Smut-Busters Purify the Military : Imposing unconstitutional censorship on 1.5 million Americans

Not content with adding a whopping $13 billion to President Clinton’s proposed 1997 defense budget, the House National Security Committee also seeks to steer the nation’s armed forces away from erotic temptations. In pursuit of that aim, it has voted to ban the sale on all military bases of “lascivious” periodicals and audio and video recordings. To the proud boast that America’s service personnel are the world’s best trained, best equipped and best fed is now added the insulting proviso that they are also to be treated like children by denying them access to material freely available to adults anywhere else in the country.

The inspiration behind this move to impose a sweeping censorship on more than 1.5 million uniformed personnel seems to have come from an Air Force wife who complained to her congressman that adult magazines are displayed at the base PX where her 11-year-old son can see them. And so to spare pre-adolescents from such sights--Reps. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md.) and Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) overreacted and concocted a flagrantly unconstitutional prohibition so loosely drawn that it could be used to deny not only on-base sales of Playboy and rentals of R-rated videos, but cable television and marriage manuals as well. This measure has to be one of the bigger morale-busters of recent times.

“Uncle Sam,” says Bartlett, “should not be subsidizing smut.” The subsidy claim, apparently referring to the discount offered on all goods sold at PXs and commissaries, is a phony, raised by the House’s self-appointed guardians of public morals to justify their assault on First Amendment rights.

What they’re really saying is that men and women in the military who are old enough to fight and maybe die can’t be trusted to look at certain magazines and movies. This is shameful thinking, and the House should have the guts to reject it.