DOJ urged to pursue hard-core cases

Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 5/20/2008 7:00:00 AM

Leaders of several pro-family, anti-obscenity organizations marched to the Department of Justice Monday to demand prosecution of hard-core pornography. Matt Barber of Concerned Women for America notes that the agency has pursued the worst of the worst -- child porn -- but doesn't seem to have interest in going after hard-core material.

"They can prosecute this if they determine that it's serious," he contends. "And we know that obscenity, pornography in particular and adult pornography, destroys families. It destroys children, it destroys marriages; the studies are conclusive, the evidence is overwhelming -- the case is closed."
 
Yet the Justice Department seems to be unmoved. Morality in Media, for example, has recorded 70,000 public complaints about obscenity forwarded to federal prosecutors, yet there is no action. Barber is concerned that with a reluctance to prosecute hard-core cases, the Justice Department is letting criminals go free.
 
"Much of what is out there on the Internet, and much of what is being sold in stores and from adult book stores and so forth, is illegal obscenity," he argues. "So we're saying enough is enough. It's time to prosecute this smut."
 
The family advocate, however, was pleased with a decision handed down after the march on Monday in which the high court upheld anti-porn penalties. "Justice [Antonin] Scalia, writing for the majority, said that we have long held that obscene speech, sexually explicit material that violates fundamental notions of decency, is not protected by the First Amendment," recites Barber.
 
In that 7-2 ruling, the high court upheld criminal penalties for promoting child pornography, and upheld part of a 2003 law that also prohibits possession of child porn.

If you believe OneNewsNow.com is an important source for Christian news,
please consider a small tax-deductible gift for this service.