Porn again
Meese’s pornography commission, unable to define
pornography, says homosexuality is degrading, inimical to
the public good. A paean to rhetoric over reason, the report
is a fundamentalist wish-book.
BY
N A N C Y
R.
W A L S E T H
ast year United States Attorney
General Edwin Meese, on orders
from Ronald Reagan, created an
eleven-member panel of mostly far-right
individuals to study the effects of porno
graphy on American society and to suggest
ways to control its spread.
After a year of hearings the Attorney
General’s Commission on Pornography
produced a two thousand page report which
concluded that depictions of explicit sex
were generally harmful to the public and
recommended various actions to combat
the menace. The written word and Cable
TV were exempted from the Commission’s
recommendations, reportedly due to lob
bying by large book publishers and cable
television executives.
While the Commission was unable to
arrive at a definition of pornography, it
categorized several types of sexually
explicit depictions which the majority of
its members believed were harmful to the
public. One group, “ not violent but de
grading,’’ includes not only homosexuality
generally, but even auto-eroticism on the
part o f a female (“ a degradation to
femininity’’).
This is bad news, but comfort can be
taken from the methods employed by the
Commission: Its conclusions were not
based upon any new empirical studies or
research; in fact, the one sociologist who
was hired by the Commission to review
some recent studies of sex in the media
was placed under a gag order and her re
port classified when it was discovered to
be inconsistent with the conclusions de
sired by the Commission’s majority. The
massive Final Report itself contains a
rather defensive admission regarding its
findings of harm, obviously the result of
some infighting:
“ [W]e have felt free to rely on less
proof merely to make assertions about
harm than we have required to recommend
legal restrictions. . . ”
This little gem, on page 307, is the hole
in the dike. While the Commission inti
mates it used a more reliable standard than
individual taste in recommending legal re
strictions, all the recommended restrictions
are vulnerable to attack, in the absence of a
credible finding that the activity sought to
be restricted is harmful. So, the whole
report is soft as butter on a summer’s day.
That is the good news; now for the fun.
At about the same time the Commis
sion's report was released, the stories of
two particularly good writers who dogged
it from beginning to end appeared in the
national mainstream press: Carole S. Van
ce’s “ The Meese Commission on the
Road’’ in the August 2/9, 1986 issue of
The Nation, and Robert Scheer’s “ Inside
the Meese Commission” in the August
issue of Playboy. The Meese Commission
undoubtedly has inspired scores of writers;
this article, however, is based upon
Vance’s and Scheer’s eyewitness accounts
and on a perusal of the Commission’s
Final Report.
L
First of all, the Meese Commission’s
total budget was $500,000, referred to by
Scheer as Washington “ lunch money” in
comparison with the $2 million budget of
the 1970 President’s Commission con
vened seventeen years earlier, which in
1968 dollars had sixteen times the Meese
Commission’s buying power. The 1970
commission used its ample budget to ob
tain more than fifty independent studies,
and held only two public hearings, appa
rently valuing sound research methods
over anecdotal testimony. The 1970 report
found no evidence that sexually explicit
material caused antisocial behavior.
The eleven members of the Meese Com
mission were categorized by both Scheer
and Vance as consisting of seven hardlin
ers, some of whom fought pornography
for a living, and four moderates (three of
whom, notably, were women). The hard
liners included a priest, a prosecuting at
torney, a fundamentalist radio counselor, a
former Nixon speech writer and contributor
to the National Review, a psychiatrist/
criminologist, an Arizona municipal offi
cial, and a Reagan-appointed federal
judge. The moderates included an editor of
Women’s Day, a law professor, a psy
chologist, and the head of California’s
Consortium of Child Abuse Councils.
Testimony was taken at various locations
around the country, and witnesss included
born-again former sex offenders, born-
again former pom stars, ministers, and
even a vice officer who had miraculously
survived having his bottom fondled in an
adult bookstore. Many of these witnesses
were reportedly flown to the hearings
expense-free and treated like honored
guests, whereas those witnesses who were
less supportive of the conclusions the ma
jority of the Commission wished to reach
were cross-examined meanly and treated
like unwelcome troublemakers.
An aspect of the hearings which is dif
ficult to describe even third-hand with a
straight face is the participants’ tireless
and unflagging interest in personally view
ing the examples of sexually explicit mate
rials which were brought before the Com
mission by a stream of anti-pornography
witnesses. (One witness, a sheriff, was
unable to present all of his evidence, but he
reported having 27,000 dildos in the prop
erty room back home.)
Both Vance and Scheer noted that there
was not much review or discussion of the
kind of thing one might expect to see in a
typical adult bookstore, but there was vital
interest in the rare stuff, pictures of people
doing things together that nobody had ever
heard of. In fact, Scheer commented that
“ the Commission exhibited en uncommon
fascination with the scatological fringe of
the pom world,” which, in case this termi
nology is new to you too, apparently refers
to sexual interest in excrement.
Vance elucidated: “ The atmosphere
throughout the hearings was one of excited
represssion . . . The material shown was
hardly mainstream fare;. . . At every
“ lights out,” spectators would rush to one
side of the room to see the screen, which
was angled toward the commissioners.
Were the hearing room a ship, we would
have capsized many times.”
At their year’s end, the commissioners
approved a 1960-page report, concluding,
in part, that “ degrading” sexually explicit
depictions are harmful to the public, and
making close to a hundred specific recom
mendations, including stiffer federal
pornography laws, stepped-up state and
local prosecutions and grassroots com
munity activities.
Most of the Final Report concerns itself
with the real thing, the stuff hardly anyone
cares about enough to want to protect. But
apathy is not warranted; sexual liberaliza
tion, as Vance reminds in her concluding
paragraph, is fragile. While it appears the
Commission avoided specific reference to
“ homosexuality” in its report (the word
“ lesbian” appears on an included list of
thousands of pom video titles), it does
contain oblique references to practices
“ although undoubtedly consensual and
equal, . . . frequently condemned in this
and other societies,” and though clearly
not linked with sexual violence, such
practices “ might simply for some other
reason constitute a harm in themselves.”
(Final Report, p. 338.)
A report is simply a report, and is not
binding on any legislative or judicial body.
However, this attractive, two-volume book
displaying the gold seal of the United States
Department of Justice, undoubtedly well-
intentioned and containing helpful infor
mation about the child pornography
industry and similar activities, undisci
plined in its own way, did not impose
rational limits on its commentary, and this
could insidiously affect present legislative
efforts, such as those for sexual preference
employment protections. In its elevation
of rhetoric over reason, the report supports
the religious right-wing culture guards,
who seek to reclaim something they feel
they have lost, but which in fact has never
existed — an environment devoid of con
fusion and temptation, bathed in heavenly
light, an easier road to sainthood than the
one they’re on, a very American dream
indeed.
© Nancy R. Walseth (1987)
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Just Out 9 February. 1987