Adopt-A-Community
Cleaning our cultural wasteland one stretch at a time.
You’ve seen the signs along the highway indicating that an organization or business has pledged to keep a stretch of road clean. I’m part of a group that has adopted a section of I-25 between Denver and Colorado Springs. Every few months our team puts on our gloves and blaze orange vests and proceeds to fill bag after bag of trash. We’ve found it all: car parts, fast food waste, soiled underwear, and even a clip of live ammunition. Regardless of the day, every time we set out to clean up our mile, the work is difficult, frustrating, and disgusting. Still, it’s a nice break from my job, which is also rather difficult, frustrating, and disgusting.
I am the Media and Sexuality Analyst for Focus on the Family. I fight obscenity. Or, as my colleagues like to joke, I’m the porn guy. For the better part of two years I have been researching court rulings, obscenity regulations, and business numbers in an effort to prevent the seedier side of life from assimilating into mainstream America. I have met with more defeats that victories.
I recently spoke of my efforts with a bright college senior. After discussing various aspects of the struggle, he asked a poignant question. “Can we really do anything about obscenity?” he asked. “It’s everywhere, and nothing seems to deter its spread.”
This student was not demonstrating a cynicism typical of many people his age, but rather a frank and honest assessment of the state of our culture and its fascination with all things prurient.
This young man, and perhaps millions like him, is alarmed by the normalization and mainstreaming of obscene material but feels helpless to do anything about it. It is as if he were tasked with cleaning up every highway in America. The sheer volume of trash, practically speaking, approaches infinity.
The fight against the proliferation of illegal pornography and its not-so-distant-cousin broadcast indecency is too large for any one person or organization to maintain. But around the country, individuals and groups are staking out their “mile” of the cultural highway and pledging to keep it clean.
The past month has seen at least three such examples. In Ruston, Louisiana, a video-store owner was tried for selling obscene videos. After viewing the tapes in question the jury took just four hours to reach a guilty verdict. Just three days later, the owner’s brother—and business partner—decided to pull all hard-core videos from the defendant’s store—more than 8,000 in all.
In West Chester Township, Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati, an adult video store decided to voluntarily close its doors rather than have a grand jury view ten hard-core pornographic tapes. The Greater Cincinnati area has seen a number of similar actions throughout the summer and fall. Convinced that area hotels were distributing obscenity through in-room pay-per-view movies, a community group encouraged local police and prosecutors to investigate. These actions led seven hotels to discontinue offering the movies rather than go to trial for obscenity violations.
In Purcellville, Virginia, a group of Patrick Henry College students decided to investigate a local adult video store. They researched local obscenity ordinances, contacted local police and town leaders, and convinced the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney of Virginia to prosecute the store under public nuisance laws. Rather than face legal action, the store removed its pornographic tapes.
These three episodes point to one universal truth. Cleaning up the national culture may seem a task too daunting for most, but we need not stand idly by as illegal polluters defile our local communities. Working to keep our nation clean mile by mile will certainly be exhausting, dirty, and often exasperating work, but are we really prepared to accept the alternative of doing nothing?
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