BACKGROUND
Movie Gallery video stores could
be bringing hard-core pornography to your neighborhood if they are
successful in acquiring the Hollywood Video store chain. In
hundreds of the stores already owned by Movie Gallery, they
feature back rooms stocked with racks of hard-core pornography.
Adding nearly 2,000 more stores will
put them right where they want to be...in front of most every American
family, and no doubt with a chance to expand their porn sales. It will
also make an unprecedented number of neighborhoods and communities
available to the pornography industry.
The issue here is law enforcement. All distribution of
obscenity is illegal. Period.
The public prosecutors you pay with your tax dollars must make
the investigation and prosecution of obscenity a priority,
wherever and by whomever it is distributed.
This is not about "free speech." Obscenity is NOT
protected under the First Amendment, despite years of attempts by
pornographers to lower the bar. State and Federal governments have
long recognized a societal interest in protecting citizens from
the harms of hard-core pornography and obscenity.
And there's the rub. The laws are on the books. But the
laws are NOT being enforced!
Why else would companies like Movie Gallery or Adelphia
Communications cable TV or Marriott hotels feel safe in
selling hard-core pornography? Apparently, the Department of
Justice has sent a message to the industry that only certain laws
will be enforced. Just not obscenity laws.
Any distributor of pornography material - from video stores, to
hotels, to cable companies - needs to be held accountable if they
are distributing hard-core prosecutable pornography that violates
obscenity laws!
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