"U.S. Plans to Escalate Porn Fight
Justice Department hire of a veteran prosecutor answers criticism from Christian conservatives who have long sought a crackdown on smut.
By Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writer

February 14, 2004

WASHINGTON ? The Justice Department has quietly installed an outspoken anti-pornography advocate in a senior position in its criminal division, as part of an effort to jump-start obscenity prosecutions.

The Bush administration's election-year move follows three years of heat from the Christian right, which believes that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, a longtime friend and ally, has fallen down on the job when it comes to fighting smut.

Now, the appointment of a tough new cop on the porn beat and other recent moves by the department to bolster obscenity cases are galvanizing conservatives, while leaving representatives of the adult-entertainment industry to wonder whether they have become a political football.

Officials said the appointment of Bruce A. Taylor, who worked in the department during the heyday of its anti-porn efforts in the late 1980s and early '90s, shows that Justice is serious about cracking down on porn after what critics called lax enforcement by the Clinton administration.

In his resume, the 53-year-old Taylor, who got his start as a Cleveland city attorney in the 1970s, lists his involvement in more than 600 obscenity cases as a prosecutor or a legal advisor.

The defendants in those cases constitute a who's-who of adult-entertainment industry tycoons, including Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt and Reuben Sturman, a onetime comic-book salesman turned porn magnate.

In a survey two years ago, Adult Video News, a trade publication based in Chatsworth, identified Taylor as one of the top "enemies" of the industry. The story was titled: "These Are the Folks Who Want to Put You Out of Business."

Taylor, who in recent years has headed a conservative advocacy group fighting for tougher regulation of the Internet, has been given the title of "senior counsel" within the criminal division at Justice, with a focus principally on federal adult obscenity issues.

The department's obscenity chief, Andrew Oosterbaan, who has been drawing much of the flak from conservatives, will retain his position. But instead of reporting to him, Taylor will answer to a more senior-level assistant attorney general.

Bryan Sierra, a Justice spokesman, said that by hiring Taylor ? which the department didn't publicize but confirmed when asked by The Times ? the department was simply marshaling additional resources rather than undercutting anyone's authority or submitting to political pressure.

"Bruce has vast experience, both at the federal and state level, prosecuting those kinds of cases," Sierra said. "It is all part of our overall effort to kick-start obscenity prosecutions after a long absence."

Sierra said Taylor was unavailable for comment.

The department has made other moves recently to shore up its anti-porn effort, including assigning for the first time in years a team of FBI agents to focus exclusively on adult-obscenity cases.

In his fiscal 2005 budget proposal released this month, President Bush sought increased spending to fight obscenity; it was one of the few spending increases ? besides for anti-terrorist efforts ? in the otherwise austere proposal.

Porn industry representatives said all the activity had the look of an administration trying hard to appease an important constituency during an election cycle.

"This is a crude, crass political effort," said Jeffrey Douglas, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult-entertainment industry.

He questioned whether the public at large was as interested in cracking down on adult fare as the Justice Department and said the hiring of Taylor was "a very dangerous, disturbing step" toward infringement on free speech.

Some defense lawyers say Taylor's record in court has been a decidedly mixed bag. His first case against Sturman, the erstwhile comic-book salesman, resulted in a hung jury. A few years ago, he was brought in to act as a special prosecutor in a case against an adult bookstore operator in South Bend, Ind.; the defendant was acquitted. Some of the Internet legislation he has pushed in recent years has been roundly rejected by the U.S. Surpeme Court as violating the 1st Amendment.

But conservative activists said the moves in the Justice Department were long overdue. They have been unhappy because, with funds limited for purposes other than the war on terrorism, the department has been targeting only purveyors of the worst forms of sexually explicit material ? such as that involving simulated violence. One such pending case is against a North Hollywood film distributor known as Extreme Associates.

Anti-porn groups have argued that this tack misses the largest distributors and the bulk of the problem, including the growth of pornography over the Internet. They are looking to Taylor to launch a tough enforcement era.

"He believes in taking on big cases that will have a major impact," said Patrick Trueman, an advisor to the Family Research Council who headed the Justice Department's anti-pornography unit in the 1980s and was once Taylor's boss. "They are bringing him in for the same reason I did: They want to win, and he is the most experienced guy."

In the 1980s, Taylor was the lawyer for an anti-porn group known as Citizens for Decency Through Law, which was founded by Charles Keating, who later became embroiled in the savings-and-loan scandals and went to jail.

Over the years, Taylor has advised scores of attorneys around the country on the niceties of obscenity law, and two years ago was invited by the Justice Department to participate in a training symposium for new prosecutors.

He maintains a collection of legal papers from pornography cases that covers "every brief in every case," according to Trueman.

Most recently, he has been the president and chief counsel of the National Law Center for Children and Families, a Fairfax, Va., group active in writing federal legislation outlawing indecent material on the Internet as well as fighting child exploitation.

Among the supporters of his law center is Cincinnati billionaire and philanthropist Carl Lindner, who in the early 1990s gained additional celebrity by helping lead the opposition to a local exhibit of sexually explicit work by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Lindner gave Taylor's group $100,000 in 2002, according to federal tax records. "


oh my.  :blink:

(found on SE.com)

This coming from the same country that banned anything involving homosexuality for how many years? I'm not saying I agree with the above. But come on, get your foot out of your mouth and stop playing the yapping dog role.

agreed

Please Phoenix you really can't expect anyone to believe this is about buisness law as much as it is about trying to grab the American public by the privates and tell them what they can and cannot see. The internet was created with the purpose of being unregulatable, hopefully it'll fufill that purpose, irregardless of content

I thought that the internet was a british invention (like the six-gun sam colt based his design on)

check this out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3357073.stm

What do I know? I'm just an old hippy

(true about the gun - really)

If I disagree with how things are run in America, I should move out? Um, last time I checked, this country was suppose to be a democracy, and as such, I should be able to make a strive towards change. Of course, since the majority of this country is stupid white Christians, a lot of change is needed. This is a perfect example of that good old Christian mentality too. Genocidal rampages are just fine and dandy, but the slightest hint of sexuality and you?re going to Hell. You can turn on the television at any time of the day and see your favorite action ?hero? involved in mass murder, or some overpaid, undereducated athlete engaged in equally violent processes, and then packaged to every brain dead consumer across the country. The halftime show at the last Super Bowl comes to mind. Here you have an utterly retarded, and ultimately violent sport, promoting simple minds through a constant barrage of commercials, yet the thing everyone becomes upset about is some woman flashing her breast. Oh how we?ve fallen. I guess there?s bound to be some such scars after centuries of moral brainwashing though, eh? Not only does our government lack the proper funding to regulate the internet to a ?satisfying? degree, but they also lack the intelligence. That is the one thing the American populace does have going for it, our government is made up of morons. But, I can see other ways around this problem, if you?re sooo worried about pornography. Perhaps you and your ilk could go build your own ?cleaner, better? network of information, and in turn, leave our?s the spork alone. Or, maybe just create a subsection, like ?.christ?, huh? To be perfectly frank, you need to take Jesus? male reproductive organ out of your mouth, because his scrotum is obviously hindering your view of the world. But hey, if you want to pull that ?love it or leave it? shit, go right ahead, so long as you?re paying my way into Canada. I?d be more than happy to leave this fascist wasteland behind anyway. You talk about civilization, HA! Civilization is for the weak, it is created by those who are socially elite so that they may maintain what little hierarchy they have left. The weak and useless are kept alive as commodities at the expense of the rest of us, for they would surely die without such special barriers. Contratu-sporking-lations, this is what your so-called civilization has done, destroyed the natural order of things. Strength and intelligence means little in this day and age, for everyone has placed their trust in objects of false value, they worship the almighty dollar, just as blindly as your ilk follows the ?Lord?. He is, after all, your shepherd, and you are all sheep! It is, however, inevitable for a society of sheep to be ruled by pigs and hounded by wolves, for when governments put whole populations to sleep, outlaws don?t team up with alarm clocks; outlaws, like poets, simply rearrange the nightmare! Perhaps it?s time for you and your kind to WAKE UP? Look past the fa?ade which is passed on as reality; destroy the veils of mysticism and superstitions, free yourself from the chains of other?s dominions, let your soul fly free, be yourself, you know what?s right and wrong, don?t let others dictate it, and certainly don?t try to dictate others! The core problem with every organized religion is just that, it allows superstition to delude and destroy whatever good it may have to say through it?s philosophy, don?t be fooled, you?re being taken as fools. Power is knowledge, and those in power do not want you to be knowledgeable, thus they set up mind traps, mazes for your cerebrum so that you may fail in any goal you set out to accomplish. Conditioning sets in at an early age, since a young mind is an impressionable mind, this is obviously the most appropriate time to begin. Said conditioning is all around you. You feel it when you go to work, when you go the church and when you go to school. You may not be familiar enough with it to see it, but you can feel it, and the effects it has on you are more than obvious to those paying attention. In this day and age though, a simple revolution is impossible. In order to conduct a successful revolt, one must have the majority behind them, or an ace up their sleeve. So unless you have a few spare tactical nukes lying around, you will need the support of the masses. This is where the plan begins to fall apart, for the masses are so blindly dependant upon the system that they will gladly give their lives to protect it, whether they realize it or not. No, brute force is not the path to take. While it may cause dismay among the enemy, they will eventually come out the victors and stomp you like a worm. This, however, is what you must become? a worm. You must burry yourself in the fruits of their labor and eat away at it from the inside. After a reasonable amount of time, the system will eventually collapse under its own weight. The revolution is coming, whether is be physical or mental? Which side will you choose?

The Movie Ratings Council is entirely voluntary and any movie can freely choose to be listed as Not Rated.

PS: dev/null, this definition from dictionary.com might interest you...

par?a?graph    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (pr-grf)
n.
   1. A distinct division of written or printed matter that begins on a new, usually indented line, consists of one or more sentences, and typically deals with a single thought or topic or quotes one speaker's continuous words.