Bachmann Pledges Constitutional Amendment Banning Pornography

COMMENTARY | Tea Party leader Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is at it again, once more talking about repealing, disbanding, defunding, or banning something. This time it's pornography. According to ABC News' "The Note," the Minnesota Congresswoman has signed a pledge sponsored by the Family Leader, a conservative Iowa organization, called "The Marriage Vow -- A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family." The pledge not only calls for a constitutional amendment for the eradication of all pornography, it also calls for recognizing only heterosexual unions in marriage. But the Minnesota Congresswoman seems to have contradicted herself.

The pledge calls for signatories to vow their "vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage -- through statutory, bureaucratic, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex."

Among other things that Bachmann is vigorously opposed is the continuation of Social Security as it now exists, health care reform, the existence of the Environmental Protection Agency (which she has vowed to dissolve), and the Department of Education.

The pledge not only calls for a ban against pornography and a definition of marriage, it also equates same-sex marriage with polygamy and bigamy and states that homosexuality is a matter of choice, not genetically-driven. Pornography and being gay are all part of the "debasement of marriage" and are a "function of adultery."

Russell Goldman at ABC News found that the pledge contradicted earlier statements made by Bachmann.

"I do believe in the 10th Amendment and I do believe in self-determination for the states," she said during the first Republican Presidential debate hosted by CNN in June. "I'm running for the presidency of the United States. And I don't see that it's the role of a president to go into states and interfere with their state laws."

The statement does not square with the intent of the pledge, which asserts that she will do exactly what she said she wouldn't -- attempt to enact a law as "president to go into states and interfere with their state laws.

One of those states would be Iowa, a state that has already passed legislation recognizing same-sex marriages.

At present, six states have legalized same-sex marriages or unions. Two of those states will be the first to see how Michele Bachmann stacks up against her Republican opponents -- Iowa and New Hampshire. Taking such a harsh approach to homosexuality (choice-driven without scientific proof, according to the "Declaration"), she might find herself trailing in the running for the GOP nomination. However, she may not, as the GOP electorate, being more conservative, are more geared to traditional marriages and more inclined to agree with her.

At the same time, though, an overall ban on pornography could be seen as problematic, calling not only for an overhaul of a Supreme Court ruling that opted in favor of the First Amendment and freedom of expression in accordance to "community standards," which allowed legal jurisdiction of obscene materials on the local level and outside the protection of the First Amendment. However, the advent of the Internet has made the "community standards" issue that has been in place since Miller v. California (1973), difficult to enforce due to jurisdiction.

It is unclear what Bachmann might mean by signing a pledge that would ban pornography. An outright ban would run afoul of the Constitution and contradicts her own Tea Party stance of increased localization of government. A ban on pornography on the Internet would call for a national "community standards" law, a contradiction of her stance against the government's increasing presence in the lives of Americans.

Bachmann seems to have just signed her way into a lot of explaining in the coming months...