No Porn for You

On the subject of empty political posturing, the Winona County Board has altered its employee travel policies, requiring its employees to choose from a list of lodging services that do not offer pornographic pay-per-view programs.

The implication here is that employees were previously allowed to watch pay-per-view materials on the county's dime. Putting a stop to that, whether the employees were watching HustlerTV or Nickelodeon, or at least making them pay for their entertainment out of their own pocket, is reasonable.

But let's have a quick reality check. First, the county's new policy doesn't just forbid employees from ordering porn in their hotel room while on business; it forbids them from staying in a building that has porn available. So let's say an employee travels to a location where there are two hotels available, and one is significantly less expensive than the other but it has porn accessible in the room. At a time of tightening budgets, where services are being cut for lack of funds, the employee would be bound to spend more of the county's money just so they can stay in a room that doesn't offer porn.

Second, pornography is really in the eye of the beholder. To carry on with the earlier example, an employee may spend more of the county's money to stay in a hotel that does not carry pay-per-view porn, but what if the hotel they patronized had HBO or Cinemax? Or what if the employee decided to relax after a hard day's work with an in-room screening of Blue Velvet, Basic Instinct, or Lolita? Already it should be clear that the board's new ruling is capricious and does little to curb the behavior it's seeking to stop.

Third, despite some local organizations petitioning the county board to the contrary, there is no causal link between pornography and violence. That's not to deny the existence of violent pornography but for the policy's advocates to say that this measure will protect women is nonsense. In fact, the March 2010 issue of The Scientist included an article that showed an inverse relationship between the consumption of pornography and the rate of violence. To say it simply, the more pornography society uses, the less sex crimes it has.

While I can commend the board for having it's heart in the right place, clearly its head was somewhere else. And all of this will be a moot point in months and years ahead as the hotel pay-per-view industry is dying out anyway. But as admitted by council member Marcia Ward (who abstained from the vote), the policy has further implications. Should the county also file restrictions that employees, while traveling on county business, cannot drink or smoke or stay in hotels that have bars or smoking rooms? And what purpose does this serve?

If the board was really interested in really helping women it could do so much more. But this isn't about helping women. It's about politicians conspicuously polishing their good-guy badges.