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This summer's trial of Robert and Carleen Thomas was more than a routine bust of a dirtybooks distributor.

The Thomases, both 38, of Milpitas, California, were convicted on July 28 of transmitting obscenity through interstate phone lines via their computer bulletin board system on the Internet. The case, which is being appealed, served to open the eyes of both the computer network industry and Christians to the growing availability and acceptance of sexually explicit images over the emerging information superhighway and the eroding control of parents over the information their children take in.

"Now, with the advance of technology, [porn] can come right into the privacy of your own home," says Donna Rice Hughes, spokesperson for the Fairfax, Virginia-based Enough Is Enough, an antipornography women's organization. "A lot of parents are still trying to figure out how to set the clock on their VCR while their kids are in their bedrooms accessing cyberporn," says Hughes.

There may be other milestone convictions in the near future, as the ever-resourceful pornography industry exploits computer and communications technology. In recent months, other instances have surfaced:

* Officials at the Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons laboratory near San Francisco announced in July that the lab's advanced computers were being used by computer hackers to store and distribute more than 1,000 hard-core pornographic images.

* Pedophiles have used computer bulletin boards to contact children, learn their names and addresses, and set up meetings with them. "We've already had rapes of children occur through that type of setup," says antipornography activist Len Munsil.

* Phone-sex operators, stymied by legal and business barriers from drawing consumers with costly 900 numbers, have begun using 800 numbers—normally tollfree, but used by phone-sex corporations to charge enough to make 800-number phone sex an annual $100 million business. (Ameritech will no longer bill customers for charges resulting from 800 number calls beginning this month.)

* Some phone-sex firms have relocated to other countries out of the reach of the Federal Communications Commission. Then, from Moldova, the Dominican Republic, or African islands, the companies receive calls rerouted from 800 or 900 numbers in the United States. Businesses are often unaware that they are paying thousands of dollars in phone sex bills, because the overseas porn provider is not identified on the phone bills.

* Sexually explicit discussion groups on the Internet, a "network of computer networks," are regularly logging the greatest number of messages by Internet's 25 million estimated users.

The difference between the red-light district of the past and the home cyberporn connection of today is the tolerance that has grown with the relaxation of public attitudes and prosecutorial zeal. After a decade of high-profile convictions of people such as major pornography distributor Reuben Sturman, and highly visible Christian involvement in fighting pornography, including Focus on the Family president James Dobson's work on the 1986 Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, broad-based Christian activism appears to be waning.

Jerry Kirk, a longtime antiporn activist and Presbyterian pastor, believes churches are often reluctant to remain involved in the fight over the long haul. "Christians don't like conflict. They don't like risk," he says.

"One of the difficulties we struggle with again and again with churches," says Deen Kaplan, vice president of public policy for the National Coalition Against Pornography (NCAP), "is that the problem of pornography and sexual exploitation in general is an extremely unpleasant problem. You're forced to confront things that you and I probably would wish didn't exist."

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September 12 1994, Vol. 38, No. 10