Maryland Senate stops porn film screening at UM

Gadi Dechter, Laura Smitherman and Stephen Kiehl report in the Baltimore Sun: “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.”

ADF Litigation Staff Counsel Heather Gebelin Hacker comments at the ADF Center for Academic Freedom blog:

If the University of Maryland is such a bastion of free speech that they would risk the ire of much of the community in order to turn their student center into a porno theater, they must really respect the First Amendment—but sadly, this is not the case. Consider the ADF Center for Academic Freedom’s ongoing case at a sister campus, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. There, pro-life students dared to put on a pro-life exhibit, but university administrators relegated the display to an isolated, nearly deserted area of campus.