By Patrick A. Trueman, AFA Director of Governmental Affairs

January 1998 – After a few months of talking online in “chat rooms,” a 15-year-old boy did a shocking thing. He left his family, boarded a bus and traveled from California to Virginia to be with this adult male cyber “friend.” When police finally tracked him down using computer tracing, he was hiding in the man’s basement. It appears that molestation charges are imminent.

Isolated case? Extreme situation? Sadly, no. It seems that every other month a case hits the news featuring children who have fallen prey to deadly curiosities on the Internet. Only a relative few are discovered by law enforcement, I believe. Many children cruise the Internet for pornography too. Curious thrill-seeking leads to pictures of all varieties of sex acts, to pedophilia, to homosexual propaganda, and to every other form of the most vile material – formerly limited to shops in the darkest parts of Manhatten. Such material is easily accessible to children through Internet access at home, school, or public library.

Children aren’t the only ones vulnerable to smut on the Internet. Men are devouring and being devoured by Internet pornography. Recently, a priest friend of mine told me that every third confession he hears is from a man who has sinned because of Internet pornography. Apparently, the easy availability of cyber-smut has taken the curious and seduced them into addiction.

Government can do more. Two years ago, Internet pornography was the hot issue. Concerned parents lit up the phone lines in every congressional office demanding legislation to protect their children. Congress responded. The Communications Decency Act (CDA) was passed and signed into law. It made it illegal for anyone to use the Internet to send “indecent” material (lewd speech or soft core pornography) to children. It also makes it illegal to send “obscenity” (hard core pornography) to anyone, adult or child.

Unfortunately, the “free speechers” saw the indecency provision as an infringement of their rights. This group, including the ACLU, various computer-related companies and the American Library Association, challenged the law. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in their favor. It said that the term “indecent” sweeps too broadly and would deny some adults access to material they have a “right” to receive. Funny thing, isn’t it, that some believe it is more important to protect the so-called “right” of adults to wallow in pornography than it is to protect children.

President Clinton was quick to respond. Unfortunately, his rhetoric has fallen short of reality. Part of the CDA legislation, the part that makes it illegal to send obscenity to anyone, is still in effect. Since most Internet pornography is obscenity, action could be swift and strong. Anyone convicted of posting such material can spend five years in prison and be fined $250,000.

In addition, those who make the distribution of obscenity possible, including companies like America Online, CompuServe and Microsoft, could also be prosecuted. If they were, Internet pornography would become much harder to find because company executives would rather eliminate access to pornography than risk time in jail. The effect? Your child would be safer. America would be a better and more moral place to live, I suspect.

How many prosecutions has President Clinton’s Justice Department brought in the nearly two years since CDA passed Congress? None!

Many pro-family leaders including AFA President Donald Wildmon and Dr. James Dobson asked to meet with Attorney General Janet Reno to discuss this problem. More than half a year later, she responded: “No, can’t meet, but see one of my representatives.” It is clear that people concerned with this issue do not have the ear of the Clinton administration. The President, who is a master of public relations, cannot afford to do “nothing” about this problem, however. So he convened a meeting, the “Internet Online Summit: Focus on Children,” ostensibly to devise solutions. Unfortunately, the big contributors at the meeting will be the major Internet access providers. This is something along the lines of consulting the foxes on hen safety since the providers stand to profit by unregulated continued growth of Internet use. At the summit, blame for the spread of Internet pornography to more and more children will be shifted from access providers to parents.

It doesn’t take a summit to sort out liability for Internet obscenity. Congress has already done that. It takes vigorous prosecuting action through the law that already exists. That’s all we want. Talk is cheap on the Internet…maybe at the White House, too.