The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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When your nickname is “Hang ’em High Henry,” it’s a safe bet that you’re not a figure famous for demonstrating excessive compassion or forgiveness.
And when the best you can muster after finding out that you’ve prosecuted and convicted the wrong man for a murder is to say “I certainly wish him the best, and regret what happened. However, I offer no apologies,” chances are you’re an even bigger prick than your nickname implies.
Of course, what brings former prosecutor and current U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson to the pages of this website isn’t his general reputation as a “hard-on-crime” figure in the criminal justice system, but specifically his anti-porn activism, which reaches back to his early days as the Commonwealth Attorney of Arlington County, Virginia.
Back then, Hudson was leading the charge against adult bookstores and any other sort of establishment that might sell sexually explicit materials. His crusade not only resonated with his fellow social conservatives there in Arlington County, but it also earned him a seat at the table of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, better known as the “Meese Commission.” In fact, Hudson didn’t just earn any seat on the Commission; he was placed in the captain’s chair, tapped to lead the Commission’s work.
Ultimately, even thought the Commission claimed pornography has a causal connection to sex crimes (something disputed by most mainstream social scientists and academics, both then and now) and made dozens of recommendations on ways to staunch the distribution of porn and the growth of the adult entertainment industry, Hudson felt their conclusions were too timid.
Among other things, Hudson griped that the report should have been “couched in more forceful language” and that its “recommendations for enhanced law enforcement, particularly with respect to violent and degrading materials,” also should have been more pronounced.
While Hudson certainly agreed with the Commissions’ conclusions with respect to visual pornography, he dissented from the panel’s recommendation that obscenity prosecutions should not be brought in connection with written works that included sexually explicit descriptions or descriptions of sexual conduct.
It’s worth noting that around 16 years before the Meese Commission concluded that porn was driving a wave of sex crimes, a different Commission empaneled by a different Commander in Chief, Lyndon B. Johnson, came to a very difficult conclusion. The President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, which published its findings in 1970, recommended the repeal of legislation that prohibited the sale of sexually explicit material to adults.
If you follow the rhetoric surrounding the current wave of age verification mandates and other efforts to curb the distribution of porn, the reasoning offered by the Meese Commission as to how it came to a conclusion directly opposite its predecessor will sound hauntingly familiar: There had been “enormous technological changes” in the years between the two Commissions doing their respective work.
“These technological developments have themselves caused such significant changes in the practices relating to the distribution of pornography that the analysis of 16 years ago is starkly obsolete,” the Meese Commission wrote.
During oral argument in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, a case which has fundamentally altered the framework of constitutional analysis for First Amendment claims involving statutes like those at play in state-level age verification mandates, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted “it’s been 20 years since Ashcroft,” referencing the case Free Speech Coalition v. Ashcroft, then proceeded to detail how things have changed.
“The iPhone was introduced in 2007, and Ashcroft was decided in 2004,” Barrett said. “I mean, kids can get online porn through gaming systems, tablets, phones, computers. It’s – let me just say that content filtering for all those different devices, I can say from personal experience, is difficult to keep up with. So… I think that the explosion of addiction in – to online porn has shown that content filtering isn’t working.”
I’m sure Hang ‘em High Henry would agree! For that matter, Hudson would probably go one further and assert that even though it’s hard to argue books represent some form of emerging technology, now that we can read them on screens instead of off paper pages, this emphasizes the urgency of indicting some bookstore for its flagrant distribution of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
And if they prosecuted and convicted the wrong bookseller? Well, Henry would regret it, sure – but he’d certainly offer no apologies.
