The outcry of customers and a Canadian bishop forced a cellular provider to stop selling pornography.
BY TOM McFEELY
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
March 4-10, 2007 Issue |
Posted 2/27/07 at 8:00 AM
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — When
Kathy Woodard learned last month that her cellular provider had become the
first North American telecommunications company to sell pornography via cell
phone, she responded immediately. “I
started looking for another provider,” said the Catholic mother of nine
children, a Telus Corp. customer who lives in Calgary, Alberta.
The backlash from Telus customers like
Woodard — alongside the efforts of Archbishop Raymond Roussin of Vancouver, who
spearheaded the public protests against Telus — has paid off in the war against
porn: On Feb. 20, Vancouver-based Telus announced it was dropping its sales of
so-called “adult content” to subscribers.
“We heard from a broad range of customers …
who made it clear they were not supportive of this initiative,” Janet Yale,
executive vice-president of corporate affairs at Telus, told the Globe
and Mail newspaper Feb. 21. “We listened to our customers.”
One of those customers was the
Archdiocese of Vancouver, which announced Feb. 16 that it had instructed
archdiocesan organizations not to renew their cellphone contracts with Telus.
Earlier, in an article published in
the Feb. 12 issue of The B.C. Catholic,
Archbishop Roussin denounced Telus for selling porn.
“Telus Mobility has crossed the line
which brings the problem of the accessibility of pornographic material further
into the public realm,” the archbishop said. “Given the increasing awareness
about the problem of sexual addiction to pornography through Internet access,
and the abuse that this perpetuates on vulnerable persons, Telus’ decision is
disappointing and disturbing.”
The
Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that pornography is a grave offense
that “perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other.
It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the
public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit
for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy
world” (No. 2354).
Why Sell It?
Telus, which has 5.1 million
cellphone customers across Canada, started selling pictures Jan. 8 of nude and
partially nude men and women for about $3 per download.
When it was challenged about
becoming a porn purveyor, the company offered two main lines of defense.
Telus noted it was legal under
Canadian law to market the “adult content” it was selling. And, Telus claimed,
it was actually acting as a responsible corporate citizen because it had
instituted age verification procedures to ensure that its porn was sold only to
adults, unlike many Internet porn websites that can be accessed by anyone.
But according to Ken Henderson,
founder of the True Knights anti-pornography apostolate (trueknights.org),
Telus was really concerned about only one thing when it started selling porn:
making money.
“Just because something is not
illegal doesn’t mean that it’s not wrong,” Henderson said. “Initially, what I
thought when I heard this company was going to be doing this was, ‘Here we have
just another step in the direction of mainstreaming this stuff, because of the
money factor.’ That was the only reason the company wanted to provide this
service — purely for the money.”
Henderson said that trying to
restrict access to porn by age verification “doesn’t mean very much at all.” He
cited a recent article in the Washington Post about a
study that found that parents who use porn themselves are less likely to protect
their children from pornography.
Said Henderson, “If you’re offering
it to the general public … these adults are going to become addicted to it,
just like to alcohol and drugs. And then they are not going to be as vigilant
in protecting their own children from this stuff.”
Catholic mother Kathy Woodard said
she was depressed when she discovered Telus was selling porn. She said there is
so much sleaze available these days on Canadian television that she can’t allow
her kids to watch TV, and now it looked like she would have to get rid of her
cell phone because of the “adult” content that could be downloaded.
“Nobody should be able to access
this,” Woodard said. “It’s not ‘adult,’ it’s infantile. It’s not mature, it’s
degradation — it tears us apart, it ruins families, it abuses children.”
Jim Johannsson, director of media
relations for Telus, said that the hostile public response to its cell phone
porn was a surprise, since equally graphic or more graphic material is readily
available through other media.
“We didn’t envision it would be
considered a bold new step,” Johannsson said.
But when complaints started to flood
in, he said, the company reconsidered its porn merchandising. And, he
acknowledged, the criticism directed at Telus by Archbishop Roussin and other
Church leaders played “a contributory role” in the Feb. 20 decision to stop
selling smut.
Asked if the experience has taught
Telus that it needs to pay more attention to the moral concerns of its
customers, Johannsson said it was difficult to ascertain the moral beliefs of a
“diverse” society like Canada.
“It’s very difficult to anticipate
where is the tolerance threshold, where is the comfort level with different
groups,” the Telus spokesman said. “The whole moral question is very difficult
for corporate Canada to deal with.”
Good Shepherd
In a Feb. 21 statement, Archbishop
Roussin praised Telus for backing down on its porn sales.
“I am pleased and grateful that
Telus has decided to remove itself from the business of profiting from
pornography,” he said.
“I hope that raising the
profile on this issue as a societal concern will result
in further reflection and study with the aim of finding solutions to the
problem of pornography,” the archbishop said.
Anti-porn activist Ken Henderson
said it was heartening to see such strong leadership from Archbishop Roussin in
the battle against commercial pornography.
“I’m glad to see that someone in an
upper level in our Church is speaking out about this,” Henderson said. “I think
the bishops and archbishops in our country, and in Canada and around the world,
actually, are starting to realize how serious of a problem this is. It’s
encouraging.”
Tom McFeely writes from
Victoria, British Columbia.
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