Posted on 08/27/2012 2:00:06 PM PDT by JerseyanExile
The Republican Party’s platform committee declared war on pornography ahead of this week’s Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.
In a Monday morning press release, advocacy group Morality in Media revealed that “new language replaces previous platform wording, which only opposed child pornography.”
According to MIM, the new wording will read, “Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced.”
The party platform was drafted by a 112-member committee and will be unveiled early this week.
Existing obscenity laws “not only prohibit distribution of hardcore pornography on the Internet but also on hotel/motel TV, on cable/satellite TV, and in retail shops,” said MIM President Patrick Trueman.
“Distribution of obscene or hardcore pornography on the Internet is a violation of current federal law,” said Trueman, a former anti-porn prosecutor in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
Earlier this year, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum attracted raised eyebrows when he promised a “vigorous” crackdown against “the scourge of pornography.” Santorum posted the promise on his presidential campaign’s website.
Mitt Romney, who will officially be nominated as the Republican presidential candidate in Tampa this week, also promised the group a “vigorous” crackdown during the Republican primaries, Trueman told The Daily Caller in July.
Romney, however, has not discussed his position at length in public, and his campaign ignored requests for comment seeking elaboration on his position.
Curiously enough, in addition to promising a crackdown on porn, the party’s platform also calls for “Internet freedom,” TheDC reported last week.
The addition to the porn plank came from Tony Perkins, the Family Research Council president and a GOP delegate from Louisiana, according to MIM.
Other socially conservative positions within this year’s party platform include opposition to abortion, with no exceptions for rape or incest.
In March, The Atlantic chronicled the history of pornography in the GOP platform, noting that it was first mentioned in 1984.
In 1992, the party platform called for “allowing victims of pornography to seek damages from those who make or sell it” and declared, “The time has come for a national crusade against pornography.”
After Bill Clinton won the 1992 election, his administration reined in the number of porn prosecutions, and they remained uncommon throughout the George W. Bush administration.
By 2008, The Atlantic reported, the anti-porn zeal had mellowed and the party’s platform merely addressed child pornography. Under President Barack Obama, Trueman told TheDC in July, the DOJ has initiated no new obscenity prosecutions.
“We are most grateful to Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council who led the effort to get the tough new language into the platform,” said Trueman. “Without enforcement of federal obscenity laws, pornographers have had a green light to target our children and families.”
Repubs continue to shoot themselves in the foot.
What, you mean using a popular concept as a front to create landmark laws and rulings that can be expanded infinitely to destroy rights, like internet freedom?
Of course. What do you think elections are FOR?
What the Fluke????
Here we go again with the Constitution party agenda...../s
No one has the freedom to spam unsolicited email (sexual or otherwise).
However, the boat has sailed.
What is pornography?
How do you crack down on something most people can not define?
I honestly believe they are trying to lose this election...and it sure seems like Rush is thinking this, too.
Oh, yaaaaaaay! Cracking down on materials involving consenting adults and used by consenting adults in the home! I’m sure glad independents and libertarians don’t matter!
I have my doubts that this story is anything more than some attempt to paint the GOP as the morality police. I suspect I could be wrong, but I suspect this story is suspect.
I know ... it’s like, “How can we lose this election?”
“Let’s tell them we’re going to take away their porn!”
If we humble ourselves and seek God's face and change our wicked ways, then will He hear from heaven and forgive us and heal our land. 2 Chronicles 7:14
“This is part of the Republican War on Women.” - Larry Flynt
I guess unemployment, investing taxpayer money on fraudlent energy schemes, blocking oil investigation, stopping production of electrical generation, inflated prices of gasoline, the current recession, more prosed cuts to national defense, corruption in the Fast and Furious case, illegal immigration are all too easy.
No, let’s alienate people over an activity that has been shown to be protected by the 2nd ammendment.
Who’s side are these idiots on?
Someone is just throwing distraction chum in the water. Don’t bite!
If we humble ourselves and seek God's face and change our wicked ways, then will He hear from heaven and forgive us and heal our land. 2 Chronicles 7:14
I say it again, take a page from the 1992 Clinton Playbook; “IT’S THE DAMN ECONOMY STUPID”
Social issues right now are not uppermost on most peoples mind. We have 40 Million people plus out of work and are in for the most part a DEPRESSION.
Pound away on the economy, that is the win. If gas prices continue to go up, pound that also. That is the key to winning the election.
Leave it to the Idiot Damn Republicans in charge to worry about things that can be dealt with later.
And next week, we’ll have Debbie Does Charlotte, starring political porn stars, which raises the question: does adopting this plank mean that the GOP wants to shut down the DNC?
“Repubs continue to shoot themselves in the foot.”
Took the words out of my mouth. I guess they were worried they might actually win.
How is porn protected by the 2nd Amendment?
Other than by the fact some people will shoot you if you try to take their’s away. :)
And the porn industry is how big, somewhere between 5 and 15 billion dollars. They can afford to spend quite a bit to protect their turf, with ACLU, Hollywood, and MSM help.
Whose brilliant idea was this? Romney’s? The dems will gleefully point out all the money he made from Marriott in-room “adult selections” (which I don’t think they offer any more).
I am no fan of porn but if the idea is to win the election, they should stick to the economy.
Republicans have always had traditional values.
If the research cited below is to be believed...
[Excerpt]
Porn in the USA: Conservatives Are Biggest Consumers
By Ewen Callaway
New Scientist
ABC News
Feb. 28, 2009
Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.
A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states.
“When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different,” says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.
However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.
“Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by,” Edelman says.
[...]
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Business/story?id=6977202&page=1#.UDvhlsFlQRk
I wonder if the GOP will write a plank forbidding Laz from eating the hearts of the children of FR trolls.
I know. Just ask Mark Foley.
Why in the heck are the Republicans focusing on this when they should focus on Jobs,Prosperity and Energy plus they will alienate the perv voting bloc.
Seems some of you lost what passes for your minds based on the head line and never even bothered to read the story.
Really pathetic how desperately eager supposed "conservatives" around here are to be water boys for the Democrat propaganda machines tactics of diversion and distraction.
Wow that is radical. Demand the law be enforced. Wow that really is extremist!
Seems some of you lost what passes for your minds based on the head line and never even bothered to read the story.
Really pathetic how desperately eager supposed “conservatives” around here are to be water boys for the Democrat propaganda machines tactics of diversion and distraction.
For a free society, we sure spend a lot of effort trying to restrict each other.
“Someone is just throwing distraction chum in the water. Don’t bite!”
My god, I think you’ve got it!
Does this have anything to do with walking Vaginas or Naomi Wolf’s new book?
This is NOT an important issue right now. These are things you look into AFTER you win the election.
I was thinking that the better strategy might be to get elected, then start your vigorous crackdown.
Like the Dems do all the time.
This plank, if the op is true, will bring to bear the resources of a wealthy, connected, and popular (among some circles) industry in working to defeat the GOP.
I have not researched this but weren’t there lots of first amendment cases over the years defining what is legal, what is hardcore, and so forth? This will lead to ambiguity and confusion, which could mean that the GOP spends lots of time and effort discussing this issue, while Obama’s team tries to make the case that a Romney win would be even worse than an Obama second term.
That is the focus that will fix the economy for sure.
All this money and time we have to throw away on porn. Who knew?
That is a large part of what conservatism is, morality and a decent society.
As the left and libertarians have won victory after victory for the last 50 years, it is destroying our nation and it's culture, and foundations, our families and our communities.
Oh wow, so radical and extremist! And as usual the whiners choir around here lose their heads rather then realize this is a NON story.
>Other socially conservative positions within this year’s party platform include opposition to abortion, with no exceptions for rape or incest.
I guess we are giving up on the women vote now.
If this is true then we are totally raped. The democrat party will rule until the Whig2 party is replaced.
LLS
Is that what passes as logic with you?
More democrat baloney. Sounds like the writer of this tripe has been speaking to Wassweman-Schultz.
“And as usual the whiners choir around here lose their heads rather then realize this is a NON story. “
Well, we’ll see if this dies out or becomes an MSM chant like the War On Women.
I’d expect Larry Flynt, if he’s still alive, to kick the media campaign off.
I hope you are correct that this propaganda won’t be effective, but you are correct, I have become cynical about the GOP’s ability to deal with coordinated media pushes.
Yup. When was the last time anybody even thought about a party platform after the convention, let alone attempted to enforce it?
I read the story.
I do believe that the Repubs should be focusing on the economy, debt, incompetence, etc, instead of porn.
And...as far as porn goes, on the one hand, I don’t really have an opinion except to say that I am happy that the anti-porn people exist. If they didn’t then porn would be delivered to our inboxes on an hourly basis.
On the other hand, I am glad that porn exists. Otherwise, the anti-porn people would find some other cause to try to embrace, like, anti-( insert cause here ).
The porn/anti-porn groups tend to cancel each other out, thank goodness.
The obscenity laws do conflict with the First Amendment. I don’t know how anyone can get around that.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.
The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked:
Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?
And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
- George Washington, presidential Farewell Address
Well said.
Some may snicker, but pornography is dragging down society. Yes, this election SHOULD be about things like not killing unborn babies and not allowing porn to invade every facet of our world and not having homosexuality thrown in our kids faces.
>I think you people are in the wrong party.
>Republicans have always had traditional values.
Agreed, but expecting the mother to die to save an unborn child is not a traditional value that needs enforced by law.
Neither is forcing a rape victim to carry a rapists child.
Really? This is what people want to focus the elections on?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes.
(No sarc tag necessary.)
Unless of course you want to dredge up the same old RINO talking points about health care, the economy, and whatnot. You know... the same rhetoric the democrats spew on.
Look. There is NO DIFFERENCE between Obamacare and Romneycare. The ONLY way we conservatives can take back our nation is by taking a stand AGAINST porn. Or abortion. And stand FOR Godly values.
But around FR? It’s obvious to see that porn is far too popular and us true SoCons are being ridiculed as if we were posting at the DUmp.
Sad how things are way too (socially) liberal around here. I, of course blame the libertarians (see tagline).
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