By Patrick Trueman, AFA Director of Governmental Affairs
July 1995 – America has had a standard of decency in modern history which dictates that pornography should be kept from children. Indeed, if a convenience store in your neighborhood sold pornography to your minor children, you would probably be incensed. That standard of decency is undergoing radical decay on the Internet. On the Internet children aren’t sold pornography –it’s given to them.
The Internet provides a means of communicating or exchanging information between individuals, businesses, universities and government agencies throughout the world with the use of the personal computer (PC). Pornographers, professional and amateur, have been quick to pollute the incredible communications potential of the Internet.
Most PCs sold in the last decade are equipped to allow users to traverse the Internet. The home PC uses a phone line to connect to the imaginary world of “cyberspace,” the link to every other similarly equipped computer in the world.
Pornographers worldwide have made use of this communication explosion. Magazines like Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler are on the Internet offering numerous free pornographic images each month to anyone, including children. Cyberspace is brought to one’s computer screen in television quality with a few clicks of a button, depending on the computer’s capability.
Pornography is found at several Internet locations – each site catering to those of a particular interest. Examples are: “female,” “male,” “blondes,” “amateur,” “group sex,” “bestiality,” “bondage,” and even one titled “children.”
Also on the Internet are several “newsgroups” or talk lines where people of similar interest can join in an international conversation or peruse the conversations of others. By no means are newsgroups limited to sexually explicit topics, but there is no shortage of those. Some of the subtopics include “homosexual,” “brothels,” “swingers,” “voyeurism,” “zoophilia,” “necrophilia,” “pedophilia,” “incest,” and many others with names too offensive to be mentioned in this family magazine.
It’s hard to imagine the perversion available on the Internet without experiencing it –which I don’t recommend that you do. A shockingly vivid description of the kidnapping, rape, torture and murder of a child appeared recently on one Internet site devoted to sexually explicit stories. Stories of bestiality are frequently posted. On the voyeurism talk line, devotees regularly post questions such as, “Does any know good locations in New York City?” or “What are the best binoculars?” Voyeurs on the Net fi re back responses. On another line devoted to pedophilia, a guide to films with naked boys is published listing dozens of modern and mainstream films produced in the U. S. and abroad. Another line tells you how to find prostitutes in numerous U. S. cities by specific locations and includes prices, all in the crudest terms imaginable.
Finding sexually explicit Internet addresses is easy, literally child’s play. Newsweek magazine, in an article condemning Congressional efforts to restrict computer pornography, included Playboy’s Internet address. How many high school children accepted Newsweek’s unwitting invitation to view Playboy by computer? The Penthouse address was shown in another mainstream magazine. Addresses for other pornographic Internet sites are listed in popular computer manuals. Once on the Internet, anyone “cruising” the pornographic sites or sexually explicit talk lines will find the 17-page “Complete Guide to Internet Sex Resources,” which will direct a person to all known sexually explicit sites. Thus, anyone with a home computer and access to the Internet has a porn shop in his home.
But our concern should not be only for the children who may be harmed by pornography on the Internet. Men who wouldn’t humiliate themselves by walking into a porn shop can – and do – find the same smut on their home or office computer. This easy access to one of the most spiritually toxic substances a man can experience only adds wind to the sails of a nation that has slipped its moral moorings.
Internet pornography is a national problem that must be addressed. The ACLU and its usual allies who advocate for a permissive, anything goes society have mounted a Congressional and media campaign to oppose any regulation of pornography on the Internet. Parental responsibility, they say, is the key to protecting children. Parents must take their share of responsibility for their kids and know what they are viewing on the computer. But pornographers should not treat our homes as toxic waste dumps on some tortured legal notion that they have a right to dump pornography anywhere and those who don’t like it can avert their eyes and those of their children.
Congress will soon take up the issue of computer pornography. Sen. James Exon (D-NE) has introduced the Communications Decency Act of 1995 which, he said, was intended to prevent the Internet from becoming a red light district. (It’s too late for that!) Sen. Exon, however, has perverted his bill by allowing numerous defenses to prosecution for pornographers and those companies which provide access to pornography on the Internet. Thus his bill would facilitate rather than outlaw computer pornography. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), no friend of the pro-family movement, has introduced legislation which would order the Justice Department to study the problem of pornography on the Internet and propose solutions to Congress. Given Attorney General Janet Reno’s track record on child pornography, this bill should be a non-starter. However, Congressman Ron Klink (D-PA) had the Leahy language added to a telecommunications bill that is working its way through Congress. If the Leahy-Klink bill prevails, Congress may sit on its collective hands while Attorney General Reno, who tried to undermine the federal child pornography law, studies this issue.
The pro-family movement must force Congress to act now. Both the Exon and Leahy-Klink bills should be opposed and the federal criminal code should be amended to apply the same laws to the Internet that we have applied in our society in regulating or prohibiting pornography to date. No pornography should be made available to children, and obscenity (hard-core pornography and obscene works) should be illegal. (Computer child pornography is already illegal.) Legislation proposing these changes will lead to a major battle. But who will oppose them –pornographers, perverts, pedophiles, and other proponents of “freedom” who refuse to acknowledge that freedom has its limits. This is a battle pro-family advocates will win. The Internet is a promising resource, but the longer it remains unregulated, the more polluted it will become as standards of decency in America continue to slide. 
