Purveyors fear extinction, while antiporn activists take heart from high-level government support and press their efforts.
In the summer issue of Adult Video News, Clyde DeWitt sounded more like a doomsday prophet than a civil libertarian attorney who makes his living representing the pornography industry. Lamenting the growing number of legal restrictions on “adult businesses,” DeWitt raised the possibility that many “adult businesses may be largely on the way to extinction.”
“Given the regulation of adult businesses and other potential outlets, where is the public going to get adult product? Not cable. Not adult bookstores. Not liquor stores. Not mail order. Where?” he asked.
DeWitt may have been trying to rally his own troops, but it was the antipornography activists who took his remarks to heart. “Lately, we’ve seen a lot of stuff from them that has Armageddon language in it, and we find that very encouraging,” says Deen Kaplan, vice-president of public policy for the National Coalition Against Pornography (NCAP).
Indeed, opponents of obscenity and child pornography meeting in Washington, D.C., last month took encouragement on several fronts. President Bush and top administration officials pledged strong government action against illegal pornography. Grassroots groups from around the country reported creative and effective efforts on a community level (see “Community Action Against Porn”). And new battle plans were drawn to expand the scope of the fight. All this leads antipornography activists to the optimistic belief that a new momentum is building to make the situation DeWitt fears become a reality.
“We believe we’re seeing the team grow up across America that’s going to win this effort,” said Jerry Kirk, chairman of the Religious Alliance Against Pornography (RAAP), a broad-based coalition of Catholic, mainline Protestant, evangelical, Mormon, and Jewish leaders.
Tough Talk From The Top
At last month’s conference, which was organized by RAAP, NCAP, the National Women’s Leadership Task Force, and the Business and Professional Leaders’ Council, participants appeared to draw the most encouragement from a White House speech by George Bush, who, for the first time, publicly linked himself with their fight. “We’ve all heard the stories—innocent children drawn into the world of pornography, victimized by crimes whose consequences are beyond imagination,” the President said. “This horror must stop.”
Bush, who has met privately with RAAP leaders in the past, pledged that his administration is committed “to the fullest prosecution of obscenity and child pornography crimes,” and he added that “this will remain a priority” under his watch.
Joining the President was William Barr, the man Bush has nominated to succeed Richard Thornburgh as attorney general. Antipornography activists were concerned this summer when Thornburgh resigned to run for the Senate. As attorney general, Thornburgh had led the Justice Department to take a tough stance against illegal pornography, including the creation of a new permanent section, the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CT, Dec. 15, 1989, p. 48).
Barr used the opportunity to allay any concerns about where he stands. “I want to assure you that child exploitation and obscenity [prosecution] remains a high priority at the Department of Justice,” Barr told the group. “There will be no slackening in our effort and no diminution in our commitment. The Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section does have and will continue to have the full backing of the department’s leadership.”
Other Justice Department officials also addressed the group, as did Federal Communications Commission commissioner Ervin Duggan, who called for a society-wide recovery of virtue. He promised to use his position “to regulate in matters of broadcast, material that is actionably indecent or obscene.”
Kirk called the combined support from so many levels of government “truly exciting,” adding that this is the first time in his eight years of involvement that the movement has enjoyed such broad official support.
Citizens’ Movement
While official support is necessary, Kirk emphasized that the antipornography effort is ultimately a “citizens’ movement,” which depends on religious and civic leaders and grassroots activism. In an effort to revitalize that element, NCAP announced it will launch in 1992 its “Enough Is Enough” campaign, aimed at mobilizing women to take leadership in the battle. “Women cannot afford to ignore the effects of illegal pornography on this nation and in their homes,” said national campaign director Dee Jepsen. She said the campaign will focus on educating women about the harms of pornography and encouraging them to action. A primary goal will be the elimination of child pornography and illegal obscenity from “the open market,” Jepsen said.
Organizers hope the campaign will draw support from feminists as well. Kaplan said he thinks the movement, some of whose members are often at odds with feminist views, has a “decent chance” of gaining their help. He noted that some feminist leaders in the past have strongly opposed pornography.
One factor that may help antipornography efforts is the furor over sexual harassment prompted by allegations leveled at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Kaplan was careful to make no assessments about the veracity of those allegations, but he said he was pleased by the “broad spectrum of the liberal community that was vehement” about how “pornography inhibits the rights of women in our society and in the workplace.”
“It is our firm hope that the concern expressed … by policymakers will be buttressed by their supportive votes on future legislation dealing with the problem of pornography and sexual violence,” he said, adding, “This has not always been the case.”
Hurdles Ahead
While they find many reasons to celebrate, antipornography activists admit that not everything has been going their way in recent times. Despite the strong endorsements, Kaplan said his group is concerned about the level of commitment of several federal agencies. The U.S. Customs Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation appear particularly reluctant to initiate investigations into child pornography and obscenity violations, he said.
Speaking to those concerns, Robert Muller, head of the Justice Department Criminal Division, acknowledged that “this is a continuous issue that never leaves us.” But he assured the group that “at the top levels … commitment is there.”
Conference organizers had also hoped that new policy initiatives would be announced during the White House meeting, but none were introduced. Muller said some initiatives were “on the drawing boards,” but he added he did not want advance publicity because it might make the package “lose some of its impact.”
More troubling to the movement, however, are recent developments in two federal court cases. Just days after the conference, a federal judge in Dallas struck down his jury’s decision to seize more than $10 million in assets from one of the nation’s largest purveyors of X-rated videos (CT, Sept. 16, 1991, p. 70). Antipornography groups had applauded the seizure, hoping it would lead to other racketeering decisions against pornographers. In a second case, a federal jury late last month was unable to come to a decision in the obscenity and racketeering trial of another major distributor of pornographic films.
“We have a lot of momentum going, and we are making good progress, but this is the kind of battle where you can never let your guard down,” Kaplan said. Nonetheless, he is optimistic his movement has the kind of staying power that will help it ultimately prevail. “We’re not there yet, but we’re a lot further than we used to be.”
By Kim A. Lawton.
Community Action Against Porn
In setting up its three-pronged test to determine illegal obscenity, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Miller v. California, made “contemporary community standards” a key component of the definition. And national antipornography leaders say local community efforts are in many ways the most important part of their battle.
“Without people active on a grassroots basis in every community in this country, regardless of the efforts of the Justice Department and national organizations, we’ll never finish the job,” says Deen Kaplan, vice-president of public policy for the National Coalition Against Pornography. Among the efforts under way across the country:
One-person possibilities. The California Care Coalition is mobilizing grassroots action through its instructive handbook, “What Can One Person Do About Pornography?” The manual, which is being widely distributed in churches and Christian organizations, gives guidelines and addresses for writing letters to local and national government officials, local newspapers, and video-store managers. It also includes voter-registration deadlines and a “personal legislator listing and voting record,” where citizens can fill in the voting patterns of their officials.
Zip Code campaign. Concerned citizens in Orlando, Florida, have organized the “Zip Code Coalition,” an alliance dedicated to eliminating obscene video material from the city, one Zip Code at a time. Participants within a designated Zip Code mobilize their neighborhoods with a rally, distribution of fliers, and voter-registration drives. Greater Orlando Coalition Against Pornography executive director Julie Drake says local churches pick a month to campaign against hard-core pornographic videos and then “pass the torch to another church in the next Zip Code.”
Porn as trash. Despite strong opposition from local media, the Coalition Against Pornography-Kansas City (CAP KC) has been trying to shift the debate from censorship issues to “values orientation.” Billboards across the city proclaim, “Real men don’t use porn,” and bright yellow garbage bags with the words pornography destroys attempt to associate pornography with trash. But CAP-KC executive director Chris Cooper says theirs is not just a campaign against adult businesses. CAP-KC has also developed “sex-aholic” support groups, victims’ assistance programs, and date-rape prevention seminars.
Out of business. More than five years ago, citizens in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, led by retired grocer George Harper, began pressuring officials to crack down on sexually oriented businesses in their community. Today, the antipornography activists say those efforts have produced dramatic results. In 1984, there were 13 pornographic bookstores, 11 peep-show booth operations, 75 topless/bottomless bars, 21 houses of prostitution, and three XXX theaters. According to Oklahoma County district attorney Robert Macy, of all those businesses, only one bookstore remained open by the end of 1990.
In addition, Macy recently testified before Congress that during the same six-year period, the county’s rate of reported rapes decreased by nearly 25 percent, while rape rates in the rest of the state continued to escalate. “The evidence speaks for itself,” Macy told members of Congress.
