mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly) (02/15/84)
Here's a little more information on the approach to pornography tried in Minneapolis; it's from an article on the subject in the January 18 issue of In These Times (ITT). Feminist authors Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon were asked by members of the City Council to draft an amendment extending the Minneapolis civil rights ordinance to cover pornography. They did, and the Council passed it on December 30 in a 7-6 vote, but it was vetoed on January 5 by Mayor Don Fraser. Since then, proponents of the ordinance have tried to either draft a compromise ordinance or override the veto. Says ITT, "The civil rights approach is a new way of approaching pornography. Currently, pornography can be attacked legally in either of two ways. First, there are criminal obscenity laws, based on a definition provided by the Supreme Court in Miller vs. California in 1973 ... In most places, the laws simply are not enforced ... The second approach is through zoning laws that can be used to limit the area in which certain kinds of pornography can be sold or displayed. But the courts have ruled that the zoning regulations must not be so strict that they constitute a de facto ban ..." Ms. Dworkin explained the rationale behind the civil rights approach to an interviewer: "What it amounts to is that you and I go into a supermarket to buy a dozen eggs. My rights as a citizen are violated because those magazines show me as an abject, degraded victim, in fact subordinate me when I am in the supermarket. They change my civil status and make it different from yours, because you're a man and I'm a woman. You're not allowed to do that. That's what civil rights is all about." The ordinance defined pornography as "the sexually explicit subordination of women, graphically depicted." (The final draft was changed to include men as well.) Then there were nine additional characteristics, and at least one had to be present in addition to the main one of subordination. These nine included scenarios involving mutilation, torture or injury, and depiction of rape as enjoyable. Of course, civil libertarians attacked the law, and that is their role. I support the ACLU generally, but I don't think that passage of any law with which the ACLU disagrees means the jackboots are coming. Catherine MacKinnon points out that freedom of speech is not an absolute. Child pornography laws and sexual harrassment laws are just two areas where the courts have ruled that one persons free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment, could interfere with another persons guarantee to equal protection under the law, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. In constitutional terms, the argument is that the "free speech" or pornography must be balanced against the interference with "equal protection under the law" that the pornography allegedly entails. Mike Kelly ..!ihnp4!tty3b!mjk
lkk@mit-eddie.UUCP (Larry Kolodney) (04/06/84)
Mike Kelly made a comparison between banning porno and banning child pornography, citing limitations to first amendment freedoms. I think the comparison is flawed since the rationales behind the banning are entirely different. Child Pornography is banned because it (presumably) hurts the children involved. Regular porno is banned because of the suppossed deliterious effects on the viewer and on society, which is a matter of adults making up their minds. Do you believe that adults should be shielded from such movies? Who is going to decide what to sheild them from? WIll the person screening the films (the censor) be hurt by their content? I want all the access that the censor does. -- Larry Kolodney (The Devil's Advocate) (USE) ..decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!lkk (ARPA) lkk@mit-mc