When I say that I love porn, I?m not speaking rhetorically. I didn?t adopt this stance in an enlightened, women?s studies kind of way. It?s just that ever since I got my sweaty hands on my junior high school best friend?s mom?s tattered copy of Nancy Friday?s , followed precipitously with my parents? stash of Penthouse Variations, I?ve been a porn fan. I just love reading the stuff, especially now that the internet brings it to me fresh and free everyday. And yeah, I read it for wanking. As it turns out, my textual habits are now being defended by none other than President George W. Bush and various religious right wing zealots.

It all started when Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln proposed a 25% porn tax on internet porn sites. She and several other Dems hope that their wildly unconstitutional Internet Safety and Child Protection Act of 2005 will help make the internet a more ?child safe? place by forcing adult website owners to pay a ridiculous, blood-sucking one quarter of their revenues back to the government (who can then, one supposes, use it to subsidize defense spending which makes the real world child-unsafe). But here?s the beauty part: the religious right opposes the proposed law.

Randy Dotinga at Wired News reports that Rick Schatz, president of the religious advocacy group National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families, told him: ?We?d not necessarily be pleased if the U.S. gets into what some people would call a ?sin tax.? There would be the concern that the government would change its focus to tax pornographic materials rather than control production and distribution.?

In other words: to tax a thing is to legitimize it. I?m glad my Christian allies are keeping my favorite mom ?n pop porn sites afloat by fighting this evil sin tax. But I think their strategy may be more canny than it seems at first. Let?s leave aside the fact that taxing a form of speech based on content is unconstitutional on its face. And let?s also leave aside the fact that it will be impossible to determine which kinds of sites should be taxed because there are so many kinds of sexual and erotic expression on the web, both commercial and noncommercial. (Although the bill?s architects say their definition of adult material will be based on the same rules that define ?sexually-explicit conduct? in Title 18, section 2257 of the US Code ? note that these rules are actually borrowed from section 2256 ? that isn?t much help. This definition of sexual explicitness was developed in the context of identifying child porn, not ?adult material.? It?s vague and strange, and its use in the application of a sin tax would no doubt lead to a whole host of litigation epiphenomena.)

Back to the bizarre canniness of Schatz? camp. I think they?re opposed to the bill because it will impose such a burden on sites with sexual material that it could actually tip the balance of the nation?s sympathy back towards pornographers. After all, these are just Americans out to make a buck on sex. If it appears they?re getting beaten down by a tax-happy government, they may become martyrs rather than evildoers. So I say: bring on the porn tax. I want to watch the legal smackdown. I want to see anti-tax right-wingers and pornographers fighting side-by-side, shaking their fists at Big Government.

Today the right wing made another move to help me get more internet porn. The Bush Administration, possibly in response to a call from the conservative Family Research Council, has asked that ICANN delay plans to implement a ?xxx? top-level domain on the net. ICANN ? or, for non-wonk, non-geeks, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ? is a controversial US nonprofit which serves as a domain name gatekeeper. In June, it suffix [note to self: buy www.othermag.xxx!]. You?d think conservatives would rejoice, right? Instant porno ghetto, complete with a really easy way to filter out ?nasty? material based on the domain name.

But no! Conservative website FamilyNews :

Daniel Weiss, Senior Analyst for Media and Sexuality at Focus on the Family Action, says there are nearly 260 million porn web pages already. A .xxx domain would only make matters worse. “Basically they’re creating an entire new domain that can be populated with pornography.” Weiss says once a .xxx domain is officially established, there would inevitably be a feeling that pornography is normal and given an official stamp of approval.

So now I have the Christian right?s full approval to keep surfing porn in all the usual places ? no pesky changing my bookmark file; no rules forcing adult sites to get ripped off when they buy those $75 xxx domain names.

Damn I love America.