No Playboy at playtime for the boys in Baghdad

Censorship? No, it's more about decency. That's what Paul Broun unveiled in his House bill last week (April 16). The upstanding Congressman from Georgia says his Military Honor and Decency Act would amend a provision of the 1997 Defense Authorization Act that banned sales of “sexually explicit material” on military bases. Paul's all worried about the morals of the boys fighting the insurgents and renegades in Iraq and elsewhere.

“Allowing sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes, feeding a base addiction, eroding the family as the primary building block of society, and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad,” Broun said. Now don't you hold back, Paul! You tell those guys that reading this stuff can make them go barmy and bawdy, and even belligerent. One part of the provision states that if a print publication is a periodical, it would be considered sexually explicit if “it regularly features or gives prominence to nudity or sexual or excretory activities or organs in a lascivious way.” Nudity lascivious, then? Too much control, Paul. Too much of you bothering about other people's private business.

The same thing's happening in Britain. Some New Labour control freaks want to add all sorts of stuff to the catch-all Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. Thankfully we have such people as the Earl of Onslow to look out for us and our freedoms. Commenting on the definition of "extreme pornographic images" during a debate on the bill, the Earl said -

"My Lords, are we not facing the terrible problem of definition? Where you have a definition that says that an extreme pornographic image is an image which is, "(a) pornographic, and (b) an extreme image", that is like saying a dog is a dog or a horse is a horse; it gets you absolutely nowhere.

There is a wonderful museum in Paris, the Musée d’Orsay, which is full of the most beautiful pictures. One of them was commissioned by the Turkish ambassador in around 1860. It is a close-up painting of a lady’s genitalia, and I believe it is called the Mother of the World—

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: “L’Origine du Monde”.

The Earl of Onslow: I thank the noble Lord. My bet is that the Turkish ambassador commissioned that painting for sexual arousal, and yet there it is, displayed in the Musée d’Orsay. Some Greek vases have pictures of Priapus on them. If Priapus was to do the things he is threatening to do, it is fairly likely, because of the size of what he has got, that they would result in serious injury to a person’s bits and pieces. We are here in the problem of definition.

I wonder what the Congressman thinks of such a painting. Would he include it in his bill? Paul Broun should ponder on definition, because it will be a problem for him as much as anyone else.