By Gadi Dechter, Laura Smitherman and Stephen Kiehl , gadi.dechter@baltsun.com and laura.smitherman@baltsun.com|April 03, 2009
Maryland lawmakers know pornography when they see it, and they know how to stop it: by threatening to halt funding to the state's flagship public university.
Civil liberties groups criticized Thursday a decision by the University of Maryland to cancel a campus screening of what is billed as the most expensive adult film ever made.
During a lively Senate debate on pornography and the First Amendment, it became clear that politicians were prepared to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in state aid unless the public university backed down from a plan to show Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge in the College Park student union.
Senators' arguments were postponed several times as groups of young schoolchildren on field trips to the State House took seats in the second-floor gallery.
At one point, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller explained to the visitors why senators kept changing the subject. "If you kids are wondering what we're doing, we're waiting for you to leave the room," he said. "We're going to talk about some bad stuff."
David Rocah, staff attorney with the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the legislature's threats and UM's apparent capitulation "an incredibly dangerous and disturbing precedent."
Linda Clement, vice president for student affairs at Maryland, said she decided to cancel the screening for a variety of reasons - not just the outrage in Annapolis.
"I think people were concerned about portrayal of women, concerned about violence, concerned about our students and decision-making processes," she said. "We were losing sight of the educational value that might come from some kind of exercise like this, so it just seemed like the best thing to do."
Advertised as a "XXX blockbuster" that cost $10 million to produce, the film was scheduled to be shown at midnight Saturday. A student programming committee voted to screen the movie and, as recently as Wednesday, campus officials defended the event as a "fun" alternative to off-campus drinking and were vowing not to block the showing.
That was before Sen. Andrew P. Harris, a conservative Republican representing Baltimore and Harford counties, proposed writing into the state budget a denial of funding to any institution of higher education that allows a public screening of a film marketed as XXX-rated, unless it is part of an academic course.
