Concerned Women for America - Porn Industry Moans for Good Reason

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Porn Industry Moans for Good Reason 2/24/2004
By Jan LaRue, Chief Counsel

Veteran porn prosecutor to lead DOJ’s obscenity enforcement.

The moaning emanating from the porn industry isn’t the soundtrack from a sleazy new video. It’s the industry reacting to some good news out of Washington.

President Bush appointed Bruce Taylor as Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division in the Department of Justice (DOJ), where he will work primarily on federal obscenity prosecution issues, on January 26. Those in the porn industry remember the pain Taylor has inflicted on them for over 30 years.

In 2000, faced with the mere possibility of George W. Bush becoming president, the industry got nervous. They knew that the “benevolent neglect” they had enjoyed for eight years under Bill Clinton and Janet Reno would come to an end. According to an industry report dated June 16, 2003, “The pornography business has boomed in the past decade, … the number of new hard-core videos produced has skyrocketed, while the number of hard-core porn rentals has steadily increased as well.” It’s been three years, and while the Bush/Ashcroft administration has begun obscenity prosecutions, the end is nowhere in sight. But the future sure looks brighter.

A February 3 article posted on the Adult Video News Web site, “Bruce Taylor Back in the DOJ Saddle Again,” quotes attorney Jeffrey Douglas of the Free Speech Coalition: “What it certainly does represent is yet another manifestation of the commitment that Attorney General John Ashcroft and his boss, acting President Bush, have to attack the industry. … [S]o an all-out attack on the industry will, of course, galvanize the right, and when you have people in the Justice Department who are operating under the assumption that they are God’s agents on Earth, it's a very bad situation.”

Lou Sirkin, longtime porn defense attorney, according to the same article, said he was “concerned with the government hiring somebody to run a department or an office or branch of it who has been so highly committed to a particular philosophical position.” And here we thought Sirkin was a pretty smart guy. Does he really think the government is supposed to hire prosecutors who aren’t committed to law enforcement?

Taylor was most recently president and chief counsel of the National Law Center for Children and Families (NLC)in Fairfax, Virginia, where he assisted prosecutors, police, legislators and public officials with laws and cases involving obscenity, child pornography, commercial sexual exploitation, protecting minors from Internet pornography, and trafficking in persons.

I had the privilege of working for and learning from Bruce at the NLC. He remains one of my best friends. Almost a year ago, we asked Attorney General Ashcroft to consider inviting Bruce back to the DOJ to lead the obscenity enforcement efforts. We are very grateful that he did.

From 1989-1994, Taylor was at the DOJ as a special attorney in the Criminal Division’s National Obscenity Enforcement Unit and then a senior trial attorney in the Child Exploitation Obscenity Section (CEOS). While at CEOS, he successfully prosecuted U.S. v. Reuben Sturman, a federal obscenity racketeering case against the world’s largest distributor of hard-core pornography. He served as an assistant attorney general of Arizona in 1989 and was an assistant prosecutor and assistant director of law for the city of Cleveland, where he handled 600 obscenity cases and 100 appeals from 1973-78.

I attended a briefing at DOJ recently featuring Taylor; officials presented a summary of DOJ’s proposed 2005 budget of $13.8 million “to protect our children from crime, pornography and obscenity.” The department has designated $2.6 million for the criminal division for child exploitation and obscenity, and $1,831,000 is designated for FBI “support to the Criminal Division’s CEOS.” Just days before the meeting, DOJ announced that, for the first time ever, six FBI agents have been assigned to CEOS to do obscenity investigations.

Taylor has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court (Larry Flynt v. Ohio), the Supreme Courts of Ohio and Colorado, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Sixth, Seventh and Ninth Circuits.

Take action: Call the Attorney General’s office at (202) 514-2001 to express your appreciation for Taylor’s appointment and the department’s prosecution efforts thus far.