The FBI has announced that it will be forming a new division to deal with “deviant pornography,” on the web or in person. Congress voted to fund it in the 2005 fiscal year, and the new branch – consisting of eight officers, a supervisor, and associated support staff – will begin its pursuit of digital evil in the near future.
The pornography in question is not of underage individuals, or even necessarily violent. This is material of consenting adults for consenting adults. The targeted areas (so to speak) are bestiality, bondage, urination/defecation, and related material, all of which – except for bestiality- is technically legal and currently widely available due to the wonder of the Internet. Federal money and time will be devoted to this quest to seek out and destroy the producers of Awful.
Left unaddressed in the FBI memo was the question of why this had become a priority when compared to defeating the forces of global terrorism. As one frustrated FBI agent said in The Washington Post, “I guess this means we won the war on terror.”
Guilford students are not happy about this. Colin Cranford said, “I think it’s absurd. I’m sort of into bondage as well … Whatever makes you happy.” Several other students echoed his sentiments. Nick Smith, a first-year at Guilford, said, “As long as there’s no harm coming to innocent creatures, it’s cool.” The campus in general seemed to feel that such a department called into question first-amendment rights. Many mentioned their own lurid pornographic interests, which have been deleted for common human decency, but were admittedly intriguing.
If the department does make arrests, then they will be prosecuted under the federal obscenity laws, which have been gathering dust since the ’80s when Ed Meese used them to support Reagan’s war on porn. The rationale is the same this time around: hardcore pornography is a danger to children, families, and pets. This assertion seems in concert with the general conservative trend in the judicial branch under the guiding hand of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Whether this argument holds water or not is a matter of debate, but the fact remains that the FBI is now cruising the seedy underbelly of the wide world of naked people, searching for evil. Smutmongers beware.
For our closing thoughts, we turn now to first-year Joe Carey, who when consulted said this: “I feel that deviant pornography is not a bad thing. You do what you [want] inside a person’s house, and whatever flips your switch. If you wanna have sex with a horse, that’s cool. If you want to record people’s stance on deviant pornography and then listen to it later alone in the dark, that’s cool too.”