Monday, Mar 19, 2012 6:38 PM UTC

Santorum is using kids to attack porn

Despite the candidate's rhetoric, his pledge to renew obscenity prosecutions has nothing to do with children

By Tracy Clark-Flory

more
- All Share Services

Topics: Rick Santorum, Pornography, Life News

After publishing an anti-pornography pledge on his website last week, Rick Santorum courted questions this weekend about how, exactly, he plans to attack smut. He didn’t make it clear and instead continued to rely on vague rhetoric about the threat to children.

On CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, he said, “Under the Bush administration, pornographers were prosecuted much more rigorously than they are … under the Obama administration.” He added, “My conclusion is they have not put a priority on prosecuting these cases, and in doing so, they are exposing children to a tremendous amount of harm. And that to me says they’re putting the unenforcement of this law and putting children at risk as a result of that.”

If one were prone to uncritical acceptance of political rhetoric, it would be easy to assume from Santorum’s remarks that the Obama administration isn’t prosecuting child porn. In all of his statements about smut, the GOP candidate is always careful to bring it back to the children. Santorum takes no care to clearly define what the threat to children is, exactly – whether it’s that they might be forced into illegal underage porn or that they might happen upon adult material online. The conflation of adult pornographers with child pornographers is a classic anti-smut move, much as child sex trafficking gets uncritically folded into debates about consensual adult sex work.

Let’s be clear here: The Obama administration continues to prosecute child pornography just as the Bush administration did. The real change is in obscenity prosecutions involving consenting adults: As I’ve written about before, the Obama administration hasn’t put a priority on these cases. Three holdover cases from the Bush years have been prosecuted, and to pathetic ends: a plea bargain with no prison time, a dismissal and, most recently, a mistrial. It’s hard to see how those cases – the very best the Department of Justice could find – were a good use of taxpayers’ dollars.

Presumably, hopefully, Santorum understands the distinction between child porn and adult porn, obscenity law and child pornography law, but he’s using ambiguity here to help his case. The truth is that the prosecution of adult obscenity cases — which are nowhere near as legally clear-cut as he suggests — has very little to do with children. If his concern is about kids being able to find adult material online, he could propose stricter access laws. What he’s really after, though, is making consensual, adult porn to which he morally objects disappear. Children just make for a much better excuse.

Tracy Clark-Flory is a staff writer at Salon. Follow @tracyclarkflory on Twitter and Facebook. More Tracy Clark-Flory.

more
- All Share Services

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X

Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
Credit: AP/LM Otero
Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
Credit: AP/Matt Rourke
A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
Credit: AP/Molly Riley
Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite
Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster
O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid
Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield
When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin
A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin
Recent Slide Shows

84 Comments

follow salon

Recommendations