If you’re looking for a solid bet, place money on Alberto Gonzales being confirmed by the Senate as Attorney General of the United States of America – despite the inevitable protest votes of a number of Democrats, and possibly even a few Republicans.If you’re looking for a solid bet, place money on Alberto Gonzales being confirmed by the Senate as Attorney General of the United States of America – despite the inevitable protest votes of a number of Democrats, and possibly even a few Republicans. For progressives, Gonzales has a dubious record; but a dubious record doesn’t seem to be the stumbling block to political success that it once was, provided one obtained that dubious record in the service of the right people. So get set to say “goodbye” to controversial and slightly nutty Attorney General John Ashcroft and “hello” to controversial but less nutty Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

But what will Gonzales do about porn when he takes over for Ashcroft? Here are a few things to consider:

First, in his nomination Senate hearing early in January, Gonzales was asked this question by Senator DeWine, a Republican from Ohio:

“Four years from now, what do you want to be remembered for, excluding, if I could, the war on terrorism?”

A fair question. Gonzales first spoke in general terms about improving the importance of the Justice Department. He then pledged to protect civil rights, civil liberties and voting rights. He spoke about curbing illegal drug use, and reducing occurrences of violent crimes. He was off to a good start. Then he said something that might interest those of us who work in the area of adult entertainment:

“I think obscenity is something else that very much concerns me,” said Gonzales. “I’ve got two young sons. And it really bothers me about how easy it is to have access to pornography.”

The conversation moved on to other areas before Senator Brownback – a Republican senator from Kansas and the mastermind behind that laughably and one-sided Senate committee hearing that compared pornography to heroin – returned to the subject of obscenity.

“A second issue you raised with Senator DeWine during your comments about things you want to be known for, and that’s the issue on obscenity laws and the enforcement of that,” said Brownback. “I held a hearing last session of Congress on the issue of these — not of obscenity laws, but on addictions to pornography. And it was an amazing set of experts that came forward talking about the addictiveness of pornography. It’s grown much more potent, much more addictive, much more pervasive, much more impactful. You’ve cited teenage children you have, and that I have, and in our private conversation.”

“There’s been criticism of Department of Justice for not enforcing obscenity laws, working on these issues, on community standards. I would hope that this would be something that you would take a look at, maybe make some personnel shifts within the Department of Justice, to address this from the law standards, on community standards, look at the addictiveness in the nature of it.”

“There are certain, obviously, guarantees of First Amendment rights, but there are also these laws that have been upheld by community standards, upheld by the Supreme Court, that can be and I really think should be enforced, given the nature of this very potent — what one expert, you know, called it — delivery system in this country. And I hope you can look at that.”

Gonzales’ reply was short:

“I will commit to you that I will look at that, Senator.”

A number of things to note. Let’s start with Brownback.

First, this “amazing set of experts” that Senator Brownback referred to were later exposed as merely activists from the anti-pornography business posing as experts. In other words, the whole hearing was a setup and a performance – not an honest look at the issue. We’re talking about people who have devoted much of their lives to the banning of pornography, and they have used different avenues over the years in their pursuit of this goal; the “addiction” angle is their latest sales pitch. Brownback here is acknowledging that the First Amendment has gotten in the way of past efforts to attack pornography (it’s pesky that way), so he clearly is suggesting to Gonzales that he might get around that annoying but popular right by approaching pornography as a kind of illegal drug.

Now Brownback is choosing his words carefully here. Note how he claims that pornography has grown “more pervasive” and “much more impactful,” words that would be central to any anti-pornography legal arguments that the government has a compelling interest in regulating pornographic speech – a compelling interest that trumps First Amendment rights and rights of privacy. According to the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence vs. Texas – the challenge to a Texas sodomy laws – the goal of general morality is not sufficient to justify a government intrusion on the basic rights of privacy that American citizens enjoy. Ahh, but what if the government wasn’t trying to legislate morality but was merely trying to save addicts from the “potent” and “impactful” horrors of addictive pornography?

So that’s Brownback’s angle. Now back to Gonzales, who might take a different approach.

It’s important that we take Gonzales’ comments in their context. First, Gonzales did mention obscenity on his own after being asked what he’d like to be remembered for, which is troubling, but he also mentioned a bunch of other things in that reply, as previously pointed out. Gonzales did not bring the subject of obscenity up again in what was a rather lengthy hearing. When Brownback returned to the subject, Gonzales promised only to “look at that,” and stopped there. In other words, how committed Gonzales is to this subject of combating pornography remains to be seen. And, all of this happened before the government’s stunning defeat in the first round of the Extreme Associates case. So there’s no cause to panic just yet.

But one still can’t help but be a little troubled that Gonzales brought the subject of obscenity up at all. On the one hand, it’s reasonable to be hopeful that he was merely tossing a previously-scripted bone towards the Christian morality groups prior to his confirmation vote. Former President Clinton also promised to enforce obscenity laws in a letter he wrote to a “values” group before he took office – a promise that he didn’t keep. Perhaps we have the same deal here with Gonzales?

But let’s suppose that we don’t have a Clinton on our hands, and Gonzales really does want to take on the adult entertainment industry. That’s certainly possible, given the red-voting half of the country’s current fervor over the “morality” issue. (Sorry for all the quote marks, but I just can’t bring myself to use the language of these people without somehow rolling my eyes at the same time – so look at the quote marks as my virtual eye-rolling.) But notice that Gonzales mentioned his kids in what was a rather brief comment on pornography. Is it possible that Gonzales doesn’t really mean that he’s interested in “obscenity” per se, but rather is interested in the issue of access to pornography, especially in regards to children? Did Gonzales tip his hand just a bit in his comments to Senator DeWine?

If I had to guess – and you know I’m going to guess – I’d guess that Gonzales will mask most attacks on the adult industry under that tried and true formula of “protecting children.” In other words, it’s not that he wants to control what adults can see and do but rather that he wants to keep his two young boys away from pornography. And who could argue with that, right?

The bad news for the adult industry is that this argument will probably resonate with the general public – it always has in the past. Porn spammers certainly haven’t helped. Most people don’t remember all the spams they get from mortgage companies or travel companies – but they definitely remember all of those porn spams they’ve deleted from their inbox. And it really pisses parents off when they discover that spammers were sending explicit messages to their children’s email accounts. And frankly, I can’t blame them. It’s irresponsible to push porn on people who might not want to see it, and it’s even worse to send explicit adult advertisements to children. And it’s unfortunate that so many of the responsible adult entertainment companies – those of us who aren’t sending out spam to anyone – will be lumped into one big group along with the companies that do send spam. Black and white is so much easier than shades of grey. Somehow I doubt Gonzales will bother to point out that most adult companies employ ethical marketing practices that don’t involve unsolicited advertisements.

So what do we do about this? First we have to concede that regardless of the motives of Gonzales or Brownback or any of these people, we need to do our part to help responsible parents keep kids off of adult websites. Personally I’m not interested in working with parents who don’t watch their children and monitor their internet use; if parents don’t take the necessary steps on their end then frankly there isn’t much we can do on our end – short of every single adult company, domestic or otherwise, simply going out of business at the same time that every single porn fan trader ceases to post porn clips in newsgroups, on P2P networks, in chat rooms, etc. Yeah, not likely. The anti-pornography crowd may want that to happen, but if they search their souls with an honest mind then even they will concede that porn is here to stay. So any progress that could be made in terms of reducing underage access to porn would have to be made with the cooperation of responsible parents. The government needs to work with the industry for once, not against it.

On our end, we can take steps like promoting filtering software, making use of voluntary ratings systems, and educating parents about issues like browser controls, monitoring internet usage, and the risks associated with allowing children to access P2P networks and newsgroups. We can also pledge to engage only in responsible marketing – and most of us already do. No unsolicited porn spam, and keep other kinds of advertising to appropriate forums. Don’t spam search engines based on non-adult search terms. Use domain names that can’t be confused for the domain name of a non-explicit site. The best adult marketers make their products available to those people who are searching for them – they don’t push their products onto groups that may not want to be exposed to porn.

Beyond that, the best thing we could do would be to stop showing uncensored hardcore in places that aren’t at least restricted to verified credit card holders. In other words, keep the hardcore to your member’s area.

In the wake of the Extreme Associates decision we can expect the government to rethink its approach on the pornography issue – and who knows, the government might open to working with us for a change. With a new Attorney General on the way, we should stay on our toes and watch for any new and emerging strategy from the Justice Department in regards to obscenity and basic access to pornography. And we should make that effort to work with responsible parents who want to keep their children away from pornography. Who knows, if we try hard enough we might actually find some common ground with the more conservative thinkers in government.

Connor Young is Editor-in-Chief of YNOT News. He has been involved with the online adult entertainment business since 1997, and also serves as Editor-in-Chief of The ADULTWEBMASTER Magazine. Connor can be reached at connor@ynot.com.