Source: American Renewal
By: Company Press Release
(WASHINGTON) — American Renewal Vice President Richard Lessner today issued the following statement:
“It is entirely understandable why, from the point of view of public perception, Al Gore does not welcome the spectacle of prominent Democrats frolicking next week at the Playboy mansion during his party’s convention in Los Angeles.
“While we applaud the vice president’s efforts to sanction Rep. Loretta Sanchez, whose political action committee is sponsoring the Democratic fundraiser, we must point out that Mr. Gore’s sensitivities are a recent development.
“Now that the Gore campaign has had an epiphany and discovered God, and is striving to seize the moral high ground and highlight pro-family issues, the vice president is desperate to distance himself from the purveyors of pornography.
“Yet the problem here is one of substance, not image. In recent years, Mr. Gore has accepted at least $8,500 in campaign contributions from Hugh Hefner and his daughter, Playboy CEO Christie Hefner. And it should be recalled that Mr. Gore and his wife, Tipper, were prominent critics of the music industry in the 1980s. The Gores led a national campaign against porn-rock groups and their producers whose music glamorizes the most vile forms of sex and violence. Following a meeting with top industry executives, however, during his run for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Gore and his wife dropped their criticism of porn-rock.
“This week Mr. Gore’s speeches have been bursting with rhetoric about God, faith, family and moral values; yet only last month Mr. Gore was pandering to the militant homosexual lobby by praising a gay and lesbian pride parade staged in Rome during Christian Grand Jubilee Year. Pope John Paul II condemned the parade and decried it as an ‘insult.’
“We would also point out that in 1993, Congress rebuked the Clinton-Gore Justice Department on a 425-3 vote of the House for its lax enforcement of federal anti-child pornography statutes. The Clinton-Gore administration, which was actually praised by the porn industry for its lack of vigorous prosecution, did not change its enforcement policy until after the 1994 election.
“Mr. Gore is right to denounce the Playboy fundraiser as inappropriate. Everything the Hefners and the Playboy empire stands for is demeaning to women, marriage, families and decency.
“Yet posturing over the Sanchez affair is little more than empty expediency if it is not supported by meaningful actions, such as returning the Playboy money. Paying lip service to morals and family values, while accepting campaign contributions from executives and celebrities who purvey sex and violence, is plainly hypocritical and smacks of self-serving sanctimony. The old saying applies: if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Mr. Gore is trying to brush off the fleas.”
American Renewal, a non-profit lobbying organization, was founded in 1992 to educate the general public and cultural leaders about traditional American values and to promote the philosophy of America’s founding fathers concerning the nature of ordered liberty.
