On November 22, the Senate approved, by unanimous consent, a resolution (S. Con. Res. 77) expressing the sense of Congress that federal obscenity laws should be vigorously enforced. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the resolution on November 6 (see The Source, 11/7/03). The resolution is sponsored by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). According to the resolution, a “May 2 report from the National Academies’ National Research Council stated that ‘aggressive enforcement of existing anti-obscenity laws can help reduce children’s access to certain kinds of sexually explicit material on the Internet.’” Additionally, the resolution states that a 1986 report from the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography found that the most prevalent forms of pornography could be categorized as sexually violent material, and that most of this material is “degrading to people, most often women.”
