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!mjklkk@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