Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance - History

History

The idea of combating pornography through civil rights litigation in the United States was first developed in 1980. Linda Boreman, who had appeared in the pornographic film Deep Throat as "Linda Lovelace," published a memoir, Ordeal, in which she stated that she had been beaten and raped by her ex-husband Chuck Traynor, and violently coerced into making Deep Throat. Boreman held a press conference, with Andrea Dworkin, feminist lawyer Catharine MacKinnon, and members of Women Against Pornography supporting her, in which she made her charges public for the press corps. Dworkin, MacKinnon, and Gloria Steinem began discussing the possibility of legal redress for Boreman under federal civil rights law. Two weeks later, they met with Boreman to discuss the idea of pursuing a lawsuit against Traynor and other pornographers. She was interested, but Steinem discovered that the statute of limitations for a possible suit had passed, and Boreman backed off (Brownmiller 337). Dworkin and MacKinnon, however, began to discuss the possibility of civil rights litigation as an approach to combatting pornography.

In the fall of 1983, MacKinnon secured a one-semester appointment for Dworkin at the University of Minnesota, to teach a course in literature for the Women's Studies program and co-teach (with MacKinnon) an interdepartmental course on pornography. Hearing about the course, community activists from south Minneapolis contacted Dworkin and MacKinnon to ask for their help in curbing the rise of pornography shops. Dworkin and MacKinnon explained their idea for a new civil rights approach to pornography, which would define pornography as a civil rights violation against women, and allow women who had been harmed by pornography to sue the producers and distributors in civil court for damages. The Minneapolis city council hired Dworkin and MacKinnon as consultants to help the city find an approach to deal with pornography. Public hearings were held by the city council, with testimony from Linda Boreman, Ed Donnerstein (a pornography researcher from the University of Wisconsin–Madison), and Pauline Bart, a radical feminist professor from Chicago. The ordinance was passed on December 30, 1983 but vetoed by Mayor Donald M. Fraser (who opposed the idea on its merits and also claimed that the city ought not get involved in litigation over the ordinance's constitutionality). The ordinance was passed a second time in July 1984, and was vetoed again by Fraser. In the interim, the city council in Indianapolis invited Dworkin and MacKinnon to draft a similar ordinance, and also held public hearings. A different version of the ordinance, rewritten to focus specifically on pornography that depicted violence, was passed by the Indianapolis city council and signed into law by Mayor William Hudnut on May 1, 1984. However, the law was quickly challenged in court, and overturned as unconstitutional by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals's ruling on American Booksellers v. Hudnut. The Supreme Court upheld the appellate court's ruling without comment. The case is often cited as an important decision on freedom of speech as applied to pornography.

In spite of the defeat in the courts, Dworkin, MacKinnon, and some other feminists continued to advocate versions of the civil rights ordinance, organizing campaigns to place it on the ballot as a voter initiative in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1985 (where it was voted down in the referendum 58%-42%), and then again in Bellingham, Washington in 1988 (where it was passed). The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the city of Bellingham after the ordinance was passed, and the federal court again struck the law down on First Amendment grounds.

Feminists were strongly divided over the anti-pornography ordinance. Some feminists, such as Wendy McElroy, Ellen Willis, and Susie Bright, opposed anti-pornography feminism on principle. Many anti-pornography feminists supported the legislative efforts, but others—including Susan Brownmiller, Janet Gornick, and Wendy Kaminer -- agreed with Dworkin and MacKinnon's critique of pornography, but opposed the attempt to combat it through legislative campaigns, which they feared would be rendered ineffectual by the courts, would violate principles of free speech, or would harm the anti-pornography movement by taking organizing energy away from education and direct action and entangling it in political squabbles (Brownmiller 318-321).