Anti-porn Groups Decry Exchange Sale Policy

Taken from Army Times (22 SEP 2007):

By Karen Jowers - Staff writer

Upset that the Pentagon allows military exchanges to sell adult magazines such as Penthouse, Celebrity Skin, Playboy’s Vixens and others, more than 40 anti-pornography groups plan to appeal to the Pentagon inspector general.

“The question of selling pornography in military exchanges has been decided by Congress, and the Department of Defense cannot change the law,” said Patrick Trueman, special counsel to the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian public interest law firm that is one of the signatories to a May 4 letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Army and Air Force Exchange Service officials said concerns about “adult sophisticate” materials represent a small portion of complaints to AAFES.

Last year, 27 comments — less than 0.2 percent of the 16,344 comments AAFES received — expressed dissatisfaction with the adult sophisticate assortment, spokesman Judd Anstey said. One customer asked for an expanded assortment.

Penthouse returned to military exchanges this summer 10 years after a Pentagon review board banned it as sexually explicit. But the anti-porn groups weren’t spurred by Penthouse alone; other magazines, such as Playboy, were not banned but are still on the groups’ list of targets.

Following a Pentagon rule in late 2006 that allows banned material to be reviewed every five years, Penthouse was reviewed this spring and was reinstated, along with Playgirl and Ultra for Men. Hustler was reviewed again, along with 14 other publications that were deemed to still be sexually explicit and will remain banned from exchanges.

But there has been no change in the law or the Pentagon board’s definitions of “sexually explicit.”

Rather, the change was in the magazine, Penthouse publisher Diane Silberstein said. New owners who took over in 2004 have worked to recreate Penthouse based on the magazine’s “original DNA” when it was launched in 1969, she said.

They hired two research firms, which collected data showing that while men do want to see young women in their entirety, they want more glamour shots, Penthouse representatives said.

“Men are attracted to the magazine by beautiful women ... and stay because they want to read the articles,” she said. They didn’t revamp the magazine in an effort specifically to get it back into military exchanges, she said, but simply “created the best magazine for the marketplace.”

However, she noted, Penthouse “has had a long relationship with the military.” The magazine wrote about issues confronting veterans after the Vietnam War, such as Agent Orange exposure.

“We’re also doing a number of articles to support returning vets” of the current wars, she said, to include an in-depth article on debt in the military.

“Penthouse is thrilled to be back on military bases,” she said.

By July, it was back in more than 500 exchange outlets worldwide, including in the Iraq and Afghanistan combat zones. Sales figures are not available yet.

Penthouse was one of more than 200 publications banned in the late 1990s by the Resale Activities Board of Review as a result of the 1996 Military Honor and Decency Act, which prohibits the sale of “sexually explicit material,” to include audio recordings, films, videos or periodicals, in military resale outlets.

Sexually explicit material is defined as having “as a dominant theme the depiction or description of nudity, including sexual or excretory activities or organs, in a lascivious way.”

The law does not affect troops’ ability to buy adult material in stores outside installations or to purchase subscriptions.

In response to the groups’ complaints, Leslye Arsht, deputy undersecretary of defense for military community and family policy, wrote that the board reviewed Celebrity Skin, Penthouse, Perfect 10, Playboy, Playboy’s College Girls, Playboy’s Lingerie, Nude, Nude Playmates and Playmates in Bed — “and determined that, based solely on the totality of each magazine’s content, they were not sexually explicit.”

As such, their sale in exchanges “is permissible,” Arsht wrote in a letter to the groups last month.

At press time, defense officials had no comment on how many magazines and other materials have been reviewed since defense officials decided late last year that publishers could request a new review once they had been banned for five years.

The board’s interpretation makes “no sense,” Trueman said. The Alliance Defense Fund and the other groups contend that Playboy, Penthouse, Perfect 10 and a host of other publications and videos sold in the exchanges are prohibited by the law.

“Who reviews the review board? I wonder if there are any military wives on this review board,” he said. “You hear people say, ‘I only buy it for the articles,’ but who believes that?

“How could a person with any ... common sense say these are not sexually explicit? The Department of Defense feels awkward about taking porn away from service members.”

He cited incidents of sexual harassment in the military and other problems that he contends are exacerbated by pornography.

“I know from my 20 years as a prosecutor and as an activist that men involved in porn look at women in a different way,” he said. “At the military academies, they’re selling the same magazines. Don’t women deserve to be safe in that environment?”

While Trueman was serving as chief of the child exploitation and obscenity section in the criminal division of the Justice Department, he said, he tried unsuccessfully to get Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush to issue executive orders banning porn in military exchanges. He later supported the 1996 law.

The groups were prompted to complain to Gates, Trueman said, after concerns were raised this spring by some troops and their families that porn was still sold in exchanges.

Army wife MaryAnn Gramig, who lives at Fort Knox, Ky., and is the research and policy director for the nonprofit organization Rock: Building Stronger Communities and Families, said she surveyed a number of exchanges by phone, including those at the academies, after some complaints were raised.

“I happened to be a military spouse working for a pro-family group,” she said.

But she’s long been aware of adult materials sold in the exchange at her own base, she said.

“I have three children, and we shop at the exchange. I don’t let them go to the periodical section without me,” she said. “There’s enough stress on the military and families. This doesn’t help.”