Pro-Family Groups Make Gains Against Hotel-Room Pornography

WASHINGTON—A coalition of pro-family groups is hoping to build on the recent success of a Cincinnati organization in getting three local hotels to stop providing adult-oriented programs in guest rooms. The coalition is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to crack down on hotels nationwide that provide these types of programs.

Catholic Church and legal officials applaud the effort and believe the campaign to eliminate pay-per-view and other adult videos from many hotels has a good chance to succeed, particularly if a large number of citizens join the effort.

The coalition, called the National Pro-Family Forum on Pornography, met in September in Washington to discuss the issue of sexually explicit movies in hotels. Its leaders and members are calling on Attorney General John Ashcroft and other Justice Department officials to threaten prosecution of any hotels offering material the coalition claims meets the legal definition of obscenity.

“Our ultimate goal is to eliminate hard-core pornography from every television set and every video store in the country,” said Phil Burress, president of the Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values and a member of the coalition. “We want to get this stuff off the face of the earth. Obviously that's not possible, but we're going to do the best we can. Pornography is a major crisis in our country.”

‘Our ultimate goal is to eliminate hard-core pornography from every television set and every video store in the country.’

The coalition represents more than 20 million families across the country and has met quarterly in Washington for six years to discuss issues of concern to families. It includes such groups as Morality in Media, Focus on the Family and Concerned Women for America.

Burress said the coalition is in the midst of a campaign to educate people about their rights in regard to law enforcement and how obscenity laws work. He said because the major providers of hard-core adult movies are distributing the movies via satellite, they are in violation of federal law.

The coalition later this year plans to launch a Web site, www.cleanhotels.com, which identifies hotels that are not providing adult entertainment. “We're trying to find out which hotels are not offering in-room pornography so we can let people know about them,” Burress said.

Community Values

Adult-oriented entertainment for hotels is big business. Officials estimate 40% of the hotels in the country offer adult movies, which amount to about $500 million in revenue each year.

The battle against adult videos in hotels began in Cincinnati, where Citizens for Community Values in July and August successfully stopped three area hotels from providing explicit pay-per-view movies in guest rooms.

The organization, founded in 1983 as a pro-family, anti-pornography lobbying group, alerted prosecutors to the explicit nature of movies being shown in rooms at local Marriott, Comfort Suites and Travelodge hotels. Group members checked into the hotels and videotaped some of the movies as evidence.

All three of the hotels agreed to stop providing the programming after county prosecutors in Ohio and Kentucky warned the owners they were violating community standards of decency and would face criminal obscenity charges if they continued to show the material.

Violation of community standards is one of the court tests for obscenity as determined by the Supreme Court in the landmark 1973 case Miller v. California. The court ruled that each community has the right to determine its own standards of decency.

James Bendell, an attorney based in Port Townsend, Wash., and the West Coast litigation counsel for the American Catholic Lawyers Association, applauds the efforts of anti-pornography groups. But he said it might be hard to prosecute some of the cases because of the difficulty in proving that something is obscene and in establishing that hotels are actually committing criminal acts.

“On the other hand, I believe that citizens through letter writing and picketing can urge these hotels not to commit these acts,” Bendell said. “The threat to hotels is that this is bad publicity and possible lost business.”

Bendell said Catholics have a moral obligation not to view or publish pornography. “It harms marriages, and people can become addicted to pornography,” he said. “We're supposed to support Catholic values, and we have higher standards than secular laws. For example, if I know a guy down the street is raising money for an organization that preaches hate, it's my obligation to say he should not support them.”

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati also applauds the efforts of the pro-family groups, said spokesman Dan Andriacco. “This is an issue of concern to the archbishop,” he said. “Pornography debases the human person, and not just the one who uses it. The entire community has a stake in eliminating pornography because the whole community is in some way affected by it.”

Opponents of the efforts argue they amount to an invasion of privacy and denial of First Amendment rights to free speech.

The adult programs “are a form of real expression, sometimes on the margins of First Amendment protection, but nonetheless protected speech,” said Raymond Vasvari, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. “When you have a small group working with prosecutors and setting up cameras in hotel rooms, that's of a censorial nature. This [adult entertainment] is being used by adults alone in a proper setting, who are not hurting anyone else.”

Pro-family groups in other parts of the country are trying to take similar action in their regions. For example, the American Family Association of Michigan, based in Midland, has urged prosecutors in the state to stop hotels in Grand Rapids, Midland and Holland from showing explicit programs in their rooms.

Burress is confident more groups will be successful. “Success for me is a hotel here and there,” he said. “I think we can make a major dent once we get the Web site up. Most parents, grandparents and conventioneers don't want to stay in hotels that provide this type of programming.”

Bob Violino writes from

Massapequa Park, New York.