Do You Believe These People?

Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, is up in arms.

Not that he's in the military (he's far too old to serve his country in that capacity), but he's outraged on behalf of the military.

And what is he outraged about? Can you venture a guess?

I'll give you a hint. It isn't about the fact that we're using National Guard forces as a de facto press gang in Iraq, violating their civil liberties by sending then back to Iraq over and over again in violation of their original commitments. It's not that we're holding American citizens against their legal rights. It's not that we're torturing people and murdering civilians.

Wildmon doesn't give a shit about any of that meaningless crap.

What does he give a shit about? Why is he so outraged?

Soldiers are able to buy and read Penthouse magazine on military bases.

GASP!!!!!!!

Oh my God! Naked ladies! Soldiers are able to look at naked ladies! This is an outrage!

It also, Wildmon contends, violates the law of the land.

Seems that 11 years ago (when the Congress was in the hands of Newt Gingrich and his group of crazed Republican thugs, many of whom were corrupt and many of whom are now, thankfully, out of power) Congress passed The Military Honor and Decency Act of 1996. This Orwellian-titled piece of legislation in the words of Peter Eisler of USA Today, "bars stores on military bases from selling "sexually explicit material." It defines that as film or printed matter "the dominant theme of which depicts or describes nudity" or sexual activities "in a lascivious way.""

In other words, it denies soldiers the very constitutional freedoms that they are ostensibly fighting for. Isn't that special? And isn't it precious that this blatantly unconstutional piece of legislation was upheld by a U.S. appeals court?

But back to Donald Wildmon. The military has decided (in an enlightened decision for which they should be commended) that certain publications such as Penthouse did not meet the standards of the legislation for sexually explicit material and thus could be sold legally on military bases. Wildmon disagrees. "They're saying 'we're not selling stuff that's sexually explicit' … and we say it's pornography," Wildmon is quoted as saying by USA Today.

Wildmon has started a letter-writing campaign wants to persuade Congress to make the Pentagon, in Wildmon's words, "obey the law."

The trouble is that the Pentagon is obeying the law. They obtained a legal opinion and they are abiding by the legal advice they have received.

Wildmon, of course, has also obtained advice from someone he considers his Lord and Savior, but he's choosing to ignore that advice.

That advice, of course, would be:

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye" (Matthew, 7:1-5)

Tom Moran