Leading pro-family groups plan a series of activities to mark the 14th annual National Pornography Awareness Week, which begins October 27.
Concerned Women for America, Morality in Media and the Maryland Coalition Against Pornography will be holding a press conference at the National Press Club on October 30.
There, CWA’s Chief Counsel Jan LaRue will release "The Porn Ring Around Corporate White Collars: Getting Filthy Rich," a paper exposing how the nation’s mainstream corporations are awash in pornography profits.
"AT&T, General Motors, Hilton, and even the Marriott Corporation all show heavy profits from Internet, satellite television, and pay-per-view pornography," LaRue said.
"When corporations like Marriott are out there providing easy access to pornographic and often obscene material in their hotel rooms, they are legitimizing pornography," she added. "When the public can access such material with just the click of a button, they get the mistaken impression that the material is legal."
LaRue says a good example of how that acceptance has impacted the culture is the soon-to-be-released video game "BMX XXX: Keep It Dirty." The controversial new game features "lots of boobies" according to promotional messages posted on its Web site.
Within the context of BMX bike racing, the game features "Pimps, puke, … hos, strippers, constipation, cosmonauts, electrocution, moneys, aliens" and other features.
"While Acclaim Entertainment, the makers of this M-rated, pornography-laced game, say it is not being marketed to consumers under the age of 17, they have the Chutzpah to try and get Wal-Mart, Toys-R-Us, and KBToys to stock it," she said.
Morality in Media, another participant in the Pornography Awareness Week press conference, will highlight www.obscenitycrimes.org, a Web site that forwards obscenity complaints from citizens directly to their local federal prosecutor.
To date, that site has forwarded 1537 reports to local U.S. attorneys after only a couple of months in operation.
Another participant, Maryland Coalition Against Pornography, will conduct an 11:30 a.m. protest at the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We are disappointed with the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the ban on virtual child pornography, thereby making it much more difficult to prosecute child pornography," says the coalition’s Web site. "The Supreme Court needs to know that we want them to protect our children, not the pornographers."
Along with national level action, these groups, and the National Coalition for the Protection of Families, will encourage citizens to participate in the White Ribbon Campaign for Decency. That campaign urges citizens to wear and display white ribbons as a symbol of purity and decency.
The National Coalition has also crafted an action plan for citizens to help them fight the effects of pornography in their own neighborhoods.
Their action plan includes steps to help citizens clean up local video stores, enacting zoning and other local ordinances to control the rise of sexually oriented businesses, and to protect children from pornography at local public libraries.
Citizens can also download a model proclamation for Pornography Awareness Week, October 27-November 3, 2002, by visiting Morality in Media’s Web site.
