The production and distribution of hardcore pornography is a harmful multi-billion-dollar industry that operates with no valid claim to First Amendment protection, and would be sharply curtailed or eliminated if the federal and state obscenity laws were vigorously enforced. "Speech" that is indecent but not obscene has only limited constitutional protection, yet indecency has become a hallmark of our popular culture because the laws on indecency, like the obscenity laws, have gone largely unenforced for years.

Hardcore pornography in the marketplace and indecency in the entertainment media are in many cases at least partly the cause of family breakup, unwed pregnancy, sexual violence, sexually transmitted diseases and other societal problems.

Morality in Media, a national non-profit [501(c)(3)] organization, has compiled a record of landmark successes against illegal hardcore pornography in the marketplace and indecency in the media since its founding in New York City in 1962, and has the resources and strategic insights to build on that success. General operations may be summarized as follows:

• Morality in Media conducts public information and public affairs activities designed to help its members, other citizens and public officials deal effectively and constitutionally with the threat of illegal pornography in their communities and the erosion of decency standards in the media.
• Morality in Media's Legal Department consults with public officials and citizens on local pornography problems, prepares proposed legislation and regulations, testifies in legislative hearings, and submits amicus curiae briefs in Federal and State court cases.

• Morality in Media operates the National Obscenity Law Center, a nationally recognized clearinghouse of information on obscenity law, with a library of cases going back to 1800.

Morality in Media uses its knowledge of the law and the vigorous involvement of informed citizens to address these pressing moral and cultural evils:

1. The exploitation of obscenity in the marketplace, and
2. The erosion of decency standards in the media.

The United States Supreme Court has held repeatedly that pornography is illegal under the obscenity laws when, in broad terms, it is found by a jury or judge to (1) appeal to the prurient interest, (2) depict hardcore sexual content in a patently offensive manner, and (3) lack serious literary, artistic, scientific and political value. Whether or not the material appeals to lust or is patently offensive are questions to be decided by a jury or judge using their perceptions of community standards as a measuring device. The test for indecency, which can be regulated in broadcasting and in commercial telephone transmission, is less rigorous: the material need only depict or describe sexual or excretory activity or organs in a patently offensive way.

Only a handful of lawyers rank as experts on the First Amendment as it relates to obscene and indecent "speech." Two of them are on the staff of Morality in Media. Morality in Media uses its legal talents and the resources of its National Obscenity Law Center to assist prosecutors and police, to help shape legislation, and to intervene as a friend of the court in cases involving challenges to obscenity and indecency laws.

Morality in Media also provides information about the pornography and indecency problems to the public and the news media through its Newsletter and other publications, its public inquiry services, public speaking activities, news releases, and interviews with print, broadcast, and on-line journalists.

Citizen involvement is vital because both obscenity and indecency laws require the application of community standards, and because prosecutors and police need to know that the people in their jurisdictions want these laws enforced.

Morality in Media has its headquarters in New York City, where it was founded in 1962 by clergymen of several faiths led by Father Morton Hill, S.J. It functions through its public affairs programs, its Legal Department, and the National Obscenity Law Center.

Morality in Media's Legal Department consults with public officials, law enforcement agencies and private citizens on specific obscenity and indecency problems in their communities. The Department also prepares proposed legislation and administrative regulations, testifies before legislative and administrative bodies, and submits amicus curiae briefs in key Federal and State cases.

Morality in Media is known to a large segment of the public through its publications, news releases, frequent media appearances, and public inquiry services. MIM's public information and public affairs activities intended to equip citizens and public officials around the country with the information they need to fight back, through constitutional means, against the distribution of illegal hardcore porn in their communities and the erosion of decency standards in the media that reach into their homes.

Public affairs activities include: Morality in Media's annual White Ribbon Against Pornography (WRAP) campaign and Turn Off TV Day.

Among Morality in Media's publications are the bi-monthly Morality in Media Newsletter for all members. Morality in Media also publishes booklets, pamphlets and reports on a variety of subjects related to obscenity and indecency. These include:

Pornography's Effects on Adults and Children, by Dr. Victor B. Cline, clinical psychologist and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Utah. Dr. Cline demonstrates porn's effects using a wealth of empirical and clinical evidence. 17 pages. This article can be found on our Porn's Effects page.

How To Win The War In Your Community: The People Vs. Pornography. This 48-page booklet reprints a series of MIM Newsletter articles containing practical advice on dealing with cable porn, mail porn, porn in video stores, "adult bookstores" and nude "entertainment." To see an excerpt, go to our Obscenity Enforcement page

Cliches: Debunking Misinformation about Pornography and Obscenity Law. This 22-page booklet contains common-sense answers to 31 common pro-porn arguments. Some of these can be found on our Obscenity Enforcement page and our Media Issues page.

Stranger in the House: Reclaiming the Decency Abandoned by Today's Media. Formerly know as "TV: The World's Greatest Mind-Bender," Stranger in the House is a 116-page handbook for citizen action. Topics include the effects of TV sex, violence and vulgarity on children, adults and families; Federal obscenity and indecency laws and how they apply; key players among advertisers, TV industry executives, and the Federal Communications Commission - and how to influence them.

In addition, it operates two World Wide Web sites:
http://www.moralityinmedia.org (Morality in Media)
http://www.moralityinmedia.org/nolc (National Obscenity Law Center)

E-mail addresses are:
mim@moralityinmedia.org (for Morality in Media)
nolc@moralityinmedia.org (for the National Obscenity Law Center)

The National Obscenity Law Center compiles information on obscenity and indecency laws and makes this material available to interested individuals, civic groups, legislators, law enforcement agencies, and prosecutors at all levels of government, for the enforcement and enactment of constitutional laws. The National Obscenity Law Center library includes all reported obscenity cases since 1800, all Federal and State obscenity laws, many city and county anti-pornography ordinances and model laws, a Brief Bank Index and monographs on legal questions that are the subject of recurring inquiries.

Most prosecutors are generalists in criminal law. National Obscenity Law Center publications help them when they go up against defense attorneys who make obscenity law a specialty. These publications are:

Obscenity Law Reporter, a 3-Volume ring-binder digest of obscenity cases decided since 1800 with a topical index and a fine-point index.

Handbook on the Prosecution of Obscenity Cases by George M. Weaver, a former Assistant Solicitor General in Atlanta now in private practice. The Handbook is a comprehensive guide for prosecutors, explaining technical terms such as "prurient interest," from investigation through trial to final appeal.

Obscenity Law Bulletin, a bi-monthly newsletter that goes by subscription to prosecutors, city attorneys, court and law libraries, police legal bureaus, the U.S. Customs Service, the FBI, and others who are interested.

Morality in Media's Legal Department consults with public officials, law enforcement agencies and private citizens on specific obscenity and indecency problems in their communities. The Department also prepares proposed legislation and administrative regulations, testifies before legislative and administrative bodies, and submits amicus curiae briefs in key Federal and State cases.

These law-related functions are complemented by public information and public affairs activities intended to equip Morality in Media members, other citizens and public officials around the country with the information they need to fight back, through constitutional means, against the distribution of illegal hardcore porn in their communities and the erosion of decency standards in the media that reach into their homes.

Morality in Media staff: President Robert Peters Vice President Peter Knickerbocker, Vice President Ed Hynes and General Counsel Paul McGeady are supported by staff members: Ari Avidar and Mary McNeill are staff attorneys in the National Obscenity Law Center, and Patrick McGrath is director of media relations. Talented, motivated student interns from New York-area law schools provide important contributions to the work of the organization.

When a group of grade school children in the Yorkville section of New York City began circulating pornographic magazines among themselves in 1962, a young mother turned to her pastor for help, and got it from an interfaith group of clergymen led by Jesuit Father Morton Hill. They fixed the problem in what became Morality in Media's first victory.

Over the years since then, Morality in Media has participated and frequently played a pivotal role in a number of landmark victories that have made a difference for the better at the Federal, State and local levels. At the Federal level, these include:

• Enactment of the Child On-line Protection Act (1998)
• Extension of the broadcast indecency ban by two prime-time hours, to 10 p.m. (1996)
• Enactment of indecency controls on leased-access cable TV channels (1996)
• Establishment of the permanent Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section in the Justice Department (1987)
• Enactment of the Federal Child Pornography Law (1984)
• Enactment of the Federal law extending tough RICO penalties to obscenity crimes (1984)
• Most importantly, perhaps, Morality in Media thwarted an attempt to repeal all Federal obscenity laws in 1970.

Repeal of the Federal obscenity laws was recommended in the flawed majority report of the 1970 Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. As a Commission member, Fr. Hill co-authored a minority report that exposed the majority report as a "Magna Carta" for pornographers. The majority report was overwhelmingly rejected by a vote of the United States Senate. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court cited Fr. Hill's minority report four times in upholding obscenity laws. Had it not been for Fr. Hill's decisive action, the country might have done away entirely with the Federal laws banning obscenity.

Despite the many landmark victories achieved over the years by Morality in Media and others, hardcore pornography is a growth industry today (see article on our Obscenity Enforcement page). This corrosive trade has invaded almost every community through "adult bookstores" and other sex-oriented businesses, the "adult" section of neighborhood video stores, news-stand magazine racks, the U.S. Mails, pay-per-view TV, the telephone and now the Internet.

U.S. News & World Report (February 10, 1997, cover story) reported that,

"America is by far the world's leading producer of porn, churning out hardcore videos at the astonishing rate of about 150 new titles per week." Inside, the story reported that, "Last year Americans spent more than $8 billion on hardcore videos, peep shows, live sex acts, adult cable programming, sexual devices, computer porn, and sex magazines - an amount much larger than Hollywood's domestic box office receipts and larger than all the revenues generated by rock and country music recordings."

While it is true that there is no conclusive scientific proof that obscene material "causes" sexual crime, there is overwhelming evidence that hardcore pornography is addictive and that it contributes to sexual crimes, ruins marriages, erodes moral values, destroys neighborhoods, spreads disease and enriches organized crime.

These ill effects on society are compounded by the erosion of decency standards in the entertainment media, where broadcast and cable TV as well as movies are full of gratuitous sex, vulgarity and extreme, unnecessary violence, and where lewd, sexually explicit lyrics are common in the recorded music industry. Hardcore pornography and media indecency are associated with sharp declines in a number of cultural indicators. For example:

• The number of births to unmarried women was 89,500 in 1940, including 42,600 to teens. In 1994, there were 1,269,592, including 393,685 to teens.
• The teenage illegitimacy ratio -- that is, the proportion of births to teenagers 15-19 that occur out of wedlock -- was 13.5%. In 1994, it was 75.9%.
• From 1960 to 1990, the suicide rate among teens 15 to 19 more than tripled, to 11.3 per 100,000 from 3.6 per 100,000.
• The divorce rate more than doubled from 1960 to 1991, to 20.9 per 1,000 married women in 1991 from 9.2 per 1,000 in 1960.
• Between 1960 and 1991, the percentage of families headed by a single parent has more than tripled, to 28.6% in 1991 from 9.1% in 1960.
• While population increased only 41% between 1960 and 1992, the number of violent crimes increased more than 550%. Between 1965 and 1990, the juvenile arrest rate for violent crimes tripled.
• The U.S. has the highest rate on sexually transmitted diseases of any developed country. For example, gonoreah infects 150 of every 100,000 Americans, compared with 18.6 of every 100,000 Canadians.

With few exceptions, censorship -- the prior restraint of First Amendment rights by government -- is unconstitutional in the United States. But there is a short list of types of speech that can be punished "after the fact" without violating the First Amendment. The list includes perjury, libel, contempt of court, false advertising, copyright infringement, threats, sexual harassment, child pornography, obscenity and indecency (see an article about censorship on our Obscenity Enforcement page).

When laws against these forms of speech are not enforced, violations tend to grow. In March 1998, Adult Video News crowed that, "The adult industry's numbers have increased nearly 100% in five years. With a more relaxed Justice Department, some retailers felt free not only to carry but also to market adult product." The story ran under this headline: "IT'S A GREAT TIME TO BE AN ADULT RETAILER." (see articles about dwindling enforcement on our Obscenity Enforcement page).

Oregon's experience is strikingly on point. That state in the late 1980s legalized adult obscenity and a multitude of sexually oriented businesses that are illegal in the rest of the country, creating a real-life laboratory to see what happens when pornographers go unchecked. The Sunday Oregonian reported some of the results on May 7, 1995, as follows:

"Portland, a city of 500,000, now has 20 times the number of nude entertainment businesses as Los Angeles, a city of 3 million... (People in Portland) fear Oregon is being overrun by a pornography and adult entertainment industry gone wild, an industry, critics charge, that is running up a big, unpaid bill in the form of increased crime and sexually transmitted diseases, damaged neighborhoods and ruined lives."

The opposite experience occurred in Oklahoma City. In a statement to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, Robert H. Macy reported that an obscenity law enforcement campaign that he headed as the city's district attorney had these results from 1984 to 1989: 12 of 13 pornographic bookstores were closed; 75 topless and bottomless bars were closed; 21 houses of prostitution were closed; 27 out of 42 escort services were closed, and 3 hardcore porn theaters switched to the edited-for-TV versions. Mr. Macy told the Judiciary Committee that the campaign had these results:

"... (While) the number of reported rapes in the State of Oklahoma continued to increase... in five years, the number of reported rapes (in Oklahoma County) dropped by 138, or almost 25 percent, and the only thing we had done different in Oklahoma County was the crackdown on obscenity and pornographic, sex-oriented businesses."

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