A Once-Banned Author Believes in Censorship for the Good of Society

No newspaper in the country would print the unexpurgated lyrics to “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” any more than it would have printed the transcripts of the Watergate tapes without the expletives deleted. Why not? Because children 18 and younger enjoy ready access to the daily paper.

Accordingly, we adults choose to restrict what they find there. To those of us who support this choice, it is not anti-democratic, totalitarian or fascist. It’s part of life in an open society. We take it in stride.

Similarly, I was not unduly upset when my book, “The San Francisco Earthquake,” was banned from my children’s elementary school simply because it contained the word brothel in its description of the old Barbary Coast district. I disagreed with what the librarian chose to censor, but not with her right to do so. I believe my own son and daughter are equipped to handle the word in context, but I also know that they are not prepared to handle the material in, say, Screw magazine. I appreciate the librarian’s effort to maintain a collection appropriate for the age group she serves.

The jurors in Florida who convicted the Ft. Lauderdale record store owner of obscenity have chosen to restrict which records are available not only to children but also to adults.

I have not seen the transcript from that 2 Live Crew case. I do not know what instructions the jurors received from the judge. But I have a strong hunch about the motives of the Florida jurors who voted guilty. Whether they stated it explicitly or not, they were probably acting on behalf of their community’s children, who form, after all, the primary market for the 2 Live Crew album. One of the first arrests involving the 2 Live Crew album was of a 19-year-old who sold “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” to an 11-year-old.

The decision of the Florida jurors may not have been good law, but neither was it the act of political terrorism that anti-censorship activists make it out to be. Even if the jurors were acting to protect the adults of their community, they were not out of line. Ours is not a society without limits. We are free to restrict the sale of published material. We do so routinely, though you could hardly tell from the rhetoric of the anti-censorship activists.

In article after article, leaders of the anti-censorship movement rely on scare tactics to incite a mindless indignation about the supposed threat posed by community censors. Almost without fail, the anti-censorship activists employ the hoariest propaganda technique of all, the “slippery slope” argument, to further their cause. The argument usually goes something like this: “If we allow the censorship of 2 Live Crew today, the next thing you know the censors will limit the expression of Madonna, then Springsteen, then Paul Simon, and, eventually, all of us! The absurdity of this notion deserves a response.

First of all, the reasoning is illogical. Action taken in one instance does not predetermine action to be taken in another. The censorship of 2 Live Crew will not lead directly and inevitably to the censorship of Paul Simon or anyone else. To suggest that it will is deception, pure and simple.

Second, the argument is historical nonsense. Never has a government established totalitarian control over the press incrementally, beginning with sexually explicit material and proceeding to the daily press. If a government wants to end the freedom of the press it starts with the newspapers and goes from there. Artists and pornographers hate to admit this, however, probably because it makes them look less important than they believe they are.

What is worst about the slippery slope argument in this case is the implied message it gives to us as a people. It suggests that we are somehow very, very close to losing our most basic human rights. It implies that the only thing keeping us from losing our freedom is the diligence of our self-appointed protectors.

To believe this line of thinking, one must accept the notion that some sinister force is poised to wrest our freedom from us. What is this force? Who is behind it?

Judging from the Florida case, it must be we ourselves, of course, the American people, working through our legislators, our courts, our judges and jurors. We who have children to protect. We who have fought and died for our country. We whose ancestors suffered all kinds of hardship just to come this land. We want to strip ourselves of our own freedom!

This idea--which is the foundation of the anti-censorship movement--is a lie. Those who promote it should be ashamed. Those who hear it should reject it without guilt and without fear. We are a good people, a fair people. We are not absurdly self-destructive. We must not believe otherwise.