Conservative Princeton Prof Calls on Barr to Prosecute Porn Cases

Princeton University Professor Robert P. George, widely considered one of the country’s most influential right-wing intellectuals, has written a letter to Attorney General William Barr calling on him to step up prosecutions of online pornography cases. “Although DOJ’s website includes fact sheets confirming that obscenity law applies to online material,” George wrote in the January 13 missive. “It appears to me that DOJ is not prosecuting a sufficient number of federal obscenity cases to discourage its proliferation.” The George letter goes on to cite a number of widely debunked, pseudoscientific claims about porn’s allegedly damaging effects on the health of its viewers. George is also the co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage, one of the leading lobbying groups that worked, but came up short, in the effort to ban same-sex marriage nationwide. But now, George is crusading against porn, calling it “a public health and a public safety and a public morality issue” that is not protected by the First Amendment.  George has also helped found the American Principles Project, a think tank that has moved to the front lines in the latest iteration of the “war on porn.” In a recent essay by that think tank’s director, Terry Schilling, the group calls for a national “age verification” system for porn sites similar to the system that was intended to ao into effect last year in the United Kingdom, but was ultimately scrapped.  Schilling in the essay called on the right wing under Donald Trump to be more aggressive wielding its power to enforce “promote virtue, public morality, and the common good. Conservatives need to overcome their fear of governing the nation that elected them.”  But not all conservatives are on board with George’s crusade.  “What you’re seeing now is this rise of a much more authoritarian and state-oriented variant of conservatism,” said Reason Magazine editor-in-chief Katherine Mangu-Ward, in an interview with Vox.com.  “It just says, ‘You know what? Actually, never mind. Let’s take away the bad choices. Let’s make some bad choices illegal.’” Photo By Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons