It took less than a month for Adelphia Cable to reverse its decision to provide XXX-rated adult movies to its customers. As first reported in the Los Angeles Times, Adelphia planned to make the most graphic and obscene movies available to its Southern California subscribers, with a gradual rollout to customers nationwide.
“It’s a good start, and a reaction to public outcry. Now, they should get rid of the other pornography on their system,” said Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America’s Culture & Family Institute.
Adelphia’s announcement generated national media attention and grassroots outrage.
“Some concern has been expressed over this type of adult programming,” Adelphia spokesman Paul Jacobson wrote in a short statement to Broadcasting & Cable. “Adelphia will remove it from all of its systems.”
“All those people who wrote, e-mailed and faxed Adelphia deserve credit for this victory for decency,” Knight said. “Adelphia should go further and dump the other porn they still peddle. And other major corporations that sell porn, such as Marriott Hotels, also need to clean up their acts. Pornography is a destroyer. Those who profit from it are profiting from others’ misery, disguised as ‘entertainment.’”
CWA’s Chief Counsel Jan LaRue told MSNBC host Pat Buchanan that Adelphia was seeking quick profits from the sale of pornography.
“This company has gone into chapter 11 bankruptcy and the new handlers think that it’s OK to draw the bottom line in a cultural sewer to chase what they think will be big porn profits,” LaRue said.
“But there are several very serious ramifications here. You know, the LA County Health Department said that the porn industry poses a serious threat not only to the health of the porn performers but to the public generally because you’ve got a crisis in -- an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV infection of five performers this past April. And the kind of sex that’s portrayed in -- especially the triple-X porn, is the most unsafe and dangerous kind of sexual behavior. So you’ve got the influence there and the threat to public health.”
Prosecution is another threat. Adelphia’s reversal comes on the heels of an announcement by the Department of Justice that it will challenge the ruling out of western Pennsylvania clearing Extreme Associates of obscenity charges. Extreme Associates produces XXX porn, the kind the cable operator had decided to carry.
