Right Wing Extremists Target Porn On Military Bases

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 4:00 PM on November 5, 2007.

This post, written by Steve Benen, originally appeared on The Carpetbagger Report

It's been a while since we've last heard from the American Family Association's the Rev. Donald E. Wildmon. Every once in a while, Wildmon and the AFA will draw headlines for attacking a group or company for being insufficiently "pro-family," though most of their complaints come across as bizarre rants from extremists.

The targets from recent years include, but are by no means limited to, Wal-Mart (for selling Brokeback Mountain DVDs), Target (for not having Salvation Army bell-ringers during the Christmas season), Ford Motor Company (for purchasing ads in gay-oriented publications), and the movie "Shark Tale" (which the AFA believed was intended to "brainwash children" into accepting gay rights).

Now, Wildmon and the AFA have a new concern: U.S. troops' a access to adult materials.

Ten years after Congress banned sales of sexually explicit material on military bases, the Pentagon is under fire for continuing to sell adult fare, such as Penthouse and Playmates In Bed, that it doesn't consider explicit enough to pull from its stores.

Dozens of religious and anti-pornography groups have complained to Congress and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that a Pentagon board set up to review magazines and films is allowing sales of material that Congress intended to ban.

"They're saying 'we're not selling stuff that's sexually explicit' ... and we say it's pornography," says Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, a Christian anti-pornography group. A letter-writing campaign launched Friday by opponents of the policy aims to convince Congress to "get the Pentagon to obey the law," he adds.

Let me get this straight. U.S. troops are fighting two wars, neither of which are going well, and the American Family Association's biggest concern is what kind of magazines the troops can purchase on base? Here's a radical idea: maybe those who wear the uniform and put their lives on the line for their country should be able to read whatever they want.

I find it rather amazing this is even a controversy.

Defense officials "don't want to take porn away from soldiers," says Patrick Trueman, a former federal prosecutor who now works with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group. "They say, 'well, 40% of this magazine is sexually explicit pictures, but 60% is writing or advertising, so the totality is not sexually explicit.' That's ridiculous."

Actually, what's ridiculous is that Congress wasted its time on this a decade ago, and the AFA is wasting its time on this now.

As the ACLU's Nadine Strossen put it. "We're asking these people to risk their lives to defend our Constitution's principles ... and they're being denied their own First Amendment rights to choose what they read."

Tagged as: religious right, pornography, us military, wildmon

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.