WWW- The national awareness campaign called White Ribbon Against Pornography [W.R.A.P.] Week starts Sunday October 30 and ends Sunday, November 6, 2005. Morality in Media, Inc., www.moralityinmedia.org is one of the oldest anti-porn advocacies in the nation and has sponsored this campaign each year to offer the public resources and information on how to battle the floodtide of hardcore pornography pouring into our nation’s communities, homes and children’s minds.

Their web site contains many tips on how to get involved in the campaign, sample sermons, sample letters to supermarket CEOs on smut at the registers, approaching the FCC with complaints on TV/radio programming, studies and books linking sexual violence and pornography, porn problems and solutions, where to get help for porn victims and addicts, how to work with local law enforcement and legislators, etc.

The first W.R.AP. campaign began with Norma Norris of Butler, PA, in 1987 after she heard a sermon against pornography delivered by the pastor of her Catholic parish, Msgr. Francis Glenn, who lamented that local prosecutors and law enforcement agencies had been deluded into thinking that people didn’t care about the hardcore porn being sold in their neighborhoods. Norma gave herself the challenge to inspire her community and to send out the message: ” WE CARE! WE COUNT!” She adopted the White Ribbon as a symbol for decency and a new movement was born involving many organizations, churches, and citizens in Butler County. The highlight of the campaign was the bulldozing of a closed porn bookstore in front of a large crowd of citizens with cameras rolling and local TV stations reporting the event. The movement caught on and from coast to coast citizens are inspired to fly the White Ribbon proudly as they undertake to do their part to hold community standards for media decency to the highest ideal.

With the theme “One Person Can Make a Difference,” I have undertaken the challenge to battle for media decency whenever the opportunity presents itself. One day I walked into a newly opened Shell station in my neighborhood to be met by an open rack of hardcore porn displayed by the door – no shrink wrap, no blinder bars. I decided not to confront the clerk but to call in a complaint to the Shell Regional Office in Oak Brook, IL. A Shell agent heard my report, went out to investigate the next day, and phoned me back that there won’t be any porn in that station or any Shell station from now on. The agent phoned Shell Corporate Headquarters and a franchise decision was made to prohibit, by signed contract, any franchisee from selling porn in Shell stations nationwide. All it took was one phone call and an agent with integrity who followed through to get something done by the corporate leaders of his organization.

With knowledge of the local, state and federal obscenity laws, and the inspiration to “care and count,” I have approached village mayors and police departments many times to encourage them to enforce the law and ensure that citizens are protected from the onslaught of the porn industry. The results are: A local convenience store is no longer offering “soft core” porn in front of the counter, “hard-core porn” in back of the counter, and a huge selection of x-rated videos alongside family fare to their customers. A village book shop no longer tosses its old porn magazines in an outside dumpster where teenagers where able to get at them. A nearby village was struggling with its “adult use” ordinances, being challenged by a strip joint that wanted to move in. I had referred them to a law firm with expertise on First Amendment and Obscenity law resulting in a more restrictive, constitutionally sound, ordinance that protects their community standards. I am now working with a neighboring village Police Department to close down the “back room” filled with x-rated movies in a video shop that also caters to children and families.

We need to understand that the First Amendment DOES NOT protect Obscenity. We need to stop believing the lies and clichés drummed into us by the so-called “free speech” and “right to porn” proponents. We need to wear a White Ribbon for W.R.A.P. week and work all through the year to protect our families and communities from this culture’s “plague of pornography.”