APPARENTLY, what sinful little things you choose to do in the privacy of your own hotel room aren't just your business anymore. A coalition of 13 groups, based mainly in the Midwest, is trying to remove pornographic movies from hotels across the nation. Although it isn't likely that many hotels will remove the option for lodgers any time soon, the campaign is a shining example of the way a campaign can distort the public's perception of an issue in order to achieve their desired result.
The coalition took out full-page ads in some editions of USA Today on Aug. 9 to urge the FBI and the Justice Department to investigate whether pornographic movies currently available in hotels violate obscenity laws, according to CNN. Phil Burress, head of the Cincinatti-based Citizens for Community Values and leader of the campaign, contends that the availability of pornographic movies compromises the safety of all patrons of hotels. Though he could not identify specific cases, Burress claimed "As more and more of these [hardcore] titles become available, we're going to have sexual abuse cases coming out of the hotels." Perhaps Burress also believes that watching "Scarface" on a cable network will encourage people to use cocaine and shoot everyone in sight.
Unfortunately, about 15 hotels in Ohio and Kentucky have already given in to the pressure of the coalition and to threats of obscenity charges from local prosecutors. While these hotels no longer offer pornographic movies, the policy does not pertain to the hotels' affiliates. Many large chain hotels are run by franchise-holders who make their own decisions about available programming. For this reason, the campaign does not seem to have much hope for national success; even more damaging for the campaign's success are the long-term contracts that many hotel chains have signed with pornographic video suppliers.
It would be all too easy to downplay this issue. It doesn't seem likely that the campaign's reach will affect anyone in the state of Virginia, unless, of course, he or she were to visit Ohio or Kentucky. Yet, the members of this coalition are trying to instill their own code of morals into others, using potentially negative publicity as their weapon of choice. In the process, hotels are losing money and their lodgers are losing the right to an individual and personal choice. Given that some estimates put the revenue generated by these movies at several hundred million dollars a year, the revenue in question is significant.
More disturbingly, although the campaign is championing flawed logic and limitations on free business, hotels continue to cave. The actual USA Today advertisement reads more like a tirade against pornography in general than pornographic movies in hotels. According to the Free Speech Coalition, the ad quotes from a 1983 study which found that 86 percent of serial rapists studied admitted to consumption of hardcore pornography.
The study is meant to mislead readers into believing pornography creates rapists, but rapists may inherently be attracted to pornography. The study proves correlation, not causation. Furthermore, the coalition's ad does not explain why pornography in hotels is the problem. Going after the sale of pornography in hotels if pornography as a whole is at fault is no less futile than trying to save the world's trees by recycling one piece of paper. The campaign has chosen a rather arbitrary and minute target in the larger scale of things.
The biggest problem with this campaign is the laws the coalition is trying to manipulate to strike down pornography. According to the Miller test, a Supreme Court determined test for obscenity, the legal significance of obscenity actually consists of a three-part test. The first part asks whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find the work, taken as a whole, to appear to the prurient interest. The second part questions whether the work depicts, in a patently offensive manner, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law. The final part asks whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. All parts must apply for the work to be obscene.
All three guidelines are not only wordy and complex but also very subjective. Though city prosecutors in Cincinnati might think a particular pornographic movie is obscene, prosecutors in Nevada might think differently. Laws must be based on more objective criteria to be effective or significant.
It is not difficult to expose the flaws in the campaign's reasoning; it requires a little common sense and even less research. The campaign continues its course of action, however, with the understanding that hotels cannot afford negative publicity. Because the hotel industry is so crowded, one small misstep could lead to significant business loss for any single hotel chain. However, the time has come for the hotel industry to risk negative publicity and to fight for their lodgers' right to watch pornography in the privacy of their hotel room. Or Scarface could be the next to go.
Rajesh Jain is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at rjain@cavalierdaily.com.
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