The Nation's Pulse/Outlaw Porn
Haag, Ernest van den
THE NATION'S PULSE OUTLAW PORN by Ernest van den Haag T he Meese report on pornography I was released last year and is now old hat. Perhaps this is a good time to examine with some detachment the...
...The Weimar Republic in Germany was not replaced by Nazism because it restrained obscenity...
...They seek gratification in using others, in inflicting pain (sometimes in suffering it), at least in their fantasy...
...I believe there are...
...The perception of pornographic qualities in any work depends on literary or aesthetic criticism...
...others fear that "censorship" of pornography may be extended to actual literature...
...Such a direct causal relationship is likely occasionally, perhaps often...
...Self-restrained and controlled individuals exist and function in an environment which fosters reasonable conduct—but few such individuals will be created, and they will function less well, in an environment where they receive little social support, where sadistic acts are openly held up as models and sadistic fantasies are sold to any purchaser...
...It is part of one's freedom to make choices that are harmful to oneself, or disapproved by others...
...by eliminating the contexts it reduces males and females simply to bearers of impersonal sensations of pleasure and pain...
...Perhaps he should...
...LEVIATHAN* 11...
...We are taught, and most of us learn, to perceive others as ends in themselves and not merely as means to our pleasure...
...children and adolescents are not supervised enough...
...02108which hold the group together," according to Freud there is "the cessation of all feelings of consideration" and therewith social disintegration and crime...
...Nothing in the First Amendment protects speechless expression, such as music or dance, or for that matter, pictures...
...Why should humanity as such be less protected than any of the specific groups that compose it...
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...Few sayings are as silly as the dictum attributed to jimmy Walker (the late New York mayor) to the effect that "No girl has ever been seduced by a book...
...It has no legal basis...
...In a sense, pornographic and finally sadistic literature is anti-human...
...Invaluable...
...We all are vulnerable to regression...
...At any rate, I can't see exploitation (a cloudy concept to begin with, meaning not much more than "I don't like it") since both buyers and sellers volunteer, and both have alternatives...
...Just as chemical pollution may erode stones, statues, and buildings, so pornography erodes civility and our social institutions...
...The Commission has been ridiculed by all the usual "civil libertarians...
...Matt-mod...
...Why should we punish the sale of pornography...
...Those offended by pornography can readily refrain...
...Wherefore the case for prohibition of obscenity seems to be quite strong regardless of whether pornography can be shown to be among the many causes of crime...
...As for grownups, many are far from the self-restrained healthy type envisaged by democratic theory...
...In this respect, The Story of 0, which, itself pornographic, also depicts the (rather self-defeating) outcome of pornographic fantasy, is paradigmatic...
...For instance, the depiction of intercourse with animals may be legal, since it may not appeal to the prurient interest of the average person...
...Name Address City, State, Zip Phone 570 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1987 31 pornography (we will never succeed in doing more...
...Why should it not be sufficient if some pictures, or other contributions to a periodical, are obscene, even if the rest consists of non-obscene essays...
...Standards of obscenity vary over time...
...Thus, in accordance with the First Amendment, legislatures cannot abridge the communication of information, or of ideas...
...If criticism cannot tell pornography from literature, what can it tell us...
...Yet current interpretations have led the courts to conclude that the First Amendment protects "expression" (such as nude dancing) as well...
...Exploitation without compulsion is hard to figure out...
...These legal criteria are rather porous...
...These are just a few samples of the rave reviews from Audio Classics subscribers...
...But we are not dealing with a homogeneous group called grownups, nor is it possible in the modern American environment to limit anything to adults...
...Why must society lead its members into temptation and then punish them when they do what they were tempted to do...
...The non-obscene material usually serves as camouflage or pretense...
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...By definition, pornography de-individualizes and dehumanizes sexual acts...
...Whether or not pornography is distasteful or morally harmful, it affects only those who buy it...
...Okay, forget about the feminists...
...Detailed and explicit visual depictions of genital actions, including copulation, masturbation, and depiction of genital arousal, are prurient and offensive...
...Keeps me mentally fit...
...There isn't, except for malehomosexuals, who indeed are catered to by pornographers...
...The answer is yes...
...If you're dissatisfied, return the tapes within 15 days and we'll credit your account or refund your money...
...Women are accidental...
...Which comes first...
...Yet, although often professing to be unable to distinguish obscene from non-obscene material, lawyers do not expose their genitals in court...
...Yet it is precarious...
...The Audio Classics are dramatized condensations of the original works...
...The legal question is not can we prohibit pornography...
...Pornography exploits sex, not females...
...The standards of the local community are vague (and costly to ascertain), unless thejury is taken to mean the community...
...Nor is explicit prose...
...We cannot outlaw everything, not even every communication, that sometimes leads to crime...
...Such invitations are all too likely to be tempting...
...I will receive the remaining 22 tapes in albums of two each month...
...But why be a critic—and teach in universities—if it involves no more than uttering capricious and arbitrary opinions...
...Further, alcohol too may lead to crime, or TV violence—indeed myriad things...
...on the contrary, it makes it as dangerous to more people...
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...It did not...
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...and (3) describes sexual conduct in ways judged to be patently offensive by the standards of the community in which the material is sold...
...the literary witnesses only have the obligation to testify truthfully as to what is, or is not, pornography...
...It is the other way around...
...Traditionally pornography has not been thought to be protected by the First Amendment...
...Not a single instance is known, throughout history, of a police state, or a dictatorship, developing by prohibiting obscenity, or even by censoring it, or by censoring anything else...
...Nobody advocates prior restraint—censorship--which is a pseudo-issue...
...What is in dispute in each case is only whether this material is obscene according to the legal definition given above...
...So are prurient depictions which make public what traditionally has been private and intimate...
...Whatever the merits of such views (I don't see any), they do not justify testifying that the distinction cannot be made...
...Surely the people who want to legalize pornography are right—if, as they contend, pornography does no harm to those who do not volunteer to buy it...
...Pornography affects the quality of our lives...
...But pornography is not the onlything that may lead to sex crime, and certainly it does so only sometimes...
...02108 ^ YES...
...Courts exist to decide doubtful cases, and can do so in this area as well as in any other...
...If not exploitative, pornography of this sort is certainly antisocial...
...Of course there will be doubtful cases—but no more so than in other areas of the law...
...Further, the First Amendment prohibits only abridging freedom of speech and of the press...
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...The Court could have been more concrete and specific...
...Use the ideas all the time...
...Are there other reasons...
...Art may "cancel lust" (as Santayana thought) or sublimate it...
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...A critic who is really incapable of distinguishing pornography from literature certainly has no business being one...
...Once Hitler was in power, he used it to abolish all freedom and to institute censorship...
...Legitimate questions about advertising, public visibility, and access by children are marginal and could be solved by plain wrappers, inconspicuous signs, and so on...
...Most females—be it for cultural, psychological, or biological reasons—do not seem to want to consume pornography...
...Else it cannot be defined as pornography...
...Many people consume it without being led to crime...
...The idea that the First Amendment licenses pornographers, though widespread, is quite recent...
...One can argue about this...
...Pornography undermines the social bond on which human association—from family to nation—must depend, which deters most of us, most of the time, from using our neighbors as we please, without regard to their ownpreferences...
...But a wise wife will avoid situations where the possibility is alluring and the op-portunity available...
...Oh yes, there is one bugaboo: A "police state," it is feared, may develop from prohibiting the sale of pornography and punishing violators...
...Visual depictions that focus on the genitals—rather than merely to include them—are...
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...But it is largely beside the point, when compared to the erosion of the social bond...
...Depiction of the nude body, even inalluring poses, is no longer regarded as offensive...
...But pornographic "literature" is without literary value...
...Pornographers would be just as willing to present pictures of males as of females—if there were a market for them...
...no one compels them to see X-rated movies, or buy pornographic magazines...
...The criminal effects are not intended, let alone conspired for...
...For a movie, if more than five percent of its running time is devoted to images which, taken in isolation, would be regarded as obscene, the movie should be so regarded...
...For those who don't, these classic thoughts are now on audio tape...
...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1987 rapher desublimates it...
...The wisdom of the past can help us better understand the present and anticipate the future...
...ut shouldn't an adult be able to L.) control himself and read or see, without enacting, what he knows to be wrong or, at least, illegal...
...Or should we find a method of outlawing it effectively...
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...Should we legalize it...
...There is a chicken and egg problem: does the prospective rapist conErnest van den Haag is the John M. Olin Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Policy at Fordham University...
...Of course, critics may disagree...
...Bravo...
...Perhaps this is a good time to examine with some detachment the question on which it sought to shed light: Should we continue to outlaw pornography while, in effect, tolerating it...
...It depreciates emotional ties and individual relationships in favor of fungible ones, in which physical pleasure is, in principle, separated from any emotional or even personal relationships...
...The general evidence strongly suggests that crime can be stimulated by communications, ideas, and by sensations aroused by movies or books...
...The Commission decided that pornography, particularly sado-masochistic pornography, stimulates, to say the least, sex crimes...
...It is printed but it is not literature...
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...Increased my knowledge...
...Those who resort to pornographic fantasies habitually are people who are ungratified by others (for endogenous or external reasons...
...This learning is the basis of society...
...A police state cannot continue without it...
...I f the Meese Commission conclusion—let's prohibit pornography because it may lead to crime—does not quite follow from its evidence, the idea of some feminists, that pornography is a male conspiracy against females to exploit them, and foster violence against them, is even less well founded...
...2) lacks serious literary, scientific, artistic, or political value (i.e., does not predominantly offer new ideas, or aesthetic experiences...
...Although expression, dancing is certainly not speech, let alone print...
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...and that we face today...
...sume pornography because he independently is a prospective rapist, or is it the pornography which causes, or stimulates, a disposition to rape that did not pre-exist or was minor...
...A witness is not entitled to deny that he saw what he did see, simply to save the accused from a punishment he dislikes...
...Why then outlaw pornography...
...This makes perfect sense for, say, novels, works meant to be taken as a whole...
...There is no great difficulty in discerning them—as lawyers are aware, though they often pretend otherwise...
...Hence there is nothing to be lost by restricting it, and much to be gained...
...The Meese Commission reason—that it may lead to crime—is not sufficient...
...Yet at any time there are standards discoverable by the courts...
...As interpreted by the Supreme Court, the First Amendment does not protect pornography, defined as that which (1) taken as a whole predominantly appeals to the prurient interest (a morbid interest in sex...
...Were it directed against a specific human group—e.g., Jews or blacks—the same ideologues who now oppose outlawing pornography might advocate prohibiting it...
...They must have some knowledge of prevailing standards...
...Further the authority of their supervisors has been diminished too much to make effective supervision possible...
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...This is the question the Meese Commission addressed...
...But pornography, as defined by the courts, is bereft of either...
...That the sexualized hate articulated is directed against people in general, rather than against only Jews or blacks, makes it no less dangerous...
...so do other witnesses, including psychiatrists and handwriting experts...
...Whatever the case, there seems to be little doubt that a disposition to commit sex crimes may be strengthened, or activated, by pornography which appears to legitimize it and to weaken internal restraints...
...But they help...
...The government is not in charge of their morals...
...In court, serious critics often behave as though they believed criticism to be a matter of opinion...
...But they need not...
...Once you have a "police state" censorship follows...
...No need (or possibility) to prove a direct and unavoidable relationship to crime...
...they are not compelled to do it...
...For those who wish to legalize pornography the answer is simple...
...Shouldn't you join them...
...Now, if these materials had artistic, indeed any but pornographic value, we would have to balance the loss against the importance of avoiding their deleterious influence...
...If you spend just 30 minutes a day in your car, you can gain a better understanding of the issues and events that great thinkers faced...
...But how many of us have the time to read and study the ideas of great authors like Jefferson, Adam Smith, Machiavelli, Mill, and others...
...This dehumanization eliminates the empathy that restrains us ultimately from sadism and non-consensual acts...
...One may favor prohibition for this reason as much as for the sake of women...
...Books do not seduce directly any more than whiskey does...
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...They do what they want to do...
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...I prefer to live in a society in which public invitations to do without love in individual relationships, to regress to an infantile level of sexuality, stripped of emotion, are not persistently extended...
...The social damage pornography does is greater, yet more diffuse than indicated by individual crimes...
...Some of the critics who claim that they cannot make the distinction do not wish to, because they regard pornography as legitimate...
...a critic who is capable of making the distinction has no business testifying that he is not...
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...To be sure, a virtuous man will not commit adultery...
...Further, present law requires that the material at issue be considered "as a whole" to determine whether it "predominantly" appeals to the prurient interest...
...Thomas Paine Jefferson Adam Smith John Stuart Nil...
...Others become criminals without pornography...
...Reshaped my thinking...
...That argument is not too plausible to begin with: America did not become a "police state" although obscenity was punished for the last 200 years...
...We may even be ready to sacrifice some probable victims for the sake of this artistic value...
...We need to be socialized continuously...
...There is no need for the law to protect them...
...Invitations to regression should not be socially endorsed...
...If it does, obviously it harms persons who did not volunteer for the harm, and are entitled to protection, provided that protection is consistent with constitutional principles...
...Therefore, some argue, it is a matter of opinion...
...After all, we all developed laboriously and with much social effort from antisocial infants into acceptable adults...
...But no democracy has ever become a "police state" by using the criminal law to restrain obscenity...
...Actually males, who spend good money for the stuff, are more, not less, exploited than the females who earn it...
...They may easily be given a last, or first, push by the materials I would like to see prohibited...
...Pornography undermines the internal restraints on which society must depend and which the criminal law with its sanctions can reinforce, but not create...
...Interstate commerce in pornographyis already illegal under federal statutes, and intrastate pornography is illegal in most states...
...After all, even if one discounts the "sexual revolution," he cannot deny that sexual mores have changed over time, owing not to changes in biology, but to changed ideas and sentiments that infect people and lead them to action...
...The depiction of excretion may be legal since it may not appeal to the prurient interest of the average person either...
...The pornog'Depiction of females merely as sexual objects, or expressions of hostility to them, and of contempt, and depictions of sadistic humiliation, are sometimes called "exploitation...
...The decision is up to the courts...
...However, if one actually looks at its report he finds that the Commission did quite reasonable work in trying to answer the question it focused on: does pornography lead to crime...
...but no sense for periodicals, which, by definition, consist of independent articles or pictures...
...The cliche-language and the stereotyped situations of characters not characterized, except sexually, are defining characteristics of pornography: the pornographer avoids distraction from the masturbatory fantasy by avoiding art and humanity...
...Legislatures can constitutionally allow pornography, or nude dancing...
Vol. 20 • July 1987 • No. 7
