No, the Evidence Against Porn Is Shoddy

The report of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography concludes that pornography is closely related to criminal sexual behavior, and it makes 92 recommendations for its control.

An earlier panel, the President’s Commission on Pornography and Obscenity, came to similar conclusions in 1970 about the horror of child pornography, and it recommended strong steps to prohibit the use of children in the production of pornography as well as the display of such material to youngsters. It also recommended statutes prohibiting public display and the use of the mails for unsolicited advertising of pornography. Yet, where consenting adults were concerned, the presidential commission advocated therelaxation of laws that had restricted the availability of such material. The commission did this because its research failed to reveal evidence relating the private use of pornography to anti-social behavior by adults.

The present commission applauds the work of the first commission, but accounts for its different conclusions and recommendations on the ground that times have changed dramatically in the past 16 years. It says that pornography is now a multi-billion-dollar industry from which organized crime generates enormous profits, but it offers no evidence for this--merely the opinions of a few who testified. It says that today’s pornography is almost all violent or, at the least, degrading to women, but it did not sample pornography broadly, offering only a few graphic examples of violent material. Finally, it contends that new technology, like cable TV and video cassettes, has broadened the accessibility of pornography to the danger point. Hence, the need for new laws and strict enforcement.

As a member of the first commission, I find it necessary to object to many of these conclusions and recommendations. I submit that, while many things have indeed changed, the evidence to support the present contention is far from conclusive. A more likely explanation for the panel’s findings is related to its sponsorship, its staff’s background, and the methods by which it collected evidence and reached conclusions.

A few examples may suffice to show the large differences between the 1970 and 1986 commissions.

Both commissions’ mandates were very similar, but the interpretations of their tasks differed greatly. The first commission was created and funded by Congress. Its 18 members were selected by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and reported to both him and Congress. It saw its task as a fact-finding mission into the nature and volume of the traffic of pornographic materials and the subsequent effects. It had a $2-million budget, which it spent mostly on research. It had two years in which to do its work.

The chairman was the dean of the University of Minnesota Law School and a renowned constitutional scholar. The executive director was a social scientist, as were most of the full-time professional staff members. Among the commissioners were representatives of the law, the publishing and movie industries, medicine, education and the social and behavioral sciences. Except for the three ministers and the one replacement member named by President Richard M. Nixon, none of the commissioners had publicly expressed an opinion about pornography.

Contrast that with the present commission created by the attorney general, our chief law-enforcement officer. It had a $500,000 budget and a one-year deadline. Its chairman and executive director were attorneys with successful records in the prosecution of pornography. Three of its professional staff members were attorneys, and three of its full-time investigators were police officers. Eight of the 11 commissioners declared themselves opposed to pornography before joining the panel.

The presidential commission held two public hearings, but it relied mainly on the results of the 80 research projects that it initiated. The attorney general’s commission, on the other hand, did no research. It only held public hearings. It is notable that none of the original commissioners were invited.

Much of the 1970 commission’s work involved studies of the effects of pornography in order to find a causal connection between exposure and sexual crime. It failed to do so. The present commission, which conducted no research of its own, is very critical of the work of others over the past 16 years because they failed to establish such a link.

However, the commission does accept prior research showing that heavy exposure to violent pornography makes men’s attitudes toward women more callous. There is a long distance, of course, between attitudes and actions, but even if this conclusion were correct, it would follow that the violence component is a culprit. Although the present commission agrees that most anti-social actions are caused by multiple forces, it totally ignores the role of violence. When asked to explain the omission, one member said that this was a pornography commission asked to make a recommendation about pornography; it was not a violence commission. The panel found no evidence at all relating nonviolent pornography to attitudes or actions, but condemned it nonetheless.

The 1970 commission conducted an opinion poll in which only about 2% of the respondents ranked pornography among the great issues of public concern. The present commission did not conduct a poll, but strongly implies that most citizens are very concerned. However, in a recent referendum in Maine, voters turned down tougher pornography laws by almost 3 to 1. The attorney general’s commission is apparently not in touch with the priorities of the American public.

Neither commission’s report was unanimous. The 1970 commission gave 245 pages of its 645-page report to its few dissenting members. It also published nine volumes of technical reports covering its research. The new commission’s report is 2,000 pages long--but in double-spaced type--with fewer than 10 pages for the dissent. However, it devotes more than 200 pages to listing pornographic books, magazine articles, tapes and films. Its condensations of the verbal material and descriptions of the visual material are very explicit--themselves pornographic--and their appearance in a public document may be legally questionable.

Space does not permit further detailed dissection of the report. Suffice it to say that as a scientific document it is somewhere between a farce and a disgrace. What the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography has produced is a political document that serves the far right. Any further expenditure of scarce public money to further a Volstead Act for pornography is impractical and ill-advised.