CBN News - Child Porn Law Focus of Free Speech Case

October 30, 2007
By John Jessup, CBN News Reporter

Watch CBN News Interview of ACLJ's Jay Sekulow on this issue.

CBNNews.com - For years, lawmakers have been working to stamp out child porn, establishing task forces and enacting laws to make it a crime to distribute, solicit or promote sexually-explicit images of children.

"This is the dirtiest business you could ever think about. Let's do something about it," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said.

But in today's Internet age, Congress has had a tough time balancing its efforts against what opponents call a violation of free speech.

Watch more from the ACLJ's Jay Sekulow on the child pornography issue, following CBN News reporter John Jessup's report.

Today's case centers around a law Congress passed in 2003 in an attempt to beef up penalties for child predators lurking on the Internet.

But part of the law was overturned by a lower court, ruling that it was too vague and unconstitutional. The court believed the law could ban not only harmfully obscene images of children. But even clean ones as well.

The government argues advertising child porn fuels the market, even when the promoted pictures are fakes.

But opponents counter that the law is so vague that it could even affect people who are trying to promote mainstream literature and movies.

The Supreme Court agreed with that view the last time it took on the subject of child porn laws, saying another congressional ban was so broad that it could have banned Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet."

So while some First Amendment rights supporters say they're protecting free speech, children's advocates wonder whether Congress can protect kids at all.