One presidential candidate has promised to enforce current obscenity laws to stop hard-core pornography videos on the internet from getting in front of our children. The other presidential candidate is unwilling to make the same promise.
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has signed — no questions asked — the Children’s Internet Safety Pledge from the internet safety organization Enough Is Enough, according to a press release from that organization. Clearly he’s taken the step with families in mind and has pledged to protect American kids from obscene web content.
“You have to wonder about the personal morals of someone who has any problem signing this pledge,” said one mom.
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would not sign the pledge.
“This is not a surprise, but you really have to wonder about the personal morals of someone who has any problem signing this pledge,” a Boston-area mother of two told LifeZette. “To leave our children vulnerable to the type of filth, generated for profit, makes me very frightened for her to win the presidency.”
Enough is Enough President Donna Rice Hughes said the Clinton campaign cited a policy of not signing pledges. “Clinton agrees with the goals of the pledge. It’s a good step,” Hughes told The Washington Examiner.
The organization asks all presidential nominees to agree to appoint an attorney general who will aggressively enforce existing laws pertaining to sex trafficking, predation, child pornography, and obscenity, according to a statement about the pledge.
So why won’t Hillary Clinton sign a pledge that is so obviously beneficial for society?
“Pandering and politicizing,” the mom from Boston said bluntly. “It’s more important to protect liberal free-speech advocates — whose votes she needs — than it is our children. And also, that’s who she is, at heart. A liberal.”
Related: No More Porn at McDonald’s or Starbucks
In Washington, oratory outweighs actual accomplishments — but this is an area where tangible progress could actually be achieved. Enough is Enough has a successful record of fighting porn — recently the group, along with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, persuaded McDonald’s, the fast-food giant, to filter porn out of their free Wi-Fi, according to ABC News.
Enough is Enough said in a release that coffee giant Starbucks originally would not agree to do the same, according to The Washington Examiner. Within a few weeks, however, Starbucks changed its corporate thinking and announced a worldwide ban on porn on Wi-Fi in its stores.
Trump stands ready to protect the nation’s children should he reach the Oval Office.
Rice Hughes told The Examiner, “I applaud Mr. Trump’s leadership and commitment to uphold the rule of law as demonstrated by his signing of the Children’s Internet Safety Presidential Pledge. Making the internet safer for children and families is a critical step in making America safe again.”
She added, “President Obama has not enforced the laws at all.”
Although a lot of internet porn content is already illegal, the Justice Department has been reluctant to pursue the issue.
Back in 2008, Rep. Steve Largent termed the billion-dollar internet pornography industry “America’s dirty little secret,” according to CNSNews.com. In an interview at the time, Largent said the Justice Department, acting under Democratic President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno, was “noticeably lax” in enforcing obscenity laws.
“In certain areas they’ve been hyperactive and probably need to take a little Ritalin,” said Largent. “But in other areas, they probably need to turn up the heat, and this is one of them.”
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Part of the scourge of pornography is how it impacts the developing teen brain. In frank terms, it devastates the ideals of love and promotes increasingly risky behavior.
“Many adolescents look at pornography when their parents think they are doing homework,” psychologist Alexandra Katehakis said in Psychology Today. “The adolescent brain is being shaped around a sexual experience that is isolating, visceral, and completely void of any love or compassion. This has the potential to lead to great problems in sexual compulsivity and sex addiction throughout the adolescent boy’s life because his brain gets shaped to expect the ‘heroin-like’ porn dopamine rush from all of his real-life sexual experiences.”
She added, “When he realizes his actual sexual experiences are lacking this rush, he may seek out riskier and more visceral experiences that resonate with his early porn use.”
That Hillary Clinton cannot pledge to fight this damage to growing teens’ brains — though she apparently agrees with the idea of the pledge — appears a dereliction of duty as a candidate for president.
“Who votes for a candidate who claims to have worked her whole life ‘on behalf of children’ but cannot even sign this type of pledge?” one Boston dad of three wondered.
Hughes said she hopes the Clinton campaign changes direction in its anti-pledge policy. “I’m an optimist,” she said, according to The Examiner. “I’m hoping they will decide to make an exception to sign it.”
The dad in Boston was skeptical. “It would be more their style to hope that during the election cycle the issue just goes away.”
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