tell his constituents what they contain and then tell them that he did not vote for strong laws against them.

On October 15, 1979, Attorney James J. Clancy of California also submitted a statement--his is a brilliant statement--in opposition to the proposed laws. I trust his complete statement with documentation will be included in the Subcommittee's final written report. I urge its careful perusal.

I.

SENATORS WHO WOULD VOTE FOR WEAK LAWS
AGAINST PORNOGRAPHY, OR NO LAWS AT ALL, GIVE
THE IMPRESSION THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT
TODAY'S PORNOGRAPHY IS.

I proceed on the assumption that the members of both the Majority and the Minority would vote for strong laws against pornography, if they realized how widespread it is; how profoundly it perverts; and how terribly harmful it is to individuals and to the Nation as a whole.

My assumption is that the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate as a whole have not yet looked carefully at the facts about the moral pollution that is contaminating the entire country. Certainly the Honorary CDL Committee members have not. Just as it took some decades of noxious gases piling up over our cities, of lethal fumes in and near our factories, of lethal pollutants corrupting our lungs as we drove to work, of growing reports by the public authorities on shortened lifespan and higher frequency of disease--before the Congress during the last decade would pass tough anti-pollution laws and create a strong Environmental Protec

...

tion Agency so also it has taken two decades of moral pollution corrupting practically every city and town in the land to bring us to the point where Congress can no longer look the other way.

But the Senate must first disabuse itself as to what modern

pornography is all about. We are not talking about a few bawdy

There is a "culture lag" here: We imagine the future, we judge the present, by our experience in the past. But the "dirty books" that one might have glanced at in his youth resemble today's pornographic magazines/videocasettes/films about as much as smoke from a cigarette resembles a forest fire out of control; or as much as shoplifting by a juvenile resembles murder-assassination by a Mafia "hit man."

We have reached a qualitative watershed. We are now talking about something so hideous and barbaric that people who have not seen it cannot believe it exists, that people who have seen some of it grope for euphemisms to dilute its vileness, and that people who indulge their morbid fantasies with it do so furtively, keeping their private collection of perverted picture books so no one knows their lusts. In an article from THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER (Feb. 11, 1979), Reo M. Christenson, the distinquished liberal political scientist, wrote:

Those appalled by the prospect of censorship usually do not realize what they are protecting, or what, through

postal subsidies, they help distribute with their tax
dollars.

It is imperative that the public know what is really
in Hustler ... (It) is not a "girlie" magazine or another
Playboy. Rather, it is full of pictures and descriptions
of such gross sexual perversion, such bizarre forms of
bestiality and such nauseating accounts of excretory
activities that few if any newspapers feel free to explicit-
ly inform their readers of what is in the magazine.

--The Judgment on Hustler: Sanity, not Censorship

The protean monster that is modern pornography takes many
These include, in livid color, with zoom-lens close-ups,

forms:

--women having intercourse with dogs and horses;

--lesbian masturbation and the devices enabling lesbian
copulation;

--techniques of rape;

--heterosexual and homosexual sadomasochism, with instruments;

--methods of seducing and/or molesting children;

--"snuff films" in which the victim is attacked sexually and then actually murdered before the camera;

--gang sex clubs in which, typically, a group of men kidnap a young woman, chain her to a post and then simultaneously have sex with her in groups of two or three or even more;

--fetishistic ways to stimulate oneself autoerotically, e.g., demonstrations of how to hang oneself by a woman's stockings or slip, just long enough to become aroused;

--close-ups of male and female sex organs in massively turgid arousal;

--in all, the protagonist, whose only purpose of sexual activity and instant and continuous gratification, and usually the foil or victim, are shown in ecstasy-like transports of total animal pleasure (never, in the films or photo essays, is shown physical or psychic harm such as VD or neurosis). The Senate must face up to the extent of all this. In every

city there are tens and sometimes hundreds of "adult bookstores,"

which deal in magazines, pictures and films of the material (and

live porn) I have just summarized.

There are between 260 and 280

monthly magazines catering to pedophiles--people who get their "kicks" by looking at the nude bodies of eight-year-olds and younger in compromising poses. There are private syndicates or clubs of sometimes hundreds of people who, through the mails, order and trade pictures of such children, in poses distinctively appealing to the individual's personal twist. And there are nationwide clubs that trade in children themselves.

I repeat. The porno industry grosses about four billion dollars annually. That's billion, which means the purveyors of porn do better than the entire legitimate motion picture and record industries.

It is likely that literally millions of young people, in their impressionable teens and certainly in their early and mid-adult years, view films of bestiality, lesbian masturbation, rape techniques, gang sex and other typical forms of pornography.

And now the industry is moving into videotapes so that it can make another billion in the hotel, motel and home cassette markets. That is, if the Congress does nothing, soon every neighborhood is virtually certain to have a few people who entertain themselves with these kinds of pornography--which means that when our little girls go babysitting they may chance to view these, and no one will be certain that when his teenage son is invited to a classmate's home for a party, and it happens that the parents are out--or they are home!--"stag films" of S-M and masturbation will not be

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shown. Then on dates!!

The full revision of the Federal Criminal Code is also a water

shed. With the crime of pornography transformed in both quantity and quality into a hideous monster roaming the land, it is time to cage the beast with tough anti-pornography laws.

II. MODERN PORNOGRAPHY CAUSES IMMENSE HARM.
IT CREATES ANTI-SOCIAL ATTITUDES. IT DEGRADES

WOMEN. IT CAUSES SEX CRIMES.

Perhaps the reason the House bill, and even to a dangerous extent, the Senate bill, seems disinterested in protecting the moral environment from the spiritual pollution of pornography is that some members of Congress believe that pornography is a "victimless crime," i.e., that it causes no harm.

There is a curious inconsistency here: We feel quite certain that smoking causes cancer. We are quite sure that "racist attitudes" cause specific acts of racial discrimination. We are beginning to recognize the mounting evidence that violence on television and in the movies causes violent conduct. As the liberal columnist, Nicholas von Hoffman, wrote in an essay, Assault by Film, THE WASHINGTON POST (April 13, 1979), p. D-4:

Why is it liberals who believe "role models" in third grade readers are of decisive influence on behavior when it concerns racism or male chauvinist piggery, laugh at the assertion that pornography may also teach rape? Every textbook in every public school system in the nation has been overhauled in the last 20 years because it was thought that the blond, blue-eyes suburban children once depicted therein taught little people a socially dangerous ethnocentrism. If textbooks, those vapid and insipid instruments of such slight influence, can have had such sweeping effect, what are we to surmise about the effects on the impressionably young of an R- or X-rated movie, in wide-screen technicolor, with Dolby sound and every device of cinematic realism?