This morning I attended the 47th Annual California Prayer Breakfast in Sacramento. Hosted by the Legislative Fellowship Group, the bipartisan event brings together legislators (Democrat and Republican), public policy experts, lobbyists and others wanting to lift up our state in prayer. With the current difficulties facing our state such as wildfires, budget shortfalls and an out-of-control judiciary, we certainly need to seek God’s guidance and protection. Several members of the Assembly and Senate Republican caucuses were in attendance, as were members of the Democratic caucuses. Notably absent was the elected official usually honored at the breakfast: the governor. Governor Schwarzenegger’s cancellation must have been last minute because, as the program noted, he was scheduled to speak.
The featured speaker for the morning was Mark Joseph, an influential film, music and TV producer, as well as a blogger for the Huffington Post. Mr. Joseph’s speech struck just the right note for a prayer breakfast: it was informative, humorous and challenging. I found one of his comments particularly interesting because it echoes a similar one made by Dinesh D’Souza at a recent UC Berkeley speech. Both Joseph and D’Souza noted that while the rest of the world seeks America’s prosperity, it detests our cultural exports. As the producer of some of the most successful family-friendly movies, Joseph understands the world-wide impact of America’s entertainment industry. He mentioned that pornography and movie/TV soft-porn are of particular insult to the rest of the world’s moral beliefs.
California is one of the main producers of pornography and the legislature is actually dealing with the issue right now. Assemblyman Charles Calderon introduced a bill that will impose a 25% tax on pornography and “adult entertainment” venues. (Last week Calderon amended the bill to an 8.3% tax on pornography and 25% tax on adult venues.) Revenues raised from the new tax will be placed in the “Adult Entertainment Impact Fund” to “ameliorate the secondary effects of adult entertainment and adult entertainment venues.”
AB 2914 raises some interesting questions for conservatives. Although we do not support the adult entertainment industry because of the degenerative impact on the family unit and society as a whole, we also oppose “sin taxes.” A sin tax makes money for government off of behavior that should probably be outlawed entirely. For example, if smoking tobacco is such a scourge, shouldn’t it just be banned or regulated like prescription drugs? It’s the same with pornography and other prurient publications. If such “adult entertainment” is so damaging, let’s not just tax it because it’s sinful, but outlaw it.
One of the excuses the pornography industry offers in defending its existence is that pornography is a “victimless crime.” But apparently Assemblyman Calderon doesn’t think so, because his reason for taxing porn is that “some activities have harmful impacts that reach beyond those directly involved in the activity.” (If only legislators could apply the same logic to their law-passing activities!) Obviously pornography does have negative secondary effects, and not just physical, but lifelong emotional consequences.
In fact, the legislative analysis of AB 2914 actually makes the case for banning porn as opposed to just taxing it. The “numerous negative secondary effects on the people of this state” include increased crime near production locations, an “adverse impact” on the “mental health” of participants that leads to drug and alcohol abuse, encouraging unsafe sex by consumers, providing explicit sexual content to children via the Internet, encouraging sexual abuse of women, and generally causing the deterioration of local communities near adult entertainment venues.
If the legislature acknowledges so many harmful effects of porn, then why are we just taxing the source of the problem instead of solving it? It would send a strong foreign policy message to nations everywhere if lawmakers curtailed California’s internationally-abhorred export. The rest of the world is (literally) watching…