Citizens Battle a Booming Pornography Business

Porn opponents call for a boycott of 7-Eleven, a leading retailer of sexually explicit magazines.

Pornography was put on center stage when former Miss America Vanessa Williams was dethroned after Penthouse magazine published sexually explicit photos of her. The National Federation for Decency (NFD) is working hard to keep the porn issue in the spotlight.

Last month the group organized a nationwide, one-day picket of 7-Eleven, the convenience store leader. Demonstrators showed up at more than 400 7-Eleven stores in some 150 cities. The NFD says 7-Eleven leads the nation in retailing pornographic magazines. A 7-Eleven spokesman says the charge can neither be conclusively confirmed nor disproved.

The NFD also has urged a boycott of the convenience-store chain until it changes its policies on porn retailing. The organization says its efforts already are netting results. A number of retail chains, other than 7-Eleven, have discontinued the objectionable magazines, says NFD associate director Steve Hallman. Handy Marts Corporation, which owns 78 7-Eleven stores, has pulled the magazines on a two-month test basis.

There are almost 7,400 7-Eleven stores in the United States. Most are owned and operated by the multi-billion dollar Southland Corporation, based in Dallas. Doug Reed, Southland’s media relations coordinator, says there will be no changes in his company’s policy on porn retailing. That policy allows for the sale of just three “men’s” magazines—Playboy, Penthouse, and Forum. These are covered with blinders that allow only the titles to show, and they are not advertised.

However, independent franchisees own 35 percent of the nation’s 7-Eleven stores. Some openly display as many as 60 pornographic magazines. Reed says Southland urges compliance with corporation policy on the sale of such magazines, but has no legal control over independent owners.

“We consider ourselves a public-minded corporation,” he says. “We don’t want to offend anyone, but we recognize that [the magazines] are products some people request. We are not in the position to make moral judgments for our customers.”

The antipornography movement has embraced a boycott strategy partly because of perceived lax enforcement of laws regulating the pornography industry. Most states have enacted some form of antiobscenity laws. In addition, federal laws prohibit the shipping, mailing, and importation of obscene material.

However, it can be difficult to determine what is obscene. The U.S. Supreme Court in Miller v. California (1973) defined obscenity in terms of what an “average person” would find “patently offensive” by applying “contemporary adult community standards.” For guilt to be established, someone must initiate legal proceedings against each violation.

When a case does go to court, defense lawyers—heavily subsidized by the pornography industry—are often able to outmanuever prosecutors. Paul McCommon, legal counsel for Citizens for Decency through Law, says the current system, with its heavy emphasis on civil rights, favors pornographers. He adds that most authorities have not taken the initiative to prosecute and punish violators.

Meanwhile, the pornography industry burgeons. Some analysts say it does $8 billion worth of business annually. Accurate figures are hard to come by since some segments operate underground. “The pervasiveness of the problem increases every day,” McCommon says. “This is easily observable based on what’s available on cable TV, at video stores, corner stores, and gas stations.”

The conviction that pornography degrades women has drawn feminists into the fray. City councils in Minneapolis and Indianapolis have passed bills that would outlaw pornography as a violation of women’s rights. (The Minneapolis measure was vetoed by the city’s mayor. The Indianapolis ordinance is being challenged in court.)

The chairman of the Playboy Foundation, Burt Joseph, claims there is no connection between reading sexually explicit material and criminal behavior, such as rape. “The studies show that it’s the violence, not the sex, that causes antisocial conduct,” he says. Playboy does not publish photographs dealing with violence and refuses to accept advertising for guns, he says.

Joseph, who does not consider Playboy to be pornographic, theorizes that censors and pornographers need each other to keep their trades alive. “Only when pornography is suppressed,” he says, “does it continue to have a market interest. If people wanted to stamp out pornography, they should let it proliferate, and it would lead to boredom.” Critics call Joseph’s solution naïve and his evaluation of Playboy inaccurate. Both those who agree and disagree with him cite studies to support their views.

Not only has the pornography industry expanded, but its tone has changed markedly in recent years. Thirty years ago, when Playboy was alone in the field, pornography consisted of pictures of nude women. But Playboy, now considered relatively tame, has lost a large segment of the market. It now has 4.1 million subscribers, down from 7.2 million in its peak year of 1972. In many magazines, today’s pornography includes depictions of sadomasochism, rape, bestiality, and urination. In addition, some porn monitors estimate that more than 200 pornographic magazines exploit children. Some are published for profit; others serve a subculture of pedophiles.

Pornography’s turn toward the violent, bizarre, and grotesque has given rise to sociological and psychological analyses of the problem. Robert Moore, a professor of psychology and religion at Chicago Theological Seminary, says people who have been deprived of loving relationships early in life are prime candidates for psychological addiction to pornography.

Jean Bethke Elshtain, a University of Massachusetts professor of political science, writes in The New Republic that the porn plague mirrors “a world in which human beings … see themselves as objects of social forces over which they have no control.” She says pornography offers the viewer the illusion of “unlimited power to bend others to his will.”

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