ACLJ Preparing Supreme Court Brief to Protect Kids from Internet Porn
 
I can’t often say “I’m furious,” but I am using this phrase very bluntly today.  When someone endangers our children and grandchildren, when someone uses children for perverse sexual pleasure, and when a court allows such a travesty, I think anger is the appropriate response.  Anger -- and action.  Let me tell you what’s happening:

Our ACLJ team wrote The Protect Act to keep children from being victimized by the multi-million-dollar Internet pornography industry. The Protect Act prohibits anyone from distributing or soliciting any online images, photos, or messages which would be perceived as actual or obscene child pornography.  Congress passed this constitutionally sound piece of legislation into law to protect America’s children.

Then a U.S. Court of Appeals declared The Protect Act unconstitutional.  They misconstrued the law and relied on unusual and hypothetical reasoning, and they are wrong!

The good news is that the Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to hear this case, and to consider restoring The Protect Act to its rightful place among our nation’s laws.  This means we are gearing up to return to the Supreme Court to help vigorously defend The Protect Act and our nation’s children.  Without The Protect Act, our children and grandchildren are seriously at risk.

The attack on this legislation originally came from a man in Florida who was convicted of possessing and pandering child pornography depicting his own baby daughter.  He is serving concurrent five-year prison terms on each charge; but he appealed his online pandering conviction, claiming that The Protect Act is “overly broad” and in violation of his constitutional rights.

Now the ACLU is supporting this convicted child pornographer—which means their big budget and extensive cadre of lawyers will be arrayed against us.  This case is going to take significant amounts of research, a tremendous toll in staff hours, and a concentrated application of legal expertise.  But we are willing and able to fight child porn, which is running rampant on the Internet.

This issue can only be settled at the Supreme Court of the United States.  Lower courts have proven unable or unwilling to stand up to the child porn industry and their compatriots from the ACLU.  For example, when a Nevada man was sentenced to up to 18 years for possessing more than 800 child-porn images, the district judge seemed to shrug off the significance of the crime by unbelievably saying:

 

            “....It’s my understanding that most men are sexually attracted to young women.  When I say young women, I don’t just mean women that ... you should be attracted to.  I mean women from the time they’re one all the way up until they’re 100. … Having sex with a girl between 12 and 16 is prohibited [only] because we say it’s prohibited ... which flies in the face of our, I guess for lack of a better description, our normal impulses.”

 

With this kind of thinking on the bench, the only way to protect our children is to fight–and win--at the Supreme Court.  We are preparing an amicus brief to file with the Supreme Court, representing our interests as well as members of Congress.  We stand firmly behind U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, who will be arguing in favor of upholding The Protect Act.  He has courageously stated, “Those who traffic in what purports to be child pornography DESERVE NO SANCTUARY.”  We cannot stand idly by and let the monsters of the child pornography industry exploit our nation’s little ones.


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