Our View - Sunday

GROUP ASKS HOTEL TO CURB THE PORN
Marriott should heed group's request

   Decades ago, pornography was something one had to seek, or find hidden under a bed. Today, it's big business and it's about as hard to find as gum at a checkout stand. Turn on the TV in an average hotel room, and the menu offers porn. The largest distributor of porn, say some critics, isn't Penthouse or Hustler. Today, they say, it's the absolutely mainstream Marriott International hotel chain. That's because Marriott uses a major hotel cable service called Lodgenet Interactive Corp., which makes big money selling porn to customers of hotels.

   Focus on the Family and four other conservative Christian organizations would like to change that. The organizations met May 13 with executives of Marriott in what has been described as a cordial discussion. Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy at the Colorado Springs-based Focus, explained that it's time for family advocates to take a collective stand against hotel pornography.

   Actually, it's past time but the organizations should be commended for stepping up.

   As Minnery said, "pornography feeds prostitution and sexual abuse. And it's especially dangerous in hotels because it can become addictive and create a sexualized climate that puts men, women and children at risk."

   Of course it's all of that. Children can easily order porn in a hotel room. How many men find themselves alone on lengthy business trips, contending with a TV set that's promoting licentious movies? If the man indulges at some point, what does it mean for his children and wife back home? It's not the hotel's fault for a traveler's decision, but it's the hotel that presents the temptation. The indulgence clearly poses harm, by promoting gratuitous, sometimes exploitative and disordered sex outside the context of a committed relationship.

   Paul Cambria, a lawyer for the Adult Freedom Foundation - an organization that defends the porn industry - invoked the First Amendment in response to the request that Marriott stop selling porn.

   "I think their campaign is a colossal intrusion on adults' free choice to view legal adult material," Cambria told The Gazette. "It's the same as coming into your living room and turning off your channel. Hotels are the home away from home."

   And that's about the most ridiculous, fictitious argument a member of the bar could make. No one is preventing customers from viewing porn in their hotel rooms. The groups are simply asking Marriott to not provide it.

   Should hardcore porn be legal? Absolutely. This is a country founded on principles of tolerance for radical messages and behaviors, including those that are lewd and possibly dangerous.

   But conservative Christians seeking to rid hotel rooms of TV porn aren't asking for a law. They're asking a private party to voluntarily behave differently, and to take some responsibility for cleaning up the culture. It's a request the business can embrace, ignore or outright reject.

   If Marriott agrees to the request, it won't deprive travelers of porn. It will remain easy to find adult content on the Internet, at bookstores and in the porn shops that one can find in almost any American city or town. All it will do is remove one very active method of promoting porn to people who might otherwise avoid it. In this case, the conservative Christians have given reasonable and logical advice. Marriott officials would be wise to accept it.

U.S. MUST FOCUS ITS MIGHT

   It's a simple message known to anyone who manages the books of a business or a home: focus. Spend resources on the most crucial wants and needs.

That was essentially the message of Defense Secretary Robert Gates when he spoke recently to a gathering of reporters and editors in Colorado Springs. Gates said American generals should stop strategizing for the next big war, and start fighting the ones we already have.

   He explained that while American military barracks have rotted because of neglect, the government has spent lavishly on hightech weapons and gadgets that aren't useful in Iraq or Afghanistan or in future wars that most likely will mimic the characteristics of our current wars. He explained that the federal government is spending as if to prepare for another Cold-War-era war, when there's no apparent reason for it.

   "It's hard to conceive of any country confronting the U.S. in conventional terms," he said at the forum, sponsored by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation. "Overall, the kind of capabilities we need in the years ahead will resemble the kind of capabilities we need today."

   Gates explained that hundreds of billions of dollars are planned for a high-tech set of weapons that could be used to fight an armored opponent. He questioned whether such weapons programs would be useful or necessary for "irregular campaigns" that are most likely the challenge facing America's military.

   In case Congress and the Bush administration haven't noticed, conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have yet to be resolved. If they're to be ended in a way that benefits the United States, it must be done quickly. The chances of Republicans controlling the congressional and executive branches of government after next fall are slim, and Democrats will likely work to withdraw our troops without much regard for the outcome of the wars. If they're considered failures, after all, they'll be considered the failures of Republicans.

   Gates is obviously correct. It's hard to believe that his message seems to fall on deaf ears among those who control military spending. Finish the business in Afghanistan and Iraq, finish it fast, and finish it to our advantage. Only then should big money chase the needs of possible wars in the distant future - wars that won't matter much if we can't win the battles at hand. It's a simple matter of focus.