Dear brother in the Lord,

We wrote you last year on behalf of the Religious Alliance Against Pornography (RAAP) and the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families (NCPCF). We alerted you about the dangers of parents buying video mobile phones, PDAs and video iPods as Christmas presents for their young people and choosing to include access to the Internet at the time of purchase. That danger is greater today than it was last year.

We have been working behind the scenes all year. This summer and fall we have been in communication with leaders in the wireless industry including the five largest companies which provide 97% of these services (Alltel, Cingular, Sprint-Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon). They have agreed with Congress and the Wireless Association (i.e. CTIA) not to provide pornography on their platforms. This is commendable. We are thankful for this decision that expresses their sense of corporate responsibility.

But most of these corporations have established the goal to sell access to the Internet because this provides considerable monthly income. They have told us they do not intend to warn parents about Internet dangers at the time of purchase. They believe parents know these dangers and are responsible for the safety of their children.

Therefore, the task of warning parents about these dangers lies totally on the shoulders of leaders within the religious community. That is why we come to you at this time. We know you care deeply about the safety and well-being of the children and young people in your care. We believe you will want to communicate the following facts to all leaders responsible for pastoral care within your denomination/faith group.

Every responsible Christian parent needs to know these facts:

1. The Internet is very helpful, but also very dangerous because there are hundreds of millions of pornographic sites and secondly because sexual predators use the Internet to seduce young people and to advance their agenda.

2. Presently, there are no adequate safety devices for either home computers or for these new mobile phones, PDAs, Sony PlayStations or video iPods that can access the Internet. Young people know how to get around present filtering devices.

3. If you purchase access to the Internet on these modern technology devices, your child/young person will be able to access all the pornography on the Internet.

4. Your young person will be able to access that pornography anonymously.

5. Your child/young person may choose now and always not to look at pornography. But that is not enough. The pornographers have learned how to attach their toxic material to good sites so that your child can seek wholesome sites and be automatically transferred from a good site to the contents of an "adult bookstore." This is called "page-jacking". We know from research and vast experience that sexually explicit material is seductive and addictive, and unwanted pornography often leads to wanted pornography.

6. While all five wireless companies are planning now not to have any pornography on their platform, some of the companies are presently exploring partnerships with other providers, and in addition, are working with second and third tier companies that will include considerable pornography on their systems. This means those particular wireless companies will not be providing pornography directly, but will become the means of distributing pornography indirectly and with financial profit. We want to impact their decisions.

7. Minors who use mobile phones and PDAs that have still camera and video capture capabilities are able to produce sexually explicit images of themselves and each other and can send those images to another person and to the Internet. They can be arrested, tried and convicted as felons for producing and distributing child pornography, which could result in penalties as high as $5,000 and accompanied by a prison sentence. These penalties and fines could be carried out on the parent or caregiver who knowingly or unknowingly signed the wireless contract for their child.

Our counsel to every religious leader is that you inform all levels of leadership as soon as possible about these facts and we urge you to inform your people not to provide access to the Internet until the wireless industry provides the necessary protection and safety devices. All of us need to share our convictions about this at the time of purchase. This will protect our children now.

And if we and our people communicate our concern with our present wireless companies, it will encourage them to seek adequate solutions more quickly and more intensely. We need each other. We can accomplish far more together than we can separately.

Dr. Jerry Kirk
Co-Chair, Executive
Committee, RAAP
NCPCF