The notion that pornography is a victimless crime has allowed it and its peddlers leniency under the law.
is pornography protected by the First Amendment—or is it properly subject to legal restraint? Does it have damaging effects—or is it relatively harmless? Do Christians have a moral and civic obligation to be involved in the dispute?
This author, who has lectured on pornography before university audiences for 20 years and has testified as an expert witness for the prosecution in federal pornography cases, is convinced that pornography is an even graver menace than most Christians are aware. I believe that it is not protected by the First Amendment and that it is urgently important to curb this abomination. And I believe, moreover, that the intellectuals who oppose censorship can be refuted on every front.
Is pornography a form of expression protected by the free-speech, free-press provision of the First Amendment? The answer is—absolutely not. The Constitution has always permitted certain restrictions on freedom of speech and press. For example, laws properly forbid incitement to violence, libel, slander, partisan campaign speeches by federal civil servants, misleading and fraudulent advertising, the divulgence of military secrets, verbal interference with court proceedings, picketing in a context of violence, and a score of other restraints.
Reasonable restrictions on marginal aspects of speech and press are not only constitutional but essential to the functioning of an orderly and self-respecting society. Among those restraints are long-standing curbs on obscene materials, curbs that were never rebuked by our constitutional fathers or by any court. Specific obscenity laws have been found wanting—but the principle that the state may proscribe the distribution of obscene materials has never been successfully challenged in any court.
What the First Amendment does do, however, is protect the expression of all heretical opinions, however subversive or obnoxious they may appear to others. Thus dissenters have the right to attack any sexual code, to recommend polygamy, or to agitate for abolition of marriage and the family. So long as people have this sweeping freedom to challenge any cherished idea or institution, and to recommend any religious, political, economic, or social policy, the First Amendment is adequately protected.
Chief Justice Burger put it well: “To equate the free and robust exchange of ideas and political debate with the commercial exploitation of obscene material … demeans the First Amendment and its high purposes in the historic struggle for freedom.”
Much is made of the lack of precision in defining what is obscene, and in the difficulties of meeting due process standards because of the vagueness involved. But if obscenity is impossible to define, why do opponents of censorship concede that society can legitimately protect children from it? If we can’t define it, what do we keep from our kids?
While the lack of precision in defining obscenity is worrisome, the problem is by no means unique to this area. In most criminal or regulatory laws, behavior relating to those laws is clearly forbidden at one end of the continuum and clearly permissible at the other. But as we approach the center of the continuum, a zone of uncertainty is reached which yields much of our litigation. Pornography laws share this zone of uncertainty with a host of other laws. (I have yet to hear liberals deplore the unreasonable search and seizure provision of the Constitution because it is too vague.)
Pornographers merit precious little sympathy when they are uncertain about what is legally obscene and what is not. If they choose to operate in the danger zone, it is because that is where the profits are greatest. If they want to play for these kinds of stakes in this kind of game, let them take the risks that go with their wretched business.
Having established the fact that obscene materials can be curbed constitutionally, are they a sufficiently serious evil to merit major attention by Christians?
Defenders of the $4 billion pornography racket contend that the production and distribution of pornography is a relatively innocuous enterprise. They cite findings by the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography in 1971 that no measurable damage to consumers of pornography could be found.
But the commission report has been subjected to more withering criticism than almost any commission report in modern times. Half a dozen reputable social scientists have either pointed out serious flaws in the scientific character of the commission’s work or have rejected its conclusions as inadequately supported by the evidence.
nonetheless, the notion persists that pornography involves a “victimless crime,” an assumption that leads law enforcment officers to give antipornography law enforcement a very low priority. A cogent case can be made, however, that four groups are victimized by pornography.
1. Women. The image of women so relentlessly propagated by pornography is that they are creatures whose hypnotic anatomical features proclaim their role and their relationships to men. They are a gender ordained for the sexual pleasure of men, and are principally distinguished by their possession of genitalia offering rich possibilities for male gratification. Much contemporary pornography highlights the joys of sadomasochistic sex, since sexual experience allegedly acquires a special flavor when women are physically abused.
Even if one cannot follow cause and effect with scientific verity, common sense tells us that millions of men cannot consume quantities of these products year after year without being affected by them.
For those who believe pornography relieves rather than intensifies unhealthy sexual urges, it should be noted that psychologists are now largely convinced that violent entertainment stimulates rather than reduces violent impulses. Only the willfully dogmatic can believe that the reverse effect takes place in pornography.
2. Adolescents. Teen-agers who read pornography are the second category of victims. There is no way that pornography can freely circulate around this country, as it is doing today, without falling into the hands of millions of teen-agers.
But does this really matter? To answer this question we must ask what is pornography’s subliminal “message” to its viewers—what impression emerges from the totality of its pictures and narrative?
In addition to portraying a demeaning picture of women, pornography tells adolescents (and others) that sexual activity need not be related to love, morality, commitment, or responsibility. For people, as for animals, sex is designed to satisfy a purely physical desire.
Thus if sex is nothing but fun and games, to be indulged without shame as impulses dictate, why be faithful to one’s spouse if someone more attractive—and willing—is at hand? Why not follow your lust wherever it leads? And why not have sex with whatever 14-year-old is willing to copulate with you?
Pornography denies that sexual experience is essentially a private matter. Group sex—why not? Wife-swapping—why not? Invite the kids to witness the fun when Mom and Pop are having sex—why not? What’s so private about sex? And what’s so wrong with voyeurism?
Pornography tells adolescents that aberrational sex is the most exciting and appealing form of sex. Hustler magazine, for example, has presented bestiality as an unrivalled form of sexual gratification—the supreme sexual experience.
Pornography encourages impulsive sex, careless sex, daring sex, irresponsible sex, and it implies that there are no adverse consequences. You would never guess from viewing pornography that irresponsible sex leads to teen-age pregnancies, premature marriages, abortions, illegitimate children, venereal disease, or psychic traumas. Nor would you suspect that extramarital sex had any unhappy consequences.
Pornography’s message may not do much harm to adolescents from good homes who are taught sound values and whose parents set a good example of moral behavior. The question rather is what it will do to adolescents from the millions of homes in which little moral instruction is given, and where poor moral example is set. Such is their lot, moreover, when they are in a rebellious mood and inclined to challenge societal standards.
Does this concern for adolescents run athwart the Supreme Court’s ruling in Butler v. Michigan (1957) that no state should quarantine “the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence …”? It does not. It is not being suggested that any books should be banned; pornographic magazines, movies, and peep shows are the target.
3. Children. Youngsters who pose for pornographers are obvious victims. Thousands of children are photographed after being seduced into various forms of explicit sexual behavior. The pornographers make obscene profits peddling such wares to the sick souls who feast on them. These children would not be caught up in this vicious business if the pornography merchants weren’t confident they could sell this stuff with relative impunity.
4. Society in general and the family in particular. Both groups are victimized by pornography.
Pornography is a direct challenge to the family because it encourages attitudes that are destructive of it. We have a right to be concerned about material that undermines the family, not by an open and reasoned attack (which would be protected by the First Amendment), but by inference, implication, and subliminal messages that infiltrate the mind while numbing the rational zone. Family stability lies at the heart of a stable society, and a healthy attitude toward sexual behavior is central to a sound, general moral code.
It cannot be reasonably denied that today’s pornography scene is making a contribution toward the decline of moral standards. True, pornography has been around for centuries. But the pornography of the past does not remotely compare in volume to that which exists today. In previous eras, most people saw it infrequently, furtively, with an aura of social disapproval surrounding it. Because it is viewed with greater social tolerance today, its subversive impact is bound to increase. Its prevalence partially explains why material of increasing raunchiness is invading television and motion pictures. Five years ago we would not have tolerated scenes that now appear on television and in the theater; each year both media offer more daring material than the year before. Pornography leads the way; it is the cutting edge of our future.
Recent news reports indicate that videotape cassettes featuring both soft- and hard-core pornography are selling like hot cakes in some of our larger cities. Along with cable TV pornographic offerings, the spectacular growth of this field foreshadows America’s future—if we let it happen. We could become a nation of vicarious voyeurs, with growing numbers of men huddled around TV sets after 11:30 P.M. watching performers engage in every form of explicit sexual behavior that commercial ingenuity can invent. How could one evaluate that scene as anything but evidence of a decadent culture?
The French nobility, before the French Revolution, used to amuse themselves by watching people have sexual intercourse. The Fascist African despot Idi Amin would order condemned prisoners to “make love before him” while he sipped wine and enjoyed the spectacle. The implications and parallels are worth reflecting upon.
some will say that as adult citizens of a free society we should have the privilege of reading or watching whatever we wish. What’s wrong with this view? In the first place, laws forbid the distribution and exhibition of obscene material, whatever people’s tastes may be. Second, if the libertarian assumption is correct, why shouldn’t entrepreneurs sell tickets to live sex shows? Why not give the customers live exhibitions of women having relations with animals? And why not give the interested public the opportunity to watch women being sexually abused and humiliated by men, in demonstration of the pornographic theory that sexual pain can become pleasure if we approach it with the right attitude? If some want to see these things, why shouldn’t they be free to do so? If others dislike them, they can stay away.
I find it hard to believe that intelligent people would solemnly argue that society has no right to intervene in matters like these. But does society have no right to establish minimum standards of decency, whatever a minority may think? Has it no right to say, This goes beyond the bounds of the minimally civilized, this we will not tolerate?
The attitude that “I want to see what I want to see,” without regard for the larger and long-run interests of society, is a posture common to our times. But it is a narcissistic, self-indulgent, and socially irresponsible view. In Maoist China, the interests of the state were almost everything, the interests of the individual, almost nothing. In America we have moved toward the opposite extreme, with the claims of individual freedom often transcending society’s needs. A point somewhere between the anthill mentality of Mao’s China and the individualist primacy of America represents a greater wisdom than either society has recognized.
Some will ask, why censor pornography and not the violence that abounds in movies and TV? Excessive violence in the entertainment world is an important social problem with which we should be concerned. But as entertainment, illegal violence is normally presented as an evil to be punished while pornography presents heedless, irresponsible sex as a good to be sought. That difference is a quantum leap, and one which warrants giving priority to pornography control.
Does history warn us that effective enforcement is impossible? As in every area of crime, perfect enforcement is, of course, unattainable. But those who believe we cannot stem the pornographic tide overlook the probability that a few stiff jail sentences (not just fines) would go a long way toward diminishing the supply of pornography. If major publishers or distributors were obliged to spend years in jail for their criminal activities, pornography would rapidly revert to its former underground status. And that is where it belongs.
Isn’t any censorship terribly dangerous, since it may spread to other and wholly legitimate publishing enterprises? Won’t censorship spread to the newspapers, to the political journals, and elsewhere?
Such questions provide more of the solemn malarkey the anticensorship forces have peddled so long—and so successfully. We have had obscenity laws throughout our history and they have never led to a creeping repression of press freedom. There is not a shred of empirical evidence to support the notion that censorship of obscenity threatens free expression of heretical political, social, or religious ideas. What sensible person really believes that if we enforce the antipornographic laws we would start censoring the New York Times?
What, then, should conservative Christians (and others who share their concern) do about all this?
Antipornography laws currently are not being enforced. Just why state laws should be enforced against the rest of us but not against pornographers is unclear. Why should they be privileged characters? Unhappily, experience makes it clear that the laws will not be enforced unless concerned citizens demand it—and hold the proper officials responsible if they fail to do so.
An appropriate course of action would seem to be first to ask your librarian to help you locate the provision of your state law that deals with obscenity. Then obtain copies of several of the more flagrantly obscene publications sold in your community—publications that deal primarily with explicit sexual activity in pornographic fashion. Take those offensive publications to your local prosecutor, invite his attention to the law, remind him of the “community standards” provision of Miller v. California (413 U.S. 15 [1973], pp. 23–24) and request that the local dealers (or publisher, if the magazine originates in your city) be prosecuted. If the prosecutor is uncooperative, ask members of your church to write a staggered succession of individually composed letters to local newspapers, courteously but firmly demanding that the obscenity laws be enforced, and briefly explaining why. If the prosecutor is an appointed officer, let the elected official who appointed him know that failure to enforce obscenity laws will seriously affect his political future. If the prosecutor is locally elected, the warning should go directly to him.
The same general procedure should apply to “adult films” that feature explicit sexual behavior. Someone must undergo the disagreeable task of viewing some of these films in order knowledgeably to protest their showing, but that is not an insuperable barrier.
To be most effective, such a campaign should be conducted by those more temperate, rather than those more strident, members of the religious community—and by those who have the interpersonal skills that successful community action requires. It is possible to be resolute and persistent without being shrill and obnoxious.
Finally, the Attorney General of the U.S. should become the recipient of a blizzard of mail requesting the enforcement of the federal law that prohibits obscene materials from moving in interstate commerce. Wave after wave of local prosecutions in every state, along with prosecutions in federal district courts, could deal the pornographers the staggering blow they so richly deserve—and which social responsibility requires.
With morality, logic, and the law all on their side, it is imperative for concerned Christians to organize at the community level and channel their indignation into effective action. If they lose this battle by default—by refusing to do what they can—their consciences will have a heavy burden to bear. It is their children—and everyone’s children—whose future is involved.
A report on how citizens in Fort Pierce, Florida, banded together to close down X-rated movies is on page 52.
