The Bush administration, following in the footsteps of the Family Research Council, has objected to the creation of a .xxx domain, suggesting it would create a virtual red-light district for Internet pornography.

Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, has asked for a hold to be placed on the contract to run the new top-level domain, which was slated to receive final approval today, until the .xxx suffix can receive further scrutiny. “The Department of Commerce has received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children,” Gallagher said in a letter made public on Monday.

Undoubtedly, some of those letters and emails came from members of the Family Research Council headed up by Tony Perkins, who, in a statement made in June, said, “Attorney General Gonzales … intends to smash these criminal enterprises on the Internet and elsewhere with a new obscenity strike force” and that the domain should not be allowed because it “will increase not decrease porn on the Internet.”

Without getting into the censorship issues this creates, why would someone object to creating a domain specifically for pornographers? Everyone would know exactly where or where not to go. It would be much easier to detect when reviewing the history on a particular computer and would, in all likelihood, be even easier to block with parental guide software. Furthermore, the idea that the .xxx domain would increase Internet porn is laughable. What’s the point in attempting to decrease it? Besides having a particular domain would not increase porn. What increases porn activity on the Internet every day, which already has more than 4 million porn sites, is the money that can be made from it. And that’s certainly something Bush and his money-hungry cronies can understand.