Politics of Porn

Patrick Trueman, the head of Morality in Media, has told the conservative Daily Caller that he was quietly promised that fighting porn will be a top priority in a Romney White House.

Trueman said he and an anti-porn prosecutor from the 1980s Justice Department, Bob Flores, met earlier this year with Alex Wong, Romney's foreign and legal policy director. Trueman said:

Wong assured us that Romney is very concerned with this, and that if he's elected these laws will be enforced. They promised to vigorously enforce federal adult obscenity laws.

Around the time Trueman says he received those assurances, Romney signed Morality in Media's anti-porn pledge along with Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, whom he was still battling for the GOP nomination. Since then, he hasn't mentioned the issue very often.

Romney has however promised that if elected president he would require every new computer be sold with a porn filter.

There may be another reason Romney isn't talking up porn: he needs the support of millions of primary voters who supported Ron Paul, who notably did not make opposition to sexually explicit materials a campaign plank.

The US Republican Party is calling for a crackdown on pornography. As they prepare to nominate Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate for the Nov. 6 election, Republicans have added language to their official platform that anti-porn nutters said would encourage the federal government to step up prosecution of pornography involving adults.

Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced, the platform says, according to a draft obtained by Reuters.

Republicans are planning a Tuesday vote on the document, a nonbinding statement of principles that tackles everything from monetary policy to abortion.

This appears to be the first time that the party has called for a crackdown on sexually explicit material involving adults, a multi-billion-dollar industry. Adult obscenity cases have been exceedingly rare over the past 20 years. Though the administration of George W. Bush promised a crackdown, only the most extreme forms of pornography have been targeted.

Anti-pornography nutter Patrick Trueman said the language in the Republican platform would bolster a broader push against the type of sexually explicit material that is sold by convenience stores, by hotels via pay-per-view television programming, and satellite and cable TV providers.

According to Trueman's group, Romney promised earlier this year that he would push for strict enforcement of obscenity laws, as well as the broader use of blocking software to screen out Internet porn.

The adult entertainment industry overwhelmingly favors re-electing Barack Obama to a second term as president, according to the results of a new industry poll conducted by media organization XBIZ.

Of the 339 respondents, 68% say Obama, while only 13% favor Romney. Another 14% would like to see someone else in the White House, while 5% responded I don't care.

Aside from economic considerations affecting voters' decisions in November, the issue of federal obscenity prosecutions figures to be a major factor for adult film producers. According to the notorious pro-censorship organization Morality in Media, Mitt Romney earlier this year, along with other Republican candidates at the time, offered assurances that if elected, they would direct the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute porn producers for obscenity violations.

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