The FCC's cable crackdown

Worried about the bottom line, the cable and satellite industry has responded by launching a campaign to educate parents about available technology, like the V-Chip, that can block certain channels from any single television. The campaign has been opposed by a powerful coterie of family advocacy groups and activists with close ties to major evangelical ministries and the Bush White House. "It will be war," says Schatz, of the coming battle over cable and satellite regulation. "There will be tremendous grass-roots pressure brought to bear."

This summer, Martin hired one of the activists, Penny Nance, to work in the FCC's Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, a position that will allow her to advise on indecency issues. Nance founded the Kids First Coalition, a group that fights abortion, cloning and indecency in the name of "pro-child, pro-family public policy." She has long been one of the nation's leading anti-pornography crusaders, testifying repeatedly before Congress. During the last presidential campaign, she appeared on Fox News as a "suburban stay-at-home mom" to say that women believe President Bush will "protect our children."

In public talks, she describes herself as a "victim of pornography" because she says a man who once tried to rape her watched porn. In January, Nance signed, along with other activists, an open letter to President Bush, complaining of a "huge indecency problem" on basic cable and a growing indecency threat on satellite radio. "The FCC should be providing leadership in addressing these problems, instead of siding with the industry," the letter said.

Nance, who did not return calls from Salon, has been invited to speak to a closed-door strategy meeting of anti-indecency groups that will be hosted by Concerned Women for America on Sept. 13 in Washington. The meeting is being organized by Phil Burress, the president of Citizens for Community Values, a group tied to Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family. Among other items, the group plans to discuss state or federal legislation that would redefine as obscene any close-up shots of vaginal intercourse or oral sex. If passed, and upheld by the courts, Burress said he hopes the new laws, which have not yet been introduced, will outlaw much of mainstream pornography, including programs delivered over pay-per-view cable and satellite networks. "I disconnected my cable," Burress said. "It got so bad that you couldn't even watch a football game."

Many of the future indecency debates at the FCC are likely to focus on whether racy shows, like the horse episode of "Keen Eddie," are indecent, even if they don't show nudity or include dirty words. In February, for instance, the Parents Television Council complained to the FCC about the CBS crime hit "C.S.I." One episode featured an adult murder victim who played out his sexual fantasies by dressing in diapers and suckling a prostitute. In one scene, the murder victim receives an enema laced with LSD and begins to play with his own feces. Then the prostitute encourages him to jump off a balcony. He later dies, apparently, by choking on his own blood.

Under the current rules, material is indecent if it is "offensive as measured by contemporary community standards." But standards vary widely from community to community, household to household. Family Research Council legal director Patrick A. Trueman said he recently traveled to a Marriott Hotel in Houston, where he said three separate cable stations -- not pay-per-view stations -- were showing "hardcore pornography," which he described as "sex acts." He demanded that the hotel staff come disable the channels. The staff told him one of the stations was Showtime. "I don't have cable just for this reason," said Trueman, who previously worked on obscenity cases in the Justice Department. "If I had cable, I would not want my children viewing that."

If the activists have their way, Trueman's children will not be the only Americans barred from watching sex -- explicit or implied -- on television. For now, they have the political winds at their backs, and a sympathetic captain at the helm of the FCC. Before taking his current job, Martin served as a lawyer for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and later as a White House aide. His wife, Catherine J. Martin, worked for Vice President Cheney until recently, when she took another job in the White House to work for the president on policy and planning issues.

There is little doubt that Martin knows the political stakes of the coming fight. In 2003, he shared his concerns over indecency in a letter to the Parents Television Council, a group that has called for a boycott of shows like the WB's "Everwood" because it features adults who encourage teenage characters to use birth control and, in one case, have an abortion. "Certainly broadcasters and cable operators have significant First Amendment rights, but these rights are not without boundaries," Martin wrote to the group. "They are limited by law. They also should be limited by good taste."

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