Students show porn film in defiance

Free speech at issue

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

ANNAPOLIS — In a show of defiance against state lawmakers who sought to prohibit the on-campus showing of a hard-core pornographic film, University of Maryland students screened the movie Monday night in what they said was a display of their free speech rights.

The planned showing of "Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge" has become a political football in Annapolis that has generated worldwide attention. When legislators initially caught wind of the plan to show the movie Saturday night at the campus theater, they threatened to withhold all funding for the state's flagship institution. University administrators called off the screening, but students protested that their freedom of speech was being violated

The students rescheduled the XXX-labeled screening for Monday night in an academic building, which was preceded by a discussion on censorship and free speech. University officials decided to allow the event to proceed this time because it contained an educational aspect, which Sen. Jamie B. Raskin applauded.

"The university stood up for the First Amendment and a robust freedom of speech on campus," said Raskin (D-Montgomery), a constitutional law professor at American University. "The students made clear they weren't going to be pushed around by political demagogues."

University officials said in a statement Monday night that their decision to allow the movie to be shown was based on "the right of a free society to offer opinion."

Students packed the lecture hall to hear the pre-screening dialogue on free speech and view the first 30 minutes of the pornographic flick. The two-and-a-half hour film, which at $10 million, is the most expensive XXX-film ever made, was to be shown in its entirety on Saturday.

Still, Sen. Andrew P. Harris (R-Baltimore, Harford) said he planned to proceed with plans to ask the state university system to develop a policy on showing sexually explicit material on campus. By allowing the film to be shown, Harris said the university essentially promoted the degradation of women in pornography, which can be linked to violence against women.

Harris, who has five children, maintained that the issue dealt more with how taxpayer money is used than free speech.

"Just because someone is on a college campus, they do not have a right to spend the hard-earned money of Maryland's taxpayers on something as detrimental to our society as hard-core XXX pornorgraphy," he said in a statement, which noted that taxpayer money was used to construct the building where the film was shown.

Staff writers Megan King and Margie Hyslop contributed to this report.

abrody@somdnews.com