These are taken from MIM's publication Cliches: Debunking Misinformation About Pornography and Obscenity Law. When you begin an organized campaign against the traffic in illegal pornography in the community, certain cliche arguments will be brought up to weaken your effort. You will hear them in private conversation, in public debate, and in the media. These cliches and answers should be studied and mastered so the truth will be brought out.

To order a copy of MIM's Cliches pamphlet, go to our Ordering Publications page.

ANSWER: Absolutely not. From a constitutional perspective, censorship means prior restraint of First Amendment rights by government. The Federal and state obscenity laws, however, operate after, not in advance of publication. Quoting from an earlier opinion, the Supreme Court said in its landmark 1931 Near v. Minnesota decision that the "main purpose" of the First Amendment provisions regarding free speech and the press are "to prevent all such previous restraints upon publications as had been practiced by other governments, and they do not prevent the subsequent punishment of such as may be deemed contrary to the public welfare." The First Amendment has never been interpreted as preventing censure for criminal matter when published, and persons can be fined and imprisoned if they disseminate obscene material.

ANSWER: Of course it does. But despite its unconditional phrasing, the First Amendment was never intended to protect every utterance, and the Supreme Court has consistently held that there are narrow categories of speech which are not protected by the First Amendment, which include obscenity, child pornography, inciting to riot, libel, false advertising, perjury, contempt of court, and falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Obscenity is not protected speech. It is a crime, and traffic in obscenity is largely controlled by organized crime.

ANSWER:

1. Certainly there are people who want it. That's what makes it profitable. National opinion polls, however, have consistently shown that the majority of Americans are opposed to the traffic in pornography and support legal measures to curb it. The majority do care, but they are confused and discouraged in the face of a highly organized pornography industry and its defenders, which include the ACLU and much of the mainstream media.

2. Just because pornography is available does not mean it is acceptable in the community. In its 1974 Hamling v. United States decision, the Supreme Court said that just because pornographic materials are for sale and purchased around the country, "does not make them witnesses of virtue.... Mere availability of similar materials by itself means nothing more than that other persons are engaged in similar activities."

3. "Community standards" cannot be measured by the number of patrons in an "adult" bookstore or in the "adults only" section of a mainstream video store. The illegal drug industry also is thriving, but obviously that does not mean that the majority of Americans accept this heinous traffic. Most illegal drugs and most illegal pornography are consumed by a small minority of the population, who are addicts.

ANSWER:

1. There is no such thing as a victimless crime. Every criminal law is intended to protect individuals from direct or indirect harm to their own persons or property or to the communities in which they live. The victims of the pornography industry are strewn from coast to coast. They include sexually abused children, corrupted teens, degraded and violated women, addicted men, broken marriages, ruined neighborhoods, AIDS victims, and ultimately, the very soul and humanity of our nation.

2. Victims of "copycat rape" are common. Easily accessible hardcore pornographic materials are known to set off rapists and provide them with blueprints for brutal assaults on women and children.

3. Children are victims of porn in a myriad of ways. Some are used in child pornography. Others are exposed to pornographic materials to soften them up for incest or other sexual molestation. Children sexually molest other children in imitation of what they've seen in pornography. "Throwaway" teenagers are being lured into performing before the pornographer's camera. Many children lose the support of two parents because of divorce related to pornography addiction. Finally, every child in America today risks exposure to materials that distort human sexuality and can lead to a lifetime of sexual dysfunction.

ANSWER: False. The United States Supreme Court defined obscenity quite adequately in its landmark 1973 decision Miller v. California. Before sexual material can be judged obscene and therefore unprotected by the First Amendment, a judge or jury must determine:

1. that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest;

2. that the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable law; and

3. that the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value.

ANSWER: My like or dislike for obscenity is irrelevant. Dissemination of obscene materials is illegal, and no one has a right to sell illegal materials. Obscenity laws have been enacted to protect the common good from prurient, patently offensive sex materials lacking in literary, political, artistic, or scientific value -- materials which do, in fact, have a destructive effect on individuals and society (see No. 4).

ANSWER: Yes, you can. All law rests on moral assumption, and every law legislates morality. Think of all the criminal laws - those against rape, murder, robbery, and so forth. Defining what is morally right and wrong is and always has been the essence of the legislative function. Public morals are the business of the entire community, and it is public morality that obscenity laws are designed to safeguard.

In its 1973 Paris Adult Theater I decision, the Supreme Court, quoting from an earlier opinion, said that a legislative body could prohibit obscenity to protect "the social interest in order and morality."

ANSWER:

1. I am not telling you what to see or to read. The people, through their elected representatives in Washington, D.C. and in over 40 state capitals, have decided that obscene materials cannot be distributed in interstate commerce or in their states. The people, with the approval of the courts, have decided to protect themselves, their families, and their communities from the harms associated with hard-core obscene pornography.

2. . Pornography now invades the home in the form of dial-a-porn, cable porn, video porn, computer porn, radio porn, satellite-to-dish porn, and rock music porn. The reality is that the sex business is trying to impose its libertine immorality on an entire nation by appealing to the worst in individuals and by preying on an entire generation of children.

3. . In any society, someone's morality (or immorality) must prevail. The real question becomes, "Whose will prevail in America?" The pornographer's, leading to anarchy and decadence? Or the moral principles of those who honor the Judeo-Christian code -- a code which has been embraced, not imposed, as the cornerstone of Western civilization.

ANSWER:

1. We have enjoyed political and religious freedom for more than two centuries. That is the clearest proof that enforcement of long-established obscenity laws does not threaten our First Amendment freedoms. As the Supreme Court said in its landmark 1973 Miller decision: "We do not see the harsh hand of censorship of ideas -- good or bad, sound or unsound -- and repression of political liberty behind every state regulation of commercial exploitation of human interest in sex."

2. The American people are too intelligent to fall for the "slippery slope" scare tactics that would have you believe that a prohibition against obscenity today will ultimately lead to a ban against everything from the Sistine Chapel to a diaperless Donald Duck. If you believe that, you would believe that a ban against playing loud rock music at 3 a.m. in a residential area would lead to a ban on the right of a symphony orchestra to perform in Carnegie Hall.

3. The question, "What next?" should be asked in the context of what next will happen if the obscenity laws are not enforced. What happens when the dehumanizing, depraved materials are allowed to spread with dazzling speed by means of high-tech advances? What happens when virtually all moral restraint is gone, in significant measure because of pornography?

4. Where do you draw the line? The U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Congress, and most state legislatures and state supreme courts have already drawn that line, and it has been repeatedly upheld as constitutional. As former Chief Justice Earl Warren stated in a 1964 obscenity case, Jacobellis v. Ohio: "No government ... should be forced to choose between repressing all material, including that within the realm of decency, and allowing unrestrained license to publish any material, no matter how vile. There must be a rule of reason in this as in other areas of law, and we have attempted ... to provide such a rule."

ANSWER:

1. Anti-sex? Surely you joke. The pornography business takes the beauty of real love and converts it into soulless, commercialized slime. The porn-fighters protect healthy sexuality with the key ingredients of love, tenderness, commitment, and the privacy of intimate moments.

2. If "prudish" and "sexually repressed" are the labels attached to those who oppose the depictions of sadomasochism, gang rape, sexual orgies, bestiality, rubbing excrement on others, ad infinitum, then we will wear those labels proudly.

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