Pro-Family Supporters Frustrated Over Stalled Broadcast Decency Bill
by Bill Fancher and Jenni Parker
May 12, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Congressman Fred Upton's broadcast decency bill (HR 310) passed in the House with a vote of 389-38 last year, but the Senate version has faced delay after delay in getting through the other chamber of Congress. And now, supporters of the measure fear it may be close to death as Senate rules have the legislation, S 193, bottled up in committee. The bill, sponsored by Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, would increase the maximum fines levied by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from $32,500 to $325,000 per violation. Support for increasing the penalties has grown ever since the 2004 Super Bowl Halftime Show broadcast, when a performance by singers Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson ended abruptly in a now notorious instance of indecent exposure due to a so-called "wardrobe malfunction."
According to the Los Angeles Times newspaper, similar legislation has overwhelmingly passed the U.S. House of Representatives twice and the Senate once. However, the Times reports, such broadcast decency regulation measures have lately been derailed in Senate by parliamentary procedure and by objections from influential senators. Also, members of the broadcast industry have voiced strong resistance to the idea of higher fines and have lobbied hard in opposition to them.
Lanier Swann of Concerned Women for America (CWA) says several senators are against the idea of increasing fines for decency violations. "Majority Leader Frist had hoped to hotline that bill and bring it to the floor for a vote by a unanimous consent," she notes, "but unfortunately, a number of senators placed a hold on the bill."
Many pro-family groups thought Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens of Alaska was purposely holding up the bill, but Swann says, "We know now that Chairman Stevens agreed to the hotline vote with the Majority Leader. So what we have now are a number of unnamed senators who have come forward and held up this bill."
The CWA spokeswoman points out that Senate rules allow senators to put a hold on bills they dislike anonymously, which is the case here. "Now what we're working on is trying to find a way that we can see final passage out of both chambers on any type of legislation that would simply increase the FCC fines," she says.
Swann says it is "high time" lawmakers crack down on "the garbage that comes through the airwaves" by increasing penalties against those broadcasters that air material that defies federal decency standards. She urges citizens to contact their representatives in Congress and voice support for legislation aimed at raising fines against broadcast decency violators.
ICANN's Nixes .XXX Domain Idea
But although the progress of Representative Upton's broadcast decency bill through Congress has been slow and frequently stalled, CWA has been monitoring another fight in which the pro-family group is seeing some encouraging progress. Recently, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) rejected a special .xxx domain for pornography sites on the World Wide Web.
The 9-5 decision by the private agency that oversees Internet operation reverses its preliminary approval last June of a domain name for voluntary use by the adult entertainment industry. CWA's chief counsel Jan LaRue is calling the vote "a win against a multi-million dollar, six-year effort on behalf of the porn industry." She says the vote demonstrates the power "regular folks" can have by raising their voices against "the power-brokers who think they can run the universe without opposition."
Last year LaRue met with officials at the Department of Commerce to express vehement opposition to the new .xxx domain. CWA urged its members and supporters to contact government officials and voice their disapproval of the idea as well.
After the Department of Commerce received thousands of e-mails voicing similar objections, the Bush administration announced its opposition to the creation of the domain. Opposition letters were also sent to Paul Twomey, CEO of ICANN, who later told media that the ICANN board was "certainly very conscious" of the controversy, although its decision to reject the .xxx domain was not driven by political considerations.
LaRue says the pro-family group objected to the porn domain for several reasons, but the most obvious concern was that, under this plan, porn site operators would be free to keep all their current domains while adding the new .xxx domain. "Anybody who thinks that would help parents protect kids from porn on the Internet has crashed in the cranium," she says.
CWA's chief counsel considers the decision by ICANN a major victory indicating the power of the pro-family public, and she is hopeful that this turn of events will send a clear message to U.S. lawmakers. "Now that ICANN has had the good sense to listen to the American people," she asserts, "those in Congress who are proposing legislation to create a porn domain need to take a virtual reality check."
The special .xxx porn domain was a bad idea for many reasons, LaRue contends. Among these, she contends, is that the domain would appear to legitimize the porn industry and its creation would mean, in effect, allowing an industry that violates federal obscenity laws with impunity to regulate itself.
