The Dallas City Council, led by Mayor Rawlings, voted Wednesday afternoon to ban Exxxotica, a pornography expo, from returning to the city-owned downtown convention center.
Needless to say, the Exxxotica expo, and the porn industry at large, will not be happy with the Dallas City Council the same way the East India Company was not happy with anti-slavery advocates. There are already threats of a lawsuit, so it’s important to make a stand, and let Dallas know it made the right choice!
Despite threats of lawsuits, Mayor Rawlings and the Dallas City Council recognized that sometimes doing the right thing means having to confront unjust industries. The Exxxotica event promotes hard-core pornography and torture sex, despite the fact that it is sexually exploitive and linked to increases in sexual violence, sexual dependencies, and decreases in brain matter. Rawlings said last week it was his “civic obligation to protect the city and our citizens” when explaining why he proposed the resolution calling for the ban. He said that after hearing about a place in the Exxxotica event where women are tied up and whipped he realized that it had crossed a line and he could not stand by while Dallas accepted money in order to host the event in its convention center.
Rawlings’ argued that denying Exxxotica the use of the convention center is no different than other restrictions that the city is authorized to put on things like the size or location of billboards.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation assisted instigating a Twitter storm directed toward the Dallas City Council, asking them to vote no to hosting an event all about pornography:
The neurological, psychological, and sociological harms of pornography documented in research are finally being addressed at a governmental level, and so now is the time to support those who are brave enough to stand up for human dignity in the public square.
