Pay-Per-View Should Apply to Internet Porn
By Doug Patton
June 10, 2002

My contempt for the lack of common sense displayed by those who sit on the United States Supreme Court is well documented. When the justices struck down the federal ban on computer-generated child pornography, they proved that they will go to any lengths to protect any material, no matter how vile, even if its only purpose is to excite those who surf the Internet as a prelude to criminal activity with children.

Unfortunately, most of the judges on our lower courts are just as deserving of our disdain. Their two-fold motivation seems clear: to uphold the ever-precarious house of cards constructed by the Supremes in the hope that they may themselves someday rise to become members of the most exclusive club in the land.

From the White House to the Vatican, we have been assaulted in recent years with a scandal a day. Our societal standards continue to be eroded by citizens with no conscience and judges with no wisdom. In a nation designed for self-government, that is a recipe for anarchy and martial law.

Last week, in a 195-page decision, a panel of three federal judges ruled that legislation requiring public libraries to install filters to screen out pornography is unconstitutional. The reason? According to the panel, the Children's Internet Protection Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 2000, went "too far" because the filters block access to "protected speech."

In the words of the judges, "Any public library that adheres to the conditions of the Children's Internet Pornography Act will necessarily restrict patrons' access to a substantial amount of protected speech, in violation of the First Amendment."

I have a friend who shares with his wife the joys and the challenges of raising six children, ages four through seventeen. Fed up with a public education system that, for the most part, regards their love of God as a fairytale, their love of chastity as a bad joke and their love of America as naive, they have chosen to educate their children at home.

They have made sacrifices in pursuit of the goals and values they believe God has called them to follow. My friend is the family's sole breadwinner, since his wife has more than a full time job at home. They used to live in the city, but a few years ago they moved their family to an acreage near a small town, thus necessitating a 100-mile-plus round-trip commute each day in his very used car. They rarely eat out. They take advantage of every opportunity to do inexpensive things together as a family. Yet, through all his sacrifice, I have only heard him complain once.

He talked recently about the cost of items made necessary by a society that no longer seems to care about the welfare of his family - expenses required to protect his children from the worst influences in society, while the rights of deviant adults are held to be sacrosanct.

If he wants only wholesome television programming, he has to pay extra to the cable company to block or scramble objectionable channels.

If he wants his phone unlisted to protect the family's privacy, he has to pay an extra fee to the phone company.

If he wants to protect his children from the thousands of pornographic sites on the World Wide Web, he has to pay an extra fee to filter out the reprehensible material our courts say that society's perverts have a constitutional right to view.

And now, thanks to three federal judges, he can't even let his children go to his local "free" public library unescorted, for fear they might stumble into the open sewer that runs right down the middle of the information superhighway - or worse yet, run into a deviant adult who regularly wallows in it.

He has a simple solution to the problem: pay-per-view Internet porn. Let those who want to view any sort of pornography on the Internet pay a fee for the privilege. Yes, I know there are already pay-per-view sites for some explicit material. He was talking about the $3.95-per-minute kind of pay-per-view; the kind that plants big red flags on a credit card statement, the kind of charges perverts would incur when calling a 900 number to have phone sex.

Of course, the second such a system is implemented, the ACLU will file a class action lawsuit on behalf of all of our society's underprivileged perverts who can't afford to pay for their Internet porn. The Supreme Court will rule that the plan is discriminatory and declare it unconstitutional. Ted Kennedy will introduce legislation to have porn addicts covered under the Americans With Disabilities Act, and propose a tax increase to pay for "porn for the poor."

On second thought, I'll just tell my friend to skip his daughter's braces and keep on paying all those fees... It will be cheaper in the long run.