Religious groups question military porn policyBy Peter Eisler - USA Today
Posted : Monday Nov 5, 2007 6:44:15 EST
WASHINGTON — 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,” said 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 added.
In an Aug. 15 letter to the groups, Leslye Arsht, a deputy undersecretary of defense, said the Pentagon’s Resale Activities Board of Review uses appropriate guidelines to review material for sale.
The board this year reviewed “Penthouse” and several “Playboy” publications and determined that “based solely on the totality of each magazine’s content, they were not sexually explicit,” Arsht wrote. However, the board did decide to bar the sale of several videos found by the anti-pornography groups at military stores.
The Military Honor and Decency Act of 1996 bars stores on military bases from selling “sexually explicit material.” It defines that as film or printed matter “the dominant theme of which depicts or describes nudity” or sexual activities “in a lascivious way.”
Rest of article at:
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/11/gns_porn_071105/
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