Dear Marriott International

Two recent articles in the Deseret News, one about "Marriott porn" and the other about "The nasty taint of porn," highlight a problem with your in-room entertainment offerings.

This is not a small problem.  Your web site says you have "nearly 2,900 lodging properties located in the United States and 67 other countries and territories."  It also says your Chairman and CEO "is an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

Some LDS Church members were surprised to learn of your pornography problem (though I personally have been frustrated about it for more than 20 years).  It became a hot topic among LDS bloggers on Thursday, July 5th, when Glen Johnson's original AP article was released.

The president of the American Decency Association heard about this controversy and emailed one of my blogging associates the following letter he had earlier received from your Chairman and CEO regarding some of the in-room movies that are made available to your guests:

June 6, 2000

Mr. Bill Johnson
Executive Director
American Decency Association
PO Box 202
Fremont, MI 48412-0202

Dear Mr. Johnson:

Thank you for your recent letter concerning the choice of in-room movies available to our guests.

We recognize, however, that our customers have certain beliefs, likes and dislikes.  That is why we have restricted access to those programs that certain customers may feel are inappropriate.  The in-room entertainment operators who provide our systems rely upon a certain volume of movie types in order to be economically viable.  If we were to eliminate the R and non-rated offerings, the systems would not be economic.  We believe it is more practical to have a system available through a wider variety and to allow our guests to make their own selections.

We do monitor the R and non-rated offerings and eliminate those that are most extreme while maintaining the minimal amount to support the economics of the system.

We appreciate your comments and value your business.

Best personal regards,

J.W. Marriott, Jr.
Chairman of the Board
and Chief Executive Officer

Unfortunately, the above letter doesn't even acknowledge a "pornography" problem.  It sidesteps that issue entirely, as if the material in question isn't pornographic, but merely inappropriate for certain customers.

I think Marriott International does sell pornography and I think that is a problem.  Now before you write me off as just another over-sensitive prude, please consider the following definitions.

What Is Hard-Core Pornography?

Hard-core pornography is obscene material that is not tolerated by the law.  I don't question that you are opposed to hard-core pornography.  This type of sexually oriented material is devoted almost exclusively to explicit and offensive representations of sex.  Hard-core pornography also includes explicit sex with children.

Hard-core pornography is not "free speech."  In communities where citizens oppose it, hard-core pornography can be prosecuted and its creators and distributors sent to jail.  Laws against hard-core pornography have been declared constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Unfortunately however, some people assume material that is actually hard-core pornography is legal simply because it exists in their community.  Public prosecutors, on the other hand, are forced to conclude that because such material is tolerated it reflects the accepted community standard.  The resulting stalemate leaves each waiting for the other.

As Christians and as citizens, we have an inherent obligation to speak out against hard-core pornography.  In today's world, we have an additional reason for doing so because the law requires a certain amount of public outcry against these materials in order to justify prosecution.

What Is Soft-Core Pornography?

Soft-core pornography is obscene material that is tolerated by the law.  It is not "legally obscene."  Soft-core pornography is "free speech" because it has been granted First Amendment protection.  This means that, even in communities where citizens oppose it, soft-core pornography cannot be outlawed because such laws have been declared un-Constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Soft-core pornography usually involves the very same kind of sexually explicit material as hard-core pornography.  The difference between hard- and soft-core pornography is not necessarily in the subject matter or even in the level of explicitness.  Often, the difference is based entirely on legal technicalities.

These legal technicalities were created when the U.S. Supreme Court created the legal definition of pornography.  Obscene material that lies within the Supreme Court's definition is hard-core pornography, and obscene material that lies outside the Court's definition is soft-core pornography.

As Christians and as citizens, we have an inherent obligation to speak out against soft-core pornography.  In today's world, we have an additional reason for doing so because the Supreme Court did not change the nature of this material, they only changed its status with respect to the law.  Soft-core pornography is just as obscene and poisonous today as it was before the Supreme Court gave it "free speech" protection.

What Are Legal Technicalities?

Legal technicalities are details that are meaningful only to the law.  In the United States, two landmark Supreme Court cases have established the fine points of obscenity law.  They are Roth v. United States (1957); and Miller v. California (1973). The Court, in these two cases, set forth the legal definition of pornography that is used for the purpose of administering criminal justice to those who produce and sell pornography.

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, three conditions must be present before obscene material can be outlawed:

1.  The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.

2.  The work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state (or federal) law.

3.  The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

The "average person" is a legal technicality.  This person is comprised of both the young and the old, the educated and the uneducated, the religious and the irreligious—even those who produce pornography.  (See Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, at 490, [1957].)  How can anyone determine what is offensive to such a person when, in reality, no such person exists?  And even if such a person can be imagined, how can pornography be offensive to those who produced it in the first place?  This is one reason why only the most revolting obscenity is actually against the law.

"Contemporary community standards" form another legal technicality.  The very existence of pornography in a community contributes to the community standards which, in turn, are then used to justify pornography's existence as being consistent with such standards.  (See Grove Press, Inc. v. Christenberry, 276 F.2d 433, at 440, [1960].)

The words "taken as a whole" are an important legal technicality because regardless of how offensive isolated parts of the work might be, unless the entire work, "taken as a whole," is offensive, it cannot be prosecuted.  It is not the nature of the offensive parts, but the nature of the rest of the material that determines this.

Biblical Principles of Modesty and Chastity

In that great day when we shall stand before the judgment bar of God, it is doubtful that we will be talking about "average persons," "contemporary community standards," or the effect of a work "taken as a whole."  Legal technicalities will be very out of place in that important conversation.  It is, therefore, important for us to understand pornography from a gospel perspective.

The essential characteristic of pornography from a gospel perspective is its offensiveness to modesty or chastity.  (See this author's article in the August 1989 Ensign magazine.)

At One Time, the Law Upheld Modesty and Chastity

In fact, this is how the entire Judeo-Christian society identified pornography for hundreds of years.  Until 1957, the word obscenity was defined in all English dictionaries in terms of its offensiveness to modesty or chastity.  It was only after the U.S. Supreme Court introduced its legal definition in 1957 that dictionaries began to define obscenity without regard to modesty or chastity.

It is also a historical fact that the Biblical principles of modesty and chastity were upheld by this country's criminal code and judicial precedent from the day Columbus first set foot on American soil until the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roth decision in 1957.

For centuries, there was no strictly legal definition of obscenity.  It was simply against the law to offend modesty or chastity in public in any way and people were sent to jail for doing so.

Consider this example.  On February 14, 1890, a Valley Falls, Kansas man was arrested for depositing in the U.S. Mail an obscene newspaper.  The defendant was a peaceable, well-conducted citizen.  He was a married man, living in wedlock, about 60 years of age.  He was convicted.

He appealed, partly on the grounds that he had acted unwittingly, not realizing that what he had mailed was obscene.  To which the federal appeals court judge responded as follows:

"There is in the popular conception and heart such a thing as modesty.  It was born in the Garden of Eden.  After Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge they ...  ' knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.'  From that day to this civilized man has carried with him the sense of shame,—the feeling that there were some things on which the eye—the mind—should not look; and where men and women become so depraved ... that they will not veil their eyes, nor hold their tongues, the government should perform the office for them....

"The defendant ... cannot claim that he has acted unwittingly."  (45 F.R. 415 [1891]; see also 56 Ind. 328 [1877].)

This federal judge was not expressing a private, personal opinion.  In those days the law quite properly assumed, and the courts agreed, that all Americans had an innate and uniform sense of modesty and decency, by which to measure the obscene qualities of a book or picture.

The Law Discarded Modesty and Chastity

Beginning in 1933, a few U.S. judges occasionally challenged this long-standing precedent.  In most U.S. jurisdictions, however, support for modesty and chastity continued right up until 1957:

"In the mid-fifties, anti-obscenity laws were attacked as unconstitutional.  The attacks were repelled.  Freedom of expression, said the Supreme Court, does not extend to expression that is obscene.... Despite a few discordant judicial utterances, [the law] was not very different from what it had been in 1868."  (Charles Rembar, The End of Obscenity, Random House, 1968, pp. 15 & 17.)

But in 1957, the law discarded modesty and chastity.  The following case illustrates how this legal transition occurred:

On January 6, 1955, the Sunshine Book Company filed suit in U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, seeking injunctive relief against the U.S. Post Office.  The Post Office, it seems, had impounded some 400 copies of a magazine published by the plaintiff, declaring them to be obscene.  The Sunshine Book Company wanted its magazines back, and, as well, a declaratory judgment that its publication was not obscene.

The 1955 U.S. District Court said, "The definition of obscene is: Offensive to chastity and modesty." (128 F.Supp. 564, at 567.) Applying this definition, the court concluded that the postmaster's "decision was founded upon substantial evidence and contains correct rulings.... The magazine is obscene." (Ibid, at 573.)

The 1955 decision was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit in 1957 (see 249 F.2d 114), but it was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1958 on the basis of Roth (see 355 U.S. 372).

Is It Pornography?

Unfortunately, if we disregard the Supreme Court's legal technicalities, we discover that Marriott International distributes a shocking quantity of (technically lawful) pornography as part of its in-room entertainment offerings.

Understandably, Marriott International doesn't use the word "pornography" in connection with these offerings and probably isn't comfortable with that designation.  It is likely assumed by Marriott International that its in-room entertainment operators carefully stay within the law when it comes to "pornography."

But therein lies the problem.  All of this material is offensive to modesty and chastity and therefore offensive to God.  Even the law understands that not all "pornography" is subject to prosecution.

What authority do I have to make this claim?  I claim only the authority to speak that comes from studying and pondering an issue.  But there are four "authorities" that I would like you to consider:

1.  The United States Supreme Court itself,

2.  The 1986 U.S. Attorney General's Commission on Pornography,

3.  BYU Law Professor Robert E. Riggs, and

4.  A recent prophet, President Ezra Taft Benson.

The United States Supreme Court

Regarding its definition of pornography, the Supreme Court said:

"The Roth definition does not reflect the precise meaning of 'obscene' as traditionally used in the English language....

"Pornographic material which is [legally] obscene forms a sub-group of all 'obscene' expression, but not the whole, at least as the word 'obscene' is now used in our language. we note, therefore, that the words 'obscene material' as used in this case, have a specific judicial meaning."  (Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, at 18 & 19, [1973].)

Regarding the relationship between pornography and the First Amendment rights of free speech, the Court said:

"Obscene material [meaning material that fits the Court's definition] is unprotected by the First Amendment."  (Ibid. at 23.)

But laws designed to regulate obscene material "must be carefully limited."  (Ibid. at 23-24, empnasis added.)  This means that the laws enacted by the legislature cannot be more restrictive than the Court's definition of obscenity.  "Thus limited," (Ibid. at 25) the law can regulate only that sub-group of obscenity that has been identified by the U.S. Supreme Court.

This means that obscenity outside of the Supreme Court's "sub-group" is actually protected by the First Amendment.

Most people believe that the Supreme Court has made pornography illegal.  What the Court actually said is almost the opposite:

"Under the holdings announced today, no one will be subject to prosecution for the sale or exposure of obscene materials unless these [obscene] materials depicted or describe patently offensive  ' hard core' sexual conduct specifically defined by the regulating state law."  (Ibid. at 27, empnasis added.)

The U.S. Attorney General's Commission on Pornography

One of the major tasks undertaken by the 1986 U.S. Attorney General's Commission on Pornography was to look closely at the harm caused by pornography.  In this connection the Commission decided that the scope of its inquiry should include both hard- and soft-core pornography.  The report says:

"We have made a conscious decision not to allow our examination of the harm question to be constricted by the existing legal/constitutional definition of the legally obscene [but] to look at the potential for harm in a range of material substantially broader."  (Final Report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, Nashville, Tennessee: Rutledge Hill Press, 1986, p. 31.)

The report then documents the nature and extent of the harm caused by both hard- and soft-core pornography.

Commenting on the fact that the Courts have liberalized obscenity laws by narrowing the legal definition of obscenity to accommodate the First Amendment, the Commission observed:

"The effect of [the] Supreme Court and lower court cases is to limit obscenity prosecutions to 'hard core' material devoid of anything except the most explicit and offensive representations of sex....

"Only the most thoroughly explicit materials, overwhelmingly devoted to patently offensive and explicit representations, and unmitigated by any significant amount of anything else, can be and are in fact determined to be legally obscene."  (Ibid. pp. 18-19, empnasis added.)

The Commission concluded that "a wide variety of sexually oriented material [is] protected by the First Amendment, but it does not follow that the material is harmless, or that its proliferation is good for society."  (Ibid. p. 71.)  In other words, although the government is prohibited from taking action against certain material, private citizens are not.  In fact the Commission encouraged private action against a much broader range of material than can be undertaken by the law itself.

"Citizens ... should not only recognize that the First Amendment protects and encourages their right to express [their] concerns loudly and often, but should as well appreciate the fact that in many aspects of our lives to keep quiet is to approve."  (Ibid.)

BYU Law Professor Robert E. Riggs

In a 1981 article entitled "Miller v. California Revisited: An Empirical Note," BYU Law Professor Robert E. Riggs explained that the United States Supreme Court, in Roth, "adopted a definition of obscenity far less restrictive than the test then being applied in many jurisdictions throughout the country."  (BYU Law Review, 1981, no. 2, p. 248.)  The Professor states:

"The effect of Roth,... far from spearheading a new movement for the suppression of obscenity, was to open the legal floodgates to a great wave of sexually oriented expression....  Its impact was not to suppress but to stimulate the production and distribution of sexually oriented material."  (Ibid, p. 261, emphasis added.)

In support of this he points first to tremendous increases in the volume of sexually oriented materials available nationwide, citing empirical data on the number of appeals related to obscenity issues following Roth.

Secondly, he points to Roth's effect on explicitness.  He quotes the authors of a technical report prepared in August 1970 for the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography:

"The 1960s witness[ed] 'a shift of such major proportions that the degree of explicitness at the frontier in 1960 is now found in mass media widely distributed to the general buying public.  During this period, the most explicit materials available on the market became more and more graphic.  By August 1970, the most explicit materials available 'above the counter' were approximately equivalent to the most explicit materials ever produced [prior to 1960]."  (Ibid, p. 261; emphasis added.)

It is not coincidental that during the late 1950s, Church leaders began condemning an increase of pornographic material in our society.  A good example of this is Ezra Taft Benson's talk in the October 1959 General Conference.  ("Call to Repentance," Improvement Era, Dec. 1959, pp. 956-959.)  Today, because of the tremendous shift in standards that has occurred, most (if not all) of the material to which they referred would not even come close to being legally obscene.

President Ezra Taft Benson

Before quoting President Benson, I want to share a personal experience involving pornography.  For five and a half years, I worked at the Utah State Prison.  In my work there I was occasionally confronted with pages clipped from Playboy magazine.  Playboy is pornography to be sure.

However, regardless of our local community standards, a jury of citizens could never declare Playboy magazine to be legally obscene because it contains enough non-obscene material to place it outside the Supreme Court's sub-group.  It is legal.

Under today's obscenity laws, pornography cannot be elminated. Only the most completely degenerate and degrading material can be eliminated, while, as President Ezra Taft Benson stated in 1970, "by court edict, pornography [is] allowed to prosper."  ("Strengthening the Family," Improvement Era, Dec. 1970, p. 49, emphasis added.)

Most pornography commonly available in America today is soft-core pornography and it is, in fact, by court edict "allowed to prosper."

In 1986, President Benson declared:

"The [U.S. Supreme] Court has removed from both the federal and state government nearly all power to prohibit the distribution and sale or exhibition of pornographic materials."  (The Constitution: A Heavenly Banner, S.L.C., Utah: Deseret Book, 1986, pp. 26-27, emphasis added.)

What About Censorship?

Censorship is not an issue.  Marriott International offers only a relatively small number of the available videos to its customers.  Therefore, Marriott International already censors its inventory.  "The truth is, we all censor what we read, watch, or listen to.  It's called making a choice."  (Ensign, Jan. 1987, pp. 59 and back cover.)

President Benson said:

"We must ... stand up and be counted on the side of decency.... There will be those who will cry 'censorship' and 'suppressing of freedom of information.'  To these people there does not seem to be any difference between liberty and license—but there is a real difference.  It is not denial of liberty to forbid the sale of narcotics or alcohol to children, and neither is it a denial of liberty to ban the distribution of filthy, obscene, character-destroying materials.

"There has developed in this country, I am sorry to say, a species of so-called  ' broadmindedness'  which tolerates anything and everything.  It is high time right-thinking citizens showed they are fed up with such false broadmindedness."  (Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, S.L.C., Utah: Bookcraft, 1988, p. 412.)

Christians Simply Do Not Distribute Pornography

Christians don't distribute pornography.  Period.

Pornography in any hotel is deplorable.  Pornography in a hotel that features a prominent LDS family name and a Book of Mormon in every room is intolerable.

Our society has forgotten its six-thousand year old tradition of Judeo-Christian decency.  Are we as Latter-day Saints justified in doing the same?  Have the laws of God changed?  Have the Biblical laws of modesty and chastity been repealed?

The erosion of moral standards in the world caused by social implementation of the Supreme Court definition of pornography is not surprising—it is happening in fulfillment of Bible prophecy.  (See Matt. 24:37-39.)

The legal definition of pornography is not the result of modern enlightenment, it is the result of moral apostasy.  What difference does it make that the material is now legal?

I ask you, therefore, to please remove pornography from your hotels.

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R. Gary Shapiro is the author of a magazine article and a book: a 1989 Ensign article about pornography and an eleven hundred page scripture reference book.  He and his wife Deborah have nine children and 28 grandchildren.  He has been blogging since May 2005 at ndbf.blogspot.com.

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