Anti-Pornography Activism

Anti-pornography activism is the term used to describe the actions of those who argue, from a variety of legal, feminist, and religious perspectives, that pornography has a large number of harmful effects, including violence toward women and minors, increased crime in areas with sex shops and strip clubs, links to organized crime, and harm to the family unit. Pornography, in general, is an issue that gets many people, including its adamant censors and perceived advocates, agitated. Yet, for all of the commotion that it causes, pornography has no accepted, static legal definition. Definitions of pornography often differ due to things such as one's upbringing, religious views, sexual preference, viewing context, position on pornography, or life situation. Under current federal obscenity laws, the majority of pornographic images are not illegal; only material that is considered to be obscene is legally unacceptable. The Supreme Court created the Miller Test, in Miller v. California, 423 U.S. 15, 40 (1972), which stated that in order for material to be considered obscene it must first be determined

Generally, the U.S. government may not regulate speech because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content (Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205 [1975]). In Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 747, 781 (1982), the Court rejected the theory that there can be permissible content regulation within a category of protected speech. However, in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568,571–72 (1942), the Court stated “certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech…are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth” that the government can regulate them without raising First Amendment concerns. In cases like Young v. American Mini Theaters, 427 U.S. 50 (1976), FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978), and N.Y. v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 781 (1982), courts have ruled that offensive but nonobscene words and portrayals dealing with sex may be regulated when the expression plays no role or even a minimal role in the exposition of ideas. For example, in Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U.S. 560 (1991), commercial speech is protected by the First Amendment, but it is less protected than other speech and is subject to content-based regulation.

Many activists and politicians have expressed concern over the ease and availability of Internet pornography. Currently in the United States, the crux of the legal debate surrounding pornography deals with the regulation of cyberpornography and is focused on how to protect children from the wide range of sexually explicit images that are available, without encroaching on the First Amendment rights of adults. Computer technology continues to advance rapidly and children now often have unrestricted access to explicit pornographic electronic images at home, in school, and in libraries. The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) is a U.S. law passed in 1998 that purported to protect children from harmful sexual material on the Internet but actually focused on limiting commercial speech originating in [Page 168]the United States. COPA required individuals who fall within the scope of the statute to undertake specified steps to restrict children's access to materials that are considered to be “harmful to minors.” COPA defined material that is “harmful to minors” as “any communication, picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording, writing, or other matter of any kind that is obscene” under the aforementioned Miller Test.

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