The Pentagon Takes Aim on Pornography

Taken from TFFKY.org (Article date: March 1999):

After a two-year court battle the Pentagon issued an historic directive last Sept. 21 to remove hard-core pornography from U.S. military bases worldwide, including Kentucky’s two bases at Fort Campbell and Fort Knox. The new policy is likely to have a massive effect as the military has been one of the nation’s largest outlets for hard-core pornography.

The sequence of events leading up to the action began in 1996 when Congress passed the Military Honor and Decency Act, banning the sale of sexually explicit material portraying nudity in “a lascivious way.” After a two-year court and appeal process, an eight-member panel was set up by the Department of Defense to decide precisely which materials pass the “lascivious” test.

Publications such as Penthouse and Hustler were found to fail the new guidelines and consequently have been banned from military base commissaries, while Playboy was allowed to remain. Altogether, the eight-member panel ordered 153 sexually explicit publications and videos to be removed from base shelves. Through this first assessment process only 14 items were permitted to remain, but the panel will continue to review material on an ongoing basis, thus making it possible for more to be dropped.

Hard-core pornography was permitted to stay in base stores for two years after the law was challenged by General Media Communications, the publisher of Penthouse magazine. General Media lost its final appeal when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected their arguments and let the ban stand.

“Its about time,” said Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, author of the Military Honor and Decency Act. “It’s sad that the military had to wait for an act of Congress and more than two years of litigation up to the Supreme Court before it could become a responsible employer and remove this garbage from Department of Defense store shelves.”

According to Fred Bluhm, Chief, Media Branch for the Army Air Force Exchange Service — the supplier of all commissary goods to the U.S. military, the removal of sexually explicit materials will cost base commissaries worldwide at least $10 million dollars per year in sales.

Kentucky’s two major military bases — Fort Campbell and Fort Knox, are home to nearly 50,000 family members who will notice a difference next time they shop at their base store. At Fort Campbell 90 different magazines and videos have been removed from the shelves. Not quite as many were removed from Fort Knox since it is a smaller base and sold fewer of the targeted materials.

Shoppers frequenting the base stores will now be able to navigate through a much more family-friendly atmosphere and peruse the shelves minus scores of sexually offensive material. “If you were to ask the average housewife and family member on base, most would say they welcome the action to remove sexually explicit material from base stores,” says Fort Campbell’s Public Affairs Officer, Lt. Col. Bill Buckner.

Some suggest that removal of the obscene material sends a strong message that the U.S. government is in the business of promoting more than just morale amongst the troops. “The army is values-based,” says Buckner. “It is about respect, honor, integrity, discipline, and courage.”