Porn On Military Bases

It is as common as salutes or the daily raising of the flag. Yes, America's military men and, yes, some woment consume porn. Apparently that annoys Rep. Paul Broun, as Radley Balko reports:

Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., (profiled by Dave Weigel here) wants to ban the sale of Playboy on military bases.

“Allowing sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes, feeding a base addiction, eroding the family as the primary building block of society, and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad,” Broun said.

Broun said he wants to bring the Defense Department into compliance with the intent of the 1997 law “so that taxpayers will not be footing the costs of distributing pornography.”

Except taxpayers aren't actually funding it:

Exchange officials noted that tax dollars are not used to procure magazines in the system’s largely self-funded operations.

Which triggered this stunner from Broun's office:

But Broun’s spokesman John Kennedy contended that taxpayer dollars are involved — “used to pay military salaries, so taxpayer money is, in effect, being used to buy these materials,” he said.

That line of argument would open up all sorts of other possibilities.

Lots of possibilities.

By that argument, of course, military members or other government employees (inluding Broun himself) would not be permitted to do all sorts of things with their paycheck that any privately employed person would be entitled to do, including purchasing porn.

But what makes Broun's argument all the more ludicrous is that there is no link between porn and violent sexual attacks on bases or sexual harassment. Indeed a sexual harasser need not even own porn, consume porn or buy porn on base to be be an offender.

Stupid is as stupid does.