Religious Conservatives Urge Bush to Increase Obscenity Prosecutions

WASHINGTON — A group of religious conservative activists have joined together to urge President Bush and the Department of Justice to step up obscenity prosecutions.

Southern Baptists public policy specialist Richard Land, President of the Ethics & Religion Liberty Commission, joined Focus on the Family Chairman James Dobson and more than 80 other conservative activists in sending a letter to Bush requesting a meeting to discuss expansion of the campaign against what they called “illegal pornography.”

A White House spokesman said Bush could not meet with the group until after the November election because of a tight schedule.

The letter called Bush’s help “essential because pornographers and sexual predators are increasingly targeting America’s most vulnerable citizens: our children.”

The letter also asked the President to speak out publicly about obscenity.

While praising the administration’s efforts to date, the signers asked the President to add prosecutors and resources to the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force at the Department of Justice.

Other signers of the letter included Alan Sears, president of the Alliance Defense Fund and former executive director of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography in the 1980s; Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council; Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America; Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media; Donna Rice Hughes, president of Enough Is Enough; Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals; and Patrick Trueman, former chief of the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.

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