Alan Dershowitz Defends Porn Against COVID-19 Shutdown Backlash

More than 40 years after he successfully defended Deep Throat star Harry Reems against a federal obscenity charge, controversial civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz is back in the corner of the adult industry. This time, the 81-year-old Harvard Law professor has penned an op-ed defending the industry against “zealots” whom, he says, seek to “exploit” the coronavirus pandemic to push their own crusade against porn. Dershowitz was seen most recently as a member of Donald Trump’s defense team, arguing against Trump’s impeachment in the United States Senate.  But in 1977, Dershowitz helped Reems get a conviction for “conspiracy” to transport “obscene” material across state lines tossed out on appeal.  In an essay appearing Friday on the conservative political site Newsmax, Dershowitz responded to a recent, widely circulated opinion article in another conservative publication, The Federalist, which was titled, “How Big Porn Is Making The Coronavirus Crisis Even Worse.” The Federalist article, by American Principles Project Director Terry Schilling, claims that the coronavirus crisis has “provided an unprecedented opportunity for Big Porn to capitalize on our social isolation,” as traffic to online porn sites has seen a significant spike around the world.  “During a worldwide pandemic that has already taken thousands of lives, concerns about a rise in porn usage may seem trivial,” Schilling writes. “However, to brush these concerns aside would be a huge mistake.” But Dershowitz sees Schilling’s “concerns” as indicative of a campaign to shut down legally protected speech on a permanent basis, using the pandemic crisis as a starting point. “What the anti-porn zealots are trying to do is, in their own words, permanently stifle the free expression of sexual images they deem offensive,” Dershowitz wrote. “But they picked the wrong time, because if there ever was a justification for ‘home remedies’ to sexual deprivation, this may be that time.” Dershowitz’s belief is shared by Bowling Green State University psychology professor and sex researcher Joshua B. Grubbs, who wrote in the tech magazine Fast Company that his findings show that porn can offer “relief” from the “stress, anxiety, or negative emotions” that naturally arise from the global crisis. Though Schilling in his Federalist essay calls porn a “silent but deadly, a powerful disease that has had devastating effects across our society,” Grubbs says that his research shows no such thing. “In short, porn does not seem to be causing widespread problems, and it is probably offering people a distraction from the boredom and stress of current events,” the psychology professor wrote. Dershowitz warns that the “anti-porn zealots” risk drawing valuable attention away from the crisis itself, potentially causing additional harm. “Now more than ever we must not devote additional resources to unnecessarily constraining basic liberties that are unrelated to the public health needs to prevent the spread of the coronavirus,” he wrote in his Newsmax op-ed. Photo By Sage Ross / Wikimedia Commons