Alex Henderson

The Culture Wars

Rick Santorum's Obsession With Porn



By Alex Henderson
RealmNoir, March 21, 2012

First, let’s set the record straight: the vast majority of modern-day Republicans are not really “fiscal conservatives,” and they do not really believe in “small government” or “limited government” no matter how much they claim that they do. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is a hardcore fiscal conservative; so is former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who recently defected from the GOP to the Libertarian Party and is running for president as a Libertarian (he stands a good chance of getting the LP nomination). But Paul and Johnson are not representative of modern-day Republican ideology on the whole. Most of today’s Republicans actually believe in very big, bloated, intrusive government, and the fact that former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum is doing as well as he is in the GOP presidential primary speaks volumes about that party’s direction. At a time when so many Americans are worried about high unemployment, record foreclosures and a staggering federal deficit, Santorum continues to obsess over adult porn, gay marriage and abortion—and one of his biggest criticisms of the Barack Obama Administration is that Obama isn’t sufficiently anti-porn. Pandering to the GOP’s theocratic Christian Right base, Santorum has been promising to make federal obscenity prosecutions a high priority if elected president. Translation: Santorum would do his part to waste the taxpayers’ money and add to the United States’ gigantic federal deficit (which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, reached $229 billion in February 2012).

In a recent interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Santorum accused the Obama Administration of “exposing children to a tremendous amount of harm” by not pursuing federal obscenity prosecutions as aggressively as the George W. Bush Administration. And by using children to make his argument, Santorum is being disingenuous; while Eric Holder hasn’t made adult obscenity prosecutions a high priority, Obama’s attorney general has actually been quite aggressive about enforcing child pornography laws. But you won’t hear that from Santorum, whose comments during that CNN interview failed to make a distinction between consensual adult entertainment (which, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, is legal as long as it isn’t obscene) and child pornography (which is flat-out illegal).

The federal obscenity cases of the Obama era have been holdovers from the George W. Bush years, and they have not gone well for the federal government. On March 6, 2012, for example, the federal obscenity trial of director Ira Isaacs ended with a hung jury; in 2010, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon threw out the case against gonzo porn director John Stagliano, who had been indicted by a federal grand jury in 2008.  The evidence against Stagliano, Leon said, was “woefully insufficient.” But that didn’t stop the federal prosecutors in the Stagliano case from wasting the taxpayers’ money.

And the fact that the Stagliano case was thrown out hasn’t stopped opportunistic politicians from calling for more federal obscenity prosecutions. In April 2011, 42 senators signed on to a letter asking Attorney General Holder to "vigorously" go after “major commercial distributors of hardcore adult pornography.” Most of the senators were Republicans, although liberal California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and some other Democrats signed on as well.

Here’s another thing you won’t hear from Santorum: one of the organizations that has been battling child pornography, the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP), is an organization led by people who work in the adult entertainment industry. Supporters of ASACP, which was founded in 1996, have included executives at major adult entertainment companies like Pink Visual and Larry Flynt’s Hustler Video. Santorum and his ilk love to make the false claim that the adult entertainment industry is preying on children, but the fact is that an organization like ASACP has been quite proactive when it comes to helping law enforcement in the United States and other countries combat child pornography. It should be noted that in European countries where adult entertainment isn’t as controversial as it is in the U.S., federal law enforcement agencies tend to take the same position that ASACP takes: that child pornography should be prosecuted as forcefully as possible, while consensual erotic material involving adults should be left alone.

The reality is that the Culture War agenda of Santorum and his ilk carries a heavy price tag, and it does so at a time when the federal government of the United States is deeper in debt than it has ever been. Santorum’s obsession with adult entertainment is not only horribly misguided—it also has the potential to be incredibly expensive if he ever becomes president.

   Alex Henderson is a veteran journalist whose work has appeared in The L.A. Weekly, AlterNet, Billboard, Spin, XBIZ, Creem, The Pasadena Weekly and a long list of other well-known publications. He can be followed on Twitter @alexvhenderson

Larry Flynt (above) is among the adult entertainment heavyweights who has been critical of GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum's anti-porn obsession.