Update: Porn producers responded to Rick Santorum’s proposals to ban “hardcore pornography.” They’re not worried. Yahoo News quoted a number of execs in an article Saturday:

“I don’t see a danger,” Michael Lucas, New York’s largest producer of gay adult films, told Yahoo News. “There’s no danger that he will be the Republican Party nominee.”

“Whether it’s Newt offering $2 gasoline or Santorum wanting to ban pornography or whatever else he’s doing, they’re making these promises and these threats, and they’re really empty and meaningless,” (Hustler publisher Larry) Flynt told Yahoo News. “I don’t think he will be much of a contender if he gets the nomination, but at the same time I don’t think he will.”

“It’s sometimes easy to attack the adult industry, but ultimately it doesn’t work,” said Steven Hirsch, the founder and co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment, an adult film company that boasts millions of viewers every month.

Republican presidential candidate, Catholic and wooer of Christian conservatives Rick Santorum wants to ban hardcore pornography in America.

“Pornography is toxic to marriages and relationships. It contributes to misogyny and violence against women. It is a contributing factor to prostitution and sex trafficking,” he wrote on his website.

“Every family must now be concerned about the harm from pornography. As a parent, I am concerned about the widespread distribution of illegal obscene pornography and its profound effects on our culture.”

His argument will sound familiar to a number of Catholics and evangelicals, who believe viewing pornography is a lustful sin that drives men away from their wives and the Lord. Houston Catholic Joe McClane leads a men’s ministry against porn, and there are hundreds of national organizations and pastors with the same mission.

These sites bring up the same negative effects that Santorum does: It hurts relationships with your spouse and children, it damages our culture and it objectifies women. A study by Christian researcher Barna found that pornography viewing was among the most common moral offenses for evangelicals, though at a lower rate than the overall population.

Santorum pledges to halt the distribution of porn through laws that prohibit its distribution “on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier.”

Legal experts aren’t sure whether such a ban, even if it relies on expanding and enforcing current obscenity laws, would be possible. From the Daily Caller:

“Although the Supreme Court says private possession is constitutionally protected, it has said that private receipt of [pornography] is not protected,” noted (UCLA law professor Eugene) Volokh. “You can’t prosecute them all … but you can find certain types of pornography that are sufficiently unpopular” for easy convictions, he explained. Most contemporary prosecutions for the receipt of pornography are because the government cannot prove its suspicion that the accused has committed more serious crimes, said Volokh. He speculated that there aren’t more prosecutions because “that prosecutor isn’t going to win a lot of votes in the next election.” The government would probably need to “find some extra money in the budget for additional porn prosecutors,” joked Volokh. He also cautioned that there would be significant outcry because “sometimes it’s viewed by husbands and wives who watch it to spice up their sex lives.” Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, noted that “What constitutes obscenity remains maddeningly vague,” but added that he’s not entirely convinced Santorum would be successful in an attempt to snuf Internet porn.

But even Christians who believe porn is harmful may not agree with Santorum’s proposal to ban it, an attempt to legislate morality rather than rely on heart changes. Ed Stetzer, head of the Southern Baptist-affiliated LifeWay Research has written:

Can we call on the legislators and defenders of freedom of speech to task? …. We could rid the world of pornography and yet never rid the world of sexual deviance. Pornography will return in some other form. Mankind would figure out another way to act out their spiritual condition. We always do.

(H/T Yahoo News)