The Attorney General's Commission and the New Politics of Pornography

Abstract

The 1986 Attorney General's Commission on Pornography Report (the 1986 Commission) is an important, yet puzzling, document. It is important because of the significance of the pornography issue, and because the Commission contributes to our understanding of pornography. The Commission is puzzling, however, because its conclusions appear simultaneously reasonable and unreasonable. Despite the condemnations of the press (on grounds of runaway censorship), the final report was actually cautious and restrained in many respects. The Commission limited its recommendations for censorship to what it considered the most degrading forms of pornography, and refused to endorse legal prohibitions that went beyond the scope of the traditional “obscenity” exception to the First Amendment. But the Commission also expressed a strong concern about the harms that pornography might engender. Given the eruption of violent and other questionable forms of pornography in recent years, this concern is hardly unreasonable. Furthermore, recent polls show that a majority of Americans favor restricting violent forms of pornography. In these respects the Commission's efforts appear to embody a committed, yet balanced, approach that considered different values (what Max Weber termed the ethic of responsibility).