Opposition to pornography
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The term anti-pornography movement is used to describe those who argue that pornography has a variety of harmful effects.
Though objections to pornography might come from many perspectives, they can often be classified as one of the categories noted below.
U.S. Government Commissions on pornography
In the United States, a 1969 Supreme Court decision which held that people could view whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes, STANLEY v. GEORGIA, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), caused Congress to fund and President Lyndon B. Johnson to appoint a commission to study pornography.
In 1970, the Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography concluded that "there was insufficient evidence that exposure to explicit sexual materials played a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior." In general, with regard to adults, the Commission recommended that legislation "should not seek to interfere with the right of adults who wish to do so to read, obtain, or view explicit sexual materials." Regarding the view that these materials should be restricted for adults in order to protect young people from exposure to them, the Commission found that it is "inappropriate to adjust the level of adult communication to that considered suitable for children."
A large portion of the Commission's budget was applied to funding original research on the effects of sexually explicit materials. One experiment is described in which repeated exposure of male college students to pornography "caused decreased interest in it, less response to it and no lasting effect," although it appears that the satiation effect does wear off eventually ("Once more"). William B. Lockhart, Dean of the University of Minnesota Law School and chairman of the commission, said that before his work with the commission he had favored control of obscenity for both children and adults, but had changed his mind as a result of scientific studies done by commission researchers. In reference to dissenting commission members Keating and Rev. Morton Hill, Lockhart said, "When these men have been forgotten, the research developed by the commission will provide a factual basis for informed, intelligent policymaking by the legislators of tomorrow" [1]
President Ronald Reagan announced his intention to set up a commission to study pornography. The result was the appointment by Attorney General Edwin Meese in the spring of 1985 of a panel comprised of 11 members, the majority of whom had established records as anti-pornography crusaders.<ref>Wilcox, Brian L. "Pornography, Social Science, and Politics: When Research and Ideology Collide." American Psychologist. 42 (October 1987) : 941-943. </ref>
In 1986, the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, often called the Meese Commission, reached the opposite conclusion, advising that pornography was in varying degrees harmful. A workshop headed by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop provided essentially the only original research done by the Meese Commission. Given very little time and money to "develop something of substance" to include in the Meese Commission's report, it was decided to conduct a closed, weekend workshop of "recognized authorities" in the field. All but one of the invited participants attended. At the end of the workshop, the participants expressed consensus in five areas:
- (1) "Children and adolescents who participate in the production of pornography experience adverse, enduring effects,"
- (2) "Prolonged use of pornography increases beliefs that less common sexual practices are more common,"
- (3) "Pornography that portrays sexual aggression as pleasurable for the victim increases the acceptance of the use of coercion in sexual relations,"
- (4) "Acceptance of coercive sexuality appears to be related to sexual aggression,"
- (5) "In laboratory studies measuring short-term effects, exposure to violent pornography increases punitive behavior toward women" According to Surgeon General Koop, "Although the evidence may be slim, we nevertheless know enough to conclude that pornography does present a clear and present danger to American public health"<ref>Koop, C. Everett. "Report of the Surgeon General's Workshop on Pornography and Public Health." American Psychologist. 42 (October 1987) : 944-945.</ref>
In 1983, prosecutors in California tried to use pandering and prostitution state statutes against a producer of and actors in a pornographic movie; the California Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that these statutes do not apply to the production of nonobscene pornography (People v. Freeman (1988) 46 Cal.3d 41). Some speculate that this decision implictly condones pornography and was one of the reasons most modern American porn is produced in California.
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