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From: pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc)
Newsgroups: net.books,net.women
Subject: Re: Pornography doesn't degrade women ...(reply to Dubuc)
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Date: Fri, 11-Jan-85 17:17:10 EST
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Posted: Fri Jan 11 17:17:10 1985
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>[From Marcel Simon in response to my article]
>Your points are well thought out, and reasonnable. The only problem
>with them is that there is no valid legal definition of pornography.

As I said, I don't think the difficulty of the task should keep us
from doing something positive to curb porn production.  What is to
keep us from coming up with a workable definition?  I have the feeling
that we don't necessarily have to accept the conclusion that there
can be none.

>The Supreme Court agreed when it offered the "community standards" concept.
>Now some communities are homogeneous enough to agree on one standard
>of what constitutes pronography, but cities, where most of the so-called
>adult stores are, certainly are *not* homogeneous. So what you have
>is the imposing of the views of a few on the rest. Therein lies the
>problem. Sure, most sensible people can agree that Big Bertha
>does the Los Angeles Rams (:-) or some such title has no value
>except to stimulate sexually. But what about DH Lawrence or Erica Jong
>books? You will, I am certain, find people who object to Lady Chatterley's
>Lover and want it banned as pornography (remember, pornography is legally
>what the community decides it is). WHich is where you run into problems.

Very good point.  But the community standards concept has never worked
anyway.  Porn shops regularly violate zoning regulations that don't
get inforced.  For example there is one in the OSU area (calling itself
"The Daily News" or something like that).  Zoning laws require that
before an "Adult" book store and set up shop they have to notify all
residents within 500 yds. to see if they object.  This particular shop
didn't bother (the neighborhood contains transient students anyway).
But try getting them out once they're in.  Appeals to First Amendment
protection are always made to combat any attempt to invoke the community
conscensus against porn.  I sat in one area commission meeting that
was called to debate the porn issue in the OSU (Ohio State University)
community (My community borders that one.)  On the pro-porn side of the
debate was an ACLU Lawyer that did nothing but talk about the first
amendment, the content of the porn was irrelavent and so were the
community standards.  Community standards are a vague, nebulous
concept.  It is much harder to prove and define workable community
standards than it is to come up with a legal definition of what is
pornography.  That is a point for the pornographers.  Nothing significant
will be done about porn as long as the virtually contentless concept
of "community standards" is used as a standard.  I think that concept
was a cop out by the Supreme Court when the legislature tossed them
that "hot potato".

As an alternative to leaving everything to "community standards" we
are going to have to have some objective standard as a base, perhaps
to be "fine tuned" by an improved definition of what constitutes
a community standard and how it is to be obtained (I think this
standard needs to be actively sought after.)  If some objective
standard is not included nothing will carry any weight.  Pornographers
will always be able to include token scenes that give it "redeeming
social value" or whatever.  As I said before, some "casualities"
will always unjustly fall under the ban.  But those few shouldn't
provide blanket protection for porn.  At least if their was some
kind of definite standard (objective base) authors and movie producers
could get some definite idea of what they can and can't do.  This
doesn't have to be viewed as a clamp on their creativity.  I have
several friends who are artists and I'm pretty sure they would agree
that a certain amount of constraint is required to spur creativity.
Where there are no constraints, anything can pass for "art".  If an
artist or author truly has talent they should be able to show it
within a certain set of constraints.  To wipe away all constraint
only offers false credibility to those with no talent.  I say this
only to illustrate that contraints are not inherently evil, not
to say that all constraints are good.

>On a related note: several small towns have refused to stock Mark Twain's
>Tom Sawyer in public libraries, on the grounds that the book is racist
>and should not be accessible to children, who could be harmed by it.
>Do you agree? Do you see the analogy? I am afraid that in the case
>of the first amendment, you have to take the bitter with the sweet.

Keeping it out of public libaries seems too extreme a measure.  When I
was in junior high school "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was
required reading in English class.  I think something else has been
substituted since, for the reason you mentioned.  That seems fairly 
reasonable since other books could be used just as well.  Maybe that
is what you are thinking of.  The only analogy I see here is that an
objective element needs to be included if we are to define what
constitutes racism.  Such a standard would help curb excesses in
banning "legitimate" material as much as it would help curb the publication
of "illigitimate" material.  (Whatever those terms come to mean under
the standard.)  With the fuzzy concept of "community standards" you
are really open to both accesses.

It seems to me that if your last statement is true the First amendment
is meaningless.  If you mean the we must accept the good with the bad,
the right with the wrong, then it seems to me that that is another
way of saying that there is nothing that we can say we will not
accept.  In the case of pornography this reduces, in practice, to
a statement that nothing can be banned.  (Which, incidently, is
the exact position some of the Supreme Court Justices [e.g. Douglas]
have taken.)  As I said before, I think this makes a mockery of free
speech, especially considering porn's probable effects on society.
(Such as I stated in my last article.)

>One possible compromise that will satisfy no one is to zone adult stores
>in so called "red light districts" or "combat zones", etc. The question
>there is "in whose neighborhoods?" Well I did say this would satisfy no one
>What does the net think?

Combat zones and red light districts tend to form naturally anyway.
Zoning laws prevent putting adult book stores just anywhere, usually.
This is one thing that makes me think that most people believe porn
has an unhealthy effect in society.  Otherwise, why would there be
more objection to putting a porn shop in their neighboorhood than
family-type bookstore?  The zoning rules are usually different for
one than the other.  The presence of porn is associated with some ill
effects in most people's minds if they don't want it in *their* neighbor-
hood.
-- 

Paul Dubuc	cbscc!pmd