Navy “Clarifies” Porn Ban”
Pentagon Watch, Number 4 – June 17, 2013
Morality in Media is disappointed in the changing rhetoric coming from the Secretary of the Navy’s Office on removing pornography. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus released a memo on June 13 calling for the immediate removal of all offensive and degrading materials, including magazines, from all areas to include Navy and Marine Exchanges.
After being congratulated by MIM, the Navy press office clarified to us today that they were only removing pornography and other offensive material “from workplaces” at Navy and Marine Exchanges but would continue to sell it, however contradictory this may seem. So, at least according to his press people, Mabus doesn’t want servicemen looking porn, but he apparently has no qualms selling it to them.
The Mabus memo clearly lists in section 4.B. “Navy and Marine Corps Exchanges” as one of the locations to be cleared of offensive material. Section 4.D. says that all materials will be removed “that a reasonable person would consider degrading or offensive” including, as Section 4.D.2. indicates, “books, pictures, photographs, calendars, posters, magazines, videos….”
Throughout the military, Exchange stores are selling a large variety of pornographic magazines, which treat women as little more than whores whose self worth is tied to their ability to sexually excite. But isn’t that attitude at the root of the military’s shocking sexual abuse scandal?
We don’t suggest that pornography is the sole or even dominant cause of rising sexual assaults in the Military, but we know it won’t be solved until all women in the military are assured that the culture of sexual exploitation in the Armed Services is dead. That cannot happen unless Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel halts the sale of pornography in all Military Exchange, as MIM requested in a letter on June 3, 2013.
