And so, with every confidence in their appointed destiny, the eleven-person Meese Commission convened on May 20, 1985. Six Commission members had strong anti-pornography track records. With its findings a foregone conclusion, the Meese Commission was in essence a highly amusing dog-and-pony show, by no means limited to sniffing out pictures of women having sex with dogs and ponies. As part of their "investigation," members visited peep shows, searched high and low for shocking material, and listened to an endless parade of witnesses describe themselves as victims. If the witnesses wouldn't claim victimhood, the Commission grilled them on the salacious details of their personal lives. A study by psychologist Edward Donnerstein had tentatively linked the viewing of sexual and violent material with a willingness to hurt others; the Meese Commission admitted the study as evidence, even though Donnerstein himself denounced the way his experimental results were taken out of context.
Giving new meaning to the Arabic maxim that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," the Commission allied itself with such groups as Women Against Pornography. Two of its star witnesses were feminist activists Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, both well-known for seeking a ban on pornography as a civil-rights violation (the same tactic that the anti-abortion movement applied to unborn fetuses). Prodded by the Commission, Dworkin and MacKinnon argued that our sexist society maintained its values partly through pornography, which conditioned men to see women as sex objects. Results included everything from rape to sexual harassment to the corporate glass ceiling. Dworkin and MacKinnon brought forth numerous witnesses, notably the former Linda Lovelace (who testified under her married name, Linda Marchiano), to corroborate their position that women in pornography were not acting of their own free will.
The Meese Commission was a dog-and-pony show, by no means limited to sniffing out pictures of women having sex with dogs and ponies. |
That women might have a measure of choice about participating in pornography, and that gay men and lesbians also enjoyed pornography, did not enter into the picture. Those who didn't agree, such as the lesbian BDSM group Samois and the editors of the lesbian porn magazine On Our Backs, for instance, were condemned as dildo-wielding heterosexual accomplices. There's no doubt that the Meese Commission dug up some harrowing stories from the porn world, but the ACLU's summary and critique of the Commission put it well: "It would not be possible to listen to the stories of many Commission witnesses and remain unmoved by their general sincerity and honesty. However, it is also difficult to imagine (in most cases) what immediate positive effect the removal of pornography would have had on the abusive relationships in which these witnesses were enmeshed. These were quite frankly not cases where but for pornography, life would have been a bed of roses."
Unsurprisingly, the Commission's final report came out against pornography, arguing that it did real and definite harm to women. According to the report, the First Amendment was not a valid defense against speech that does such definite harm: "Not every use of words, pictures, or a printing press automatically triggers protection by the First Amendment. For example, writing bad checks, lying under oath, or 'urging your brother to kill your father so that you can split the insurance money' are not constitutionally protected activities." And so, the eleven commissioners urged the reconsideration of pornography as "a subset of prostitution. . . a form of sex discrimination and. . . an invasion of performers' personal rights."
Even if many saw the Meese Commission as a kangaroo court, it had a definite chilling effect on free speech in America. Conservative groups were emboldened by the idea that God and Government were on their side. Added to this was the Commission's intimidation power: 7-Eleven and other national chains removed Playboy and Penthouse from their shelves in 1986, when the Meese Commission began sending letters threatening possible prosecution to distributors. The new Comstockery attacked that which was most vulnerable to government interference: the entertainment industry's profit margin. This strategy would continue up until the World Wide Web made policing the public morality next to impossible. But that's a story for next month.
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