The Meese Commission

With the election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980, the United States entered a new era. The reassertion of traditional moral values was seen by some analysts to be part of an overall conservative realignment, due in part to the aging of the baby-boom generation. However, while polls showed a renewed appreciation for traditional values, tolerance of Americans for the right of others to reject those values showed no corresponding decline (Stengel, R. et al. 13). An example can be seen in the results of a referendum in Maine on June 10, 1986, when voters there were asked to approve a new statute designed to "make it a crime to make, sell, give for value or otherwise promote obscene material in Maine." The vote was 16,101 for and 48,976 against. The people of one of the more conservative states seem to be "unambiguous in their dislike of censorship and the busybodies who promote it" (Hertzberg 23).

In connection with the signing of the Child Protection Act of 1984, President Reagan announced his intention to set up a commission to study pornography, apparently with the goal of obtaining results more acceptable to his conservative supporters than the conclusions of the 1970 Commission. The result was the appointment by Attorney General Edwin Meese in the spring of 1985 of a panel comprised of 11 members, the majority of whom had established records as anti-pornography crusaders (Wilcox 941).

Two Supreme Court rulings in early 1986 dealt with the constitutionality of certain issues related to pornography. In one case, acted on in February, cities and towns were given broad authority to regulate X-rated movie theaters through zoning laws. In the other case, the Court struck down an Indianapolis law which attempted to ban pornography as discriminatory against women. The ordinance, developed by anti-porn feminists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon and passed by the Indianapolis City-County Council, gave "victims" of pornography, including "any woman acting on behalf of all women," the right to bring civil actions against distributors of pornography. It was held unconstitutionally vague, and was overturned by the District Court, whose decision was subsequently upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court (Linz et al. "Issues Bearing" 182).

An earlier case, Olivia v. National Broadcasting Company, Inc., (1978), involved civil action relating to pornography, and is often cited in this context. The legal questions raised by this case are: "(1) When can media portrayals be considered to have incited illegal violent acts? (2) Can social science investigationsbe used to establish whether media portrayals incite violence?" The concept of "clear and present danger," originally articulated by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1919, provides the test used to determine when speech is not protected by the First Amendment. The interesting thing about these decisions is that the courts did not disagree with the premise of the legislation, that pornography leads to subordination of women, and possibly even to "battery and rape on the streets." Pornography was likened to speech which promotes hatred and bigotry, which, no matter how insidious, is protected by the First Amendment. When this same issue was considered in Canada, it was decided that "the right to freedom of expression is protected only in so far as it does not interfere with rights of equality of all persons under the law" (Linz et al. "Issues Bearing" 172-185).

As soon as it became obvious what direction the Attorney General's Commission was going to take, opponents began to denounce it. The Meese Commission Exposed, which appeared well before the Commission issued its report, contains transcripts of speeches by such well-known figures as Kurt Vonnegut, Betty Friedan, Colleen Dewhurst, and others at a conference of the National Coalition against Censorship (NCAC). The speakers, most of whom had attended hearings held by the Commission, spoke out "preemptively and forcefully against what they perceived to be the inevitable conclusions toward which the commission was moving" (Burger 442). Vonnegut's bitingly sarcastic piece states, "It is not enough that sex crimes of every sort are already against the law and are punished with admirable severity. It is up to our leadersto persuade a large part of our citizenry that even the most awful sex crimes are made legal, and even celebrated in some godless quarters, because of the permissiveness of our Constitution" (81-82). One feminist perspective expressed by Betty Friedan is that among the first targets of anti-pornography legislation would be feminist books such as Our Bodies, Ourselves (Burger 442).

Groups such as the Mississippi-based National Federation for Decency advocated picketing and consumer boycotts, claiming they had stopped some 5,000 chain stores from selling magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse ("Supreme Court Speaks"). A number of companies received a letter in February of 1986 from Alan E. Sears, executive director of the Attorney General's Commission, and a copy of "'testimony' charging them with dealing in pornography." As a direct result of that testimony, the 7-Eleven chain stopped selling adult magazines in 7500 of its stores. Another convenience store chain, Dairy Mart, conducted a survey of its customers, asking if it should stock magazines like Playboy. The results were: 55% yes, 35% no, and the rest had no opinion (Stengel et al. 17-18). Two other distributors who received the letters protested and challenged the constitutionality of the action. According to Maxwell Lillienstein, counsel for the American Booksellers Association, booksellers were told "Censor the books and magazines you sell or be publicly branded as pornographers" (Fields: "First Amendment").

Federal district Judge John Garrett Penn issued an emphatic ruling, ordering the Commission the retract the implied threat. He said the original letter constituted prior restraint on speech. Hendrik Hertzberg, writing in The New Republic, noted that these magazines publish not only erotica but political opinion as well. "Once it is established that indirect government pressure on magazine distributors is okay, there is no guarantee that such pressure won't be applied to publications that the reigning ideologues don't like for political reasons" (24). Hertzberg adds, "The First Amendment contains no requirement that the speech it protects be harmless. On the contrary, speech that somebody thinks is harmful is the only kind that needs protecting."

In July 1986 the Commission finally released its findings. In news reports Meese is shown holding the Commission's two-volume, 1960-page report, standing in front of the statue Spirit of Justice, a half-clothed female figure with one breast bare. The original draft of the report, which was written by staff members and overseen by the Commission's executive director, former assistant U.S. Attorney Alan Sears, "an ardent antipornography crusader," was seen as an over-zealous reaction to the testimony of individuals who blamed the evils of their lives on pornography, relying on over-simplification and the bizarre to make its points. As a result, another Commission member, Frederick Schauer, professor of law at the University of Michigan, wrote his own 200-page draft, which became the basis for the final report (Stengel et al. 15).

The mandate of the Commission as expressed in its charter was to "determine the nature, extent, and impact on society of pornography in the United States, and to make specific recommendations to the Attorney General concerning more effective ways in which the spread of pornography could be contained, consistent with constitutional guarantees" (AGCP 215). In comparing their report to the report of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography issued in 1970, the Commissioners note first of all the difference in available time and money. It is said that, "taking into account the changing value of the dollar, the 1970 Commission had a budget nearly sixteen times as large as ours." They also note a difference in perspective, since "all of us have taken issue with at least some aspects of the earlier Commission's approach, and all of us have taken issue with at least some of the earlier Commission's conclusions." As to the direct influence of the 1970 report on the present Commission, they state rather noncommittally, "Whether this Commission would have been created had the 1970 Commission reached different conclusions is not for us to say." Concerning the attempt to provide an adequate definition for "pornography," this Commission, like others, "decided that definition was simply futile" (AGCP 226-228).

While admitting that establishment of a link between aggressive behavior and sexual violence "requires assumptions not found exclusively in the experimental evidence," the Commissioners go on to say , "We see no reason, however, not to make these assumptionsthat are plainly justified by our own common sense" (AGCP 325). Plotnik's 1970 statements seem increasingly relevant.

In a section which is underlined for emphasis in the report, but given little attention in the popular accounts derived from it, the Commission states that the consequences of viewing sexually-violent materials "do not vary with the extent of sexual explicitness so long as the violence is presented in an undeniably sexual context." They point out that so-called "slasher" films "are likely to produce the consequences discussed here to a greater extent than most of the materials available in 'adults only' pornographic outlets" (AGCP 328-329).

Two female members of the Commission, Judith Becker, director of the Sexual Behavior Clinic at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Ellen Levine, editor of Woman's Day, objected to "efforts to tease the current data into a causal link" between pornography and violence. Many social scientists believe that sexual attitudes are formed very early in life, and that pornography is "a symptom of deviant sexuality rather than a cause of it." According to Nicholas Groth, who worked with sex-offenders at the Connecticut Correctional Institution, such men get turned on looking at children's underwear ads in the Sears catalog (Stengel et al. 15).

Despite the assertion by Commission members that the report did not advocate censorship, Leanne Katz, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, said "I have been working in the anti-censorship cause for about 30 years, and I have never encountered a censorship controversy in which the other side wasn't saying 'This isn't censorship'" (Stengel et al. 15)

Discussing the commissioners' level of knowledge of human sexuality and the culture of the last decade, Barry Lynn of the ACLU, who is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ in addition to being a lawyer, said "Several of them seemed to be proud of the fact that they haven't been to a movie in five years, as if that's some kind of blessing. I think it's an abysmal statement for people to make who are supposedly critiquing the culture and urging the moral condemnation of the culture" (Fields: "More Difficult" 37).

Even the National Review seemed uncomfortable with the conclusions expressed in the Meese Commission report. Admitting that "this is the sort of question that will never be settled to general satisfaction," it is then suggested that "the commission has to some extent found the conclusion it was looking for." The argument is made that the case against pornography is a philosophical one, having to do with "public morality," and there may be some truth that is "independent of the simpler empirical claims that are made for it." Conservatives are said to have mixed feelings in that they believe it is improper for the government to pressure chain stores into dropping "porn magazines," although they are glad "to see the corner 7-Eleven made fit for family consumption" ("Meese v. Playboy" 13).

Many religious book stores refused to stock the Commission's report for fear of offending their customers. The objections focused on the extensive quotations from and descriptions of pornographic books and films. An article in the New York Times erroneously reported on "the many graphic photographs and illustrations that are in the Government version, culled from pornographic movies and magazines" (McDowell). The only photographs in the Government version of the report are those of the commissioners.

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