No pay-per-view porn in hotels? One Minn. county might go clean

Photo by schillergarcia

There are a lot of inappropriate (and illegal) things that happen behind hotel room doors. But is watching pay-per-view porn one of them?

A victims services advocacy group is trying to convince Olmsted County commissioners to step up their initiative to prevent sexual violence by first asking all Rochester hotels to voluntarily cut offerings to pay-per-view pornographic films. Next could be making public officials and employees stay in "clean" hotels which don't offer publicly-available porn.

Can we regulate ourselves out of sexual violence or is this just another ridiculous violation of privacy and business freedom? The commissioners will vote later this year on the "clean" hotels policy. County officials see this as the start of a state-wide initiative much like the smoking ban.

More from the Rochester Post-Bulletin:

"It's changing an environment that normalizes sexual harm," said Jeanne Martin, a program manager in Dodge-Fillmore-Olmsted Community Corrections.

Martin said she is involved with a group that includes representatives from the county's Public Health Department and Mayo Clinic who believe pornography is tied to sexual violence, and that restricting access to porn is a means of preventing that form of violence.

What's next? Banning all R-rated movies because that violence might lead them to commit some kind of crime? How much can we "protect" adults from dangers before we've gone too far?

Watch the WCCO video report here.