(1)

LEGISLATORS WHO WOULD "DECRIMINALIZE" PORNOGRAPHY GIVE THE IMPRESSION THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT TODAY'S PORNO

GRAPHY IS.

Again, one wants to put a charitable cast to all this. One does not want to believe that those who would have no Federal laws against pornography as it exists in America in 1979 really know what sort of monster is loose in the land.

We are not talking about a few bawdy passages from Chaucer or Rebelais. Nor about cartoons from a 1939 issue of ESQUIRE. Nor about parts of the writings of D. H. Lawrence. Nor even about the "centerfold"

of the 1969 issues of PLAYBOY.

We are talking about something so hideous and barbaric that people who have not seen it cannot believe it exists, that people who have seen some of it grope for euphemisms to water down is vileness, and that people who indulge their morbid fantasies with it do so furtively, wearing dark glasses as they enter the "adult" bookstores, keeping thier private collection of comic books under lock and key in the basement.

Consider: In the Law Review Symposium that my article, appended, appears, 226 pages are given to eight separate articles, from all points on the philosophical spectrum, to explore the topic, "Obscenity and the First Amendment." As far as I can see, my article was the only one that gave some concrete examples of obscenity, i.e., pornography. I wondered at the time how learned law professors could discuss the legalities of a thing when, to all appearances, they did not--literally--know what they were talking about. One wonders how the Congress can write laws dealing with

it.

In a television debate with Larry Flynt in February, 1977, I was appalled that he could succeed with the assertion that the censors wanted to ban "discussions of sex" such as HUSTLER magazine. Such euphemism is like calling the Black Hole of Calcutta "substandard housing." In an article from the CINCINNATI ENQUIRER (February 11, 1979), Reo M. Christenson, the distinguished liberal political scientist, wrote:

Those appalled by the prospect of censorship usually do not
realize what they are protecting. Or what, through postal
subsidies, they help distribute with their tax dollars.

It is imperative that the public know what is really in Hustler
... (it) is not a "girlie" magazine or another Playboy. Rather,
it is full of pictures and descriptions of such gross sexual
perversion, such bizarre forms of bestiality and such nauseating
accounts of excretory activities that few if any newspapers feel
free to explicitly inform their readers of what is in the magazine.
The Judgment on Hustler: Sanity, not Censorship.

-

The protean monster that is modern pornography takes many forms:

these include, in livid color, with zoom-lens, close-ups,

--women having intercourse with dogs and horses;

--lesbian masturbation and the devices enabling lesbian
copulation;

--techniques of rape;

--heterosexual and homosexual sadomasochism, with instru-
ments;

--methods of seducing and/or molesting children;

--"snuff films," in which the victim is attacked sexually and
then actually murdered before the camera;

--gang sex clubs in which, typically, a group of men kidnap
a young women, chain her to a post and then simultaneously
have sex with her in groups of two or three or even more;

--fetishistic ways to stimulate oneself autoerotically, e.g.,
demonstrations of how to hang oneself by a woman's

stockings or slip, just long enough to become aroused;

--closeups of male and female sex organs in massively turgid
arrousal;

--in all, the protagonist, whose only purpose is sexual
activity and instant and continuous gratification, and
usually the foil or victim, is shown in ecstasy-like trans-
ports of total animal pleasure (never in the films or photo
essays, is shown physical or psychic harm such as VD
or neurosis).

The Congress must understand the extent of all this. In every city there are tens and sometimes hundreds of "adult bookstores" which deal in magazines, pictures and films of the material I have just summarized. There are between 260 and 280 monthly magazines catering to pedophiles-people who get their "kicks" by looking at the nude bodies of eight-yearolds in compromising poses. There are private syndicates or clubs of sometimes hundreds of people who, through the mails, order and trade pictures of such children, in poses distinctively appealing to the individual's personal twist.

The porno industry grosses about four-billion dollars annually. That's billion, which means the purveyors of porn do better than the entire legitimate motion picture and record industries.

It is likely that literally millions of young people, in their impression able teens and certainly in their early and mid-adult years, view films of bestiality, lesbian masturbation, rape techniques, gang sex and the other typical forms of pornography I mentioned above.

And now the industry is moving into videotapes, so that it can make another buck in the hotel, motel and home cassette markets. That is, if the Congress does nothing, soon every neighborhood is virtually certain to have a few people who entertain themselves with these kinds of pornography --which means that when my little girl goes babysitting she may chance to view these, and no one will be certain that when his teenage son is invited

to

a classmate's home for a party, and it happens that the parents are

out--or they are home!--"stag films" of S-M and masturbation will not be shown.

And while all this is happening in every city of the land, the Congress occupies itself passing laws against adultered eggs and noise pollution! (2) THE MONSTER OF MODERN PORNOGRAPHY CAUSES IMMENSE HARM.

Perhaps the reason the Congress appears more interested in controlling noise pollution of the physical environment than in protecting the moral environment from the spiritual pollution of pornography is that the Congress believes pornography is a "victimless crime," i.e., that it causes no harm.

There is a curious inconsistency here: we feel quite certain that smoking causes cancer. We are quite sure that "racist attitudes" cause specific acts of racial discrimination. We are beginning to recognize the mounting evidence that violence on television and in the movies causes violent conduct. As the liberal columnist, Nicholas von Hoffman, wrote in essay, Assault by Film, THE WASHINGTON POST (April 13, 1979), page

D4:

Why is it liberals, who believe "role models" in third-grade
readers are of decisive influence on behavior when it concerns
racism or male chauvinist piggery, laugh at the assertion that
pornography may also teach rape? Every textbook in every
public school system in the nation has been overhauled in the
last 20 years because it was thought that the blond, blue-eyed
suburban children once depicted therein taught little people a
socially dangerous ethnocentrism. If textbooks, those vapid and
insipid instruments of such slight influence, can have had such
sweeping effect, what are we to surmise about the effects on the
impressionably young of an R-or X-rated movie, in wide-screen
technicolor, with Dolby sound and every device of cinematic
realism?

Later in the same essay, von Hoffman added: Network television
executives who deny the likelihood their programs can alter
human behavior lie and they know it. All you have to do is
listen to what these same gentlement say to their advertisers.
They boast, they brag, they bellow about what an effective sales

medium their networks are

how good they are at getting

people to alter their behavior and part with their money.

The evidence on violence, the clinical, professional-psychologist-developed evidence, continues to mount. But in structure (and often in practice) what happens in the human mind and consciousness--and unconsciousness--when sex is depicted is no different from what happens when violence is depicted.

Two things happen: (1) some overly-impressionable viewers do act out what they have seen; (2) all the viewers are left with lasting impres sions which sink into the subconscious and, if frequent enough (and for some persons, even if not frequent), these impressions influence and warp their entire attitude about life and about other persons. As Dr. Fredric Wertham put it in an article titled, Medicine and Mayhem (M.D. Magazine, June 1978, page 11):

Negative media effects do not generally consist in simple imitation.
They are indirect, long-range, and cumulative. Violent images
are stored in the brain, and if, when, and how they are retrieved
depends on many circumstances. It is a question not so much of
acts as of attitudes, not of specific deeds but of personality
developments.

One wonders about pornographic sadomasochistic videocassettes when he reads the comment later in Wertham's Essay:

The saturation of people's minds with brutal and cruel images
can have a long-range influence on their emotional life. It is an
effect that involves human relations in fantasy and in fact and
can become a contributing factor to emotional troubles and adjust-
ment difficulties.

Certainly, before the Congress repeals all Federal Criminal Laws controlling pornography, it could call as a witness a man of Dr. Wertham's credentials (Consulting Psychiatrist at Queens Hospital Center, New York; formerly associate in psychiatry, Johns Hopkins Medical School; author of several