "a senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General based in Washington, D.C." or "to oversee the Department's pornography prosecution efforts."

As if that's not enough to make you break out in a cold sweat, it's conceivable that if Bush wins a second and final term, he can take a public-opinion-be-damned attitude and really let Ashcroft, Taylor and company loose to wreck havoc on the industry in such a way that hasn't been seen since the dark days of the mid-`80s Meese Commission and the resulting "Project PostPorn" indictments and convictions that put more than two dozen adult companies out of business. Some in the industry speculate more such indictments could even be handed down prior to the November election for Bush to milk for political mileage with his religious right constituency, who are actually disappointed that he hasn't taken a tougher stand against the adult industry.

"If he [Bush] gets in, we're done," a deeply concerned Christopher, an industry veteran who remembers the dark days all too clearly, told me on one of his sets. "To me, there's no difference between him and the Islamic fundamentalists. And the magazine [AVN] and everyone, the whole industry, should do something." Indeed.

Christopher isn't the only one worried.

Whatever Taylor's role in the DOJ, adult industry attorney Jeffrey Douglas, who also serves as board chairman of the Free Speech Coalition, says it ain't a good one.

"What it certainly does represent is yet another manifestation of the commitment that Ashcroft and his boss, acting President Bush, have to attack the industry," Douglas was quoted saying in Kernes's story on Taylor. "He is a committed opponent of free speech, of free thought and human sexuality as one normally thinks of it.

"An all-out attack on the industry will, of course, galvanize the right, and when you have people in the Justice Department who are operating under the assumption that they are God's agents on Earth, it's a very bad situation."

Another adult industry legal heavyweight, attorney H. Louis Sirkin (who represents Extreme), concurred in Kernes' piece: "He (Taylor) has followed, and he has followed very closely and has been aligned with people who have an absolute commitment ... to being anti-sexually explicit material regardless of whether it's protected or not."

Numbers-and-influence-wise, this industry is just a small part of the American body politic, but nonetheless, we should pro-actively support the Democratic nominee not only with our voices, media and votes, but also - this especially goes for the more successful company owners - with our wallets as well. It could just be the best business investment we ever make.

- Mike Ramone, Adult Video News - April 2004
Reproduced with full credit under the fair use provisions of U.S. Copyright Law