Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are supporting stricter control of sexual content on the internet as advocated by numerous public interest groups.
Nearly 100 groups are members of the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation which had its annual conference in Houston Sept. 28-30.
Federal Communications Commission staff member Sharon Stewart is pursuing a federal court complaint that employees in an adjacent office regularly watched “porno” during working hours and their “groans” and other sounds were an intolerable distraction. Federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said “an abusive working environment” was created.
Trump has signed the pledge below and Clinton has sent a letter of support to Enough Is Enough which has been seeking to influence sexual content on the web since 1992. U.S. member is Donna Rice Hughes, host of Friendly Wi-Fi.
The Pledge:
If elected President of the United State of America, I promise to:
1) Uphold the rule of law by aggressively enforce existing federal laws to prevent the sexual exploitation of children online, including the federal obscenity laws, child pornography laws, sexual predation laws and the sex trafficking laws by:
a. appointing an Attorney General who will make the prosecution of such laws a top priority in my administration and,
b. Providing the intelligence community and law enforcement with the resources and tools needed to investigate and prosecute Internet crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children.
2) Aggressively enforce the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requiring schools and public libraries using government eRate monies to filter child pornography and pornography by requiring effective oversight by the Federal Communications Commission;
3) Protect and defend the innocence of America’s children by advancing public policies that prevent the sexual exploitation of children in a manner that is consistent with the government’s compelling interest in protecting its most vulnerable citizens, within the limits set forth by the First Amendment.
4) Give serious consideration to appointing a Presidential Commission to examine the harmful public health impact of Internet pornography on youth, families and the American culture and the prevention of the sexual exploitation of children in the digital age.
5) Establish public-private partnerships with Corporate America to step up voluntary efforts to reduce the threat of the Internet-enabled sexual exploitation of children by the implementation of updated corporate policies and viable technology tools and solutions.
Stewart claims that when she complained to her superior, Thomas Reed, she was removed from interesting projects and assigned dull administrative tasks that were properly the responsibility of a porn-watching co-worker. Stewart also says she was denied merit and performance awards as a result of her complaint.
Hard to Stop Porn, Conference Told
Dawn Hawkins, executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, told the conference: “My children will be exposed to pornography despite my best efforts.”
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She said that, as a mother, she is “particularly horrified by the types of porn that have gone mainstream—rape or extreme violence, child, or teen, incest, racism and slavery.” Porn is “available, anonymous and affordable and the porn industry is using increasingly sophisticated tactics to get kids hooked young.”
Hawkins advised parents to get “filters, software settings, accountability programs, utilize safe search options on Google and YouTube. Above all, have open conversations with family members regularly.”
NCSE has grown from 5,000 members to 400,000 in the past four years and revenues have climbed from $400,000 to $1.1 million. EIN: 13-2608326.
Dr. May Anne Layden said “the greatest enemy of porn is love. Porn teaches us that sex is not about intimacy, caring love or respect. It teaches us that sex is about servicing, that sex isn’t about procreation, that we don’t need to know our partners…”
Mormons "Do Best Job"
Speaker Matt Fradd said the Mormons do the best job in curbing porn—“They put the rest of us to shame fighting sexual exploitation.”
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Josh McDowell, who says he has spoken to 34,000 groups of teenagers totaling in the multi-millions over the years, said few people know the size of the porn industry.
He said there are now more than 2.3 billion porn web pages which would take one person four million days to view and on one porn site alone last year, 78.9 billion porn videos were watched. Another site produced enough porn to fill 540 million filing cabinets.
Jonathan Van Maren, columnist and talk show host, posted three single-spaced pages on the CESE national conference.
The Adult Entertainment Expo is Jan. 18-21 at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas. It promotes itself as “The biggest weekend of the year for anything and everything porn-related.”
Some 25,000 have attended past events.
The number of porn studios across the adult industry shrank from around 200 to a few dozen, in the past several years, according to the Las Vegas Sun. The production companies and retailers that survived struggled to afford the tens of thousands of dollars it costs to exhibit at AEE, forcing the expo to relocate from the sprawling Sands Convention Center to the cozier Hard Rock Hotel.
Lo Isidro, senior director at Real Chemistry with more than a decade of strategic communications and PA experience, has joined Narrative Strategies.
Nelson Fernandez, former North American chair of APCO Worldwide and managing director of Burson-Marsteller, has joined Volunteers in Medicine Berkshires as director of communications and PA.
Lilit Bargar, who was most recently an EVP in the healthcare practice at Weber Shandwick, comes on board at GCI Health as EVP, corporate practice lead.
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