But the Puritans of this House and elsewhere in government are not satisfied with free choice and the free market. Instead, they want the government to decide what is or is not appropriate for the public to watch or listen to.

Just recently, for example, the Secretary of Education on his second day on the job snapped into action and threatened public broadcasting funding if they dared air a show in which real live families with real live same-sex parents would appear. It was actually a show about making maple syrup, not an advocacy piece about family arrangements. But it was too much for the Secretary of Education.

``Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode,'' Spellings wrote in her threatening letter to the CEO of PBS. Who asked her?

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Then there was the strange case of SpongeBob Square Pants, a cartoon character who appeared in a video promoting tolerance entitled ``We Are Family.'' Who were the purveyors of this objectionable material? Well, among others, the Anti-Defamation League's successful ``World of Difference'' program and Sesame Street's ``Sesame Foundation.'' It seems some self-appointed guardians of our morals are fine with the idea of tolerance, unless it includes people they don't like. ``We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids,'' Paul Batura, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, told the New York Times. ``It is a classic bait and switch.''

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A former Member of this House condemned NBC for airing ``Schindler's List,'' saying that the Holocaust film took network television ``to an all time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity'' during family viewing time. He said that NBC's decision to air the movie on Sunday evening should outrage parents and decent-minded individuals everywhere.

Then-Senator Alfonse D'Amato properly replied that ``to equate the nudity of Holocaust victims in the concentration camps with any sexual connotation is outrageous and offensive.'' But with this bill, where would we be if that former Member of the House were a member of the FCC?

So what next? We are already seeing a great deal of self-censorship as the self-appointed guardians of public decency go after anything that offends them personally. We saw recently many affiliates of ABC refuse to show ``Saving Private Ryan'' because they were afraid of the fines that the FCC might, might, levy. So there is self-censorship because of the chilling effect.

Evidently, the Members of this House do not trust Americans to make up their own minds and the large corporations that own media conglomerates are not about to risk profits by running afoul of the people with power and their own agenda.

I would suggest that if my colleagues are looking for obscene and indecent material, they can turn off their televisions and log on to WWW.Congress.Gov. On the Committee on the Judiciary Web site you can find sexually graphic material, including graphic sexual accounts in the Starr Report of several years ago. Children doing their homework everywhere can read this.

In this last Congress, a Member of this House introduced legislation containing eight words that would probably draw half a million dollar fines under this legislation. Our Legislative Information System still has this up for anyone to read.

Mr. Speaker, Congress and the FCC have no business telling people what they can or cannot watch, what sorts of tolerance it will or will not tolerate, or what values parents may or may not desire to instill in their children. You do not have to love indecency to oppose this bill. You merely have to have faith in and respect for the judgment of the American people, and a distrust in the omnipotent judgment of government bureaucrats. I urge the defeat of this bill.