BY Dr. Reo M. Christensen, Professor of Political Science, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
Editor’s Note: The following excerpts are from an address delivered by Dr. Christenson in the mid-1980s.
April 2000 – The Founding Fathers never intended for the First Amendment to be interpreted as the courts interpret it today. They were sensible men, resolved to protect the right of heretics and dissenters to expound their views on social, economic, political and religious matters without fear of government reprisals. But they would have laughed to scorn any notion that things resembling Hustler magazine, vulgar T-shirts, naked dancers, and X-rated movies could hide behind the First Amendment. Nothing could have been further from their intentions, or from the spirit which motivated the Amendment.
Nor has the [U.S. Supreme] Court ever conceded that obscene material is protected by the First Amendment. But the Court has made two glaring errors; first, it took a long leap and gave commercial entertainment as much constitutional protection as political discourse. Well, almost. Then it tried to reconcile its exclusion of obscenity with its protection of commercial entertainment by setting up interpretive roadblocks which make effective enforcement of anti-obscenity laws next to impossible.
The pornographers have exploited this opening by employing expensive – very expensive – and unscrupulous lawyers concerned with nothing but the bottom line. Prosecutors are usually no match for these legal hit men, skilled as they are at throwing sand in jurors’ eyes. The pornographers have also used the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as their front line of defense.
Social science or common sense
Let me back up a bit. The President’s Commission on Pornography and Obscenity in 1970 issued a voluminous report which concluded that there was no persuasive empirical evidence that such material led to anti-social behavior.
That report has been cited ten thousand times in the press. What the public does not know is that no social scientist, to my knowledge, has reexamined the report and found it defensible. It has been denounced by outstanding social scientists, psychologists and journalists – none of whom believe it met the test of scientific objectivity.
Well, things are much worse today than they were in 1970. We have had a scandalous outpouring of child pornography, which is currently on the defensive but has by no means been eliminated. We have an avalanche of material featuring sadomasochistic sexual behavior, an avalanche which was predicted all along by realists who were skeptical of all the talk about people getting bored if only they had free access to pornography. And that avalanche includes every form of bizarre, grotesque and shameless imagery which depraved minds can concoct.
I agree with Professor Wilson of Harvard who states that social science does not have sufficiently sensitive and sophisticated techniques and tools for definitively proving what damage pornography does or does not do. Especially when it comes to its long-range impact and its impact on people who are not emotionally healthy and hence are particularly prone to commit antisocial acts. I might add that science can’t tell us whether love is better than hatred, democracy better than dictatorship, peace better than war or about anything else in the realm of values – that is, in the things that matter most.
But if science cannot give us assured answers, let us use our common sense. Pornography leaves the impression with its viewer that sex has no relationship to privacy, that it is unrelated to love, commitment or marriage, that bizarre forms of sex are the most gratifying, that sex with animals has a specially desirable flavor and that irresponsible sex has no adverse consequences – no venereal disease, illegitimate births, abortions, premature marriages, single-parent families or moral erosion. I see no way that a torrent of materials with this subliminal message, which ultimately fans out to reach people of almost all ages, can fail to have pernicious effects.
Not that someone sees pornography and then rushes out to commit rape. That may happen, but that’s not the main problem. But whatever conditions people to regard destructive sexual behavior as harmless, or worse, as desirable, will inevitably weaken those barriers which society erects against irresponsible sexual conduct.
It is interesting that while a dozen studies have demonstrated that violent entertainment stimulates violent behavior on the part of those who witness it, entertainment which features irresponsible sexual behavior is alleged to have no effect on its consumers.
I would emphasize the significance of the study by professors at the University of Indiana and the University of Evansville showing that persons who see a lot of pornography believe rapists should be treated more indulgently than those who don’t. Charles Peters summarized earlier research from Purdue, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Manitoba as indicating that violent pornography inspires violence. Peters added, “This strikes me as about as surprising as the news that hungry men want to eat.” And Newsweek reported on the University of Wisconsin study which showed that sexually violent films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre make men more likely to accept the notion that women enjoy rape. It also reported a UCLA study demonstrating that men exposed to violent pornography show an increased willingness to inflict pain on women.
Conclusive proof? No. Persuasive evidence, yes.
If, then, we can reasonably assume that a flood of pornography will gradually erode barriers against irresponsible sex, what are the ultimate implications? Here I would like to cite a highly significant study made 50 years ago by Professor J. D. Unwin of Cambridge, a study in which the author found the opposite of what he hoped to find. (That always impresses me, because it is so easy for social scientists to formulate a study, or interpret its findings, to get the results they want.)
After examining the sexual practices of more than 80 primitive and more advanced societies, Unwin concluded that sexually permissive behavior led to less cultural energy, less creativity, less individualism, less mental development and less cultural progress in general. Primitive societies with the greatest sexual freedom had made the least cultural advances. Those with stricter limitations had made the greatest progress. Among civilized societies, the same rule held. Those with restrictive sexual codes had made the greatest cultural strides, and when more permissive sexual standards appeared, cultural decline set in. Unwin said there was no known instance of a society that retained as high a cultural level after relatively relaxed sexual standards replaced more rigorous ones (although he conceded that it might take several generations before the debilitating effect was clearly manifest).
William Stephens, after studying 90 primitive cultures, wrote that the tribes lowest on the scale of cultural evolution have the most sexual freedom. Sigmund Freud, surprisingly to some, associated cultural advances with limitations on sexual activity. Arnold Toynbee, celebrated student of world civilizations, declared that a culture which postpones rather than stimulates sexual experience in the young is a culture most prone to progress. Will and Ariel Durant, after a lifetime of studying world history, wrote in The Lessons of History that it was imperative to maintain rigorous sexual restraint upon the young.
Community vs. individual rights
I think the time has come to act. Time to confront presidential and congressional candidates with a proposal to ban from interstate commerce material or performances which involve visually explicit sexual behavior intended for commercial entertainment, and time to force them to take a stand. Time for the nation to realize, for the courts to realize, that communities have a right to set minimal standards of decency and a right to enforce them.
The licentiousness of modern pornographers has become a stench in our nostrils. The age of unbridled individualism, of individualism uber alles, is fading, the attitude that “I want to do what I want to do and see what I want to see and if the community doesn’t like it, it can go suck its thumb” – that is passing. An age which seeks a more sensible balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community is already on its way. Let us work to hasten its coming. 
