In fact, no laws now permit those victimized by pornography
to sue the pornographers for the pornography. So long as the
pornography can be made and sold, the harms of its making
and use wil continue, and the incentive to make it and sel it
wil continue. Obscenity laws have proven essentially unworkable against the industry—even with al the power at the disposal of federal, state, and local law enforcement, even in the hands of expert and committed lawyers. Zoning laws move some
of the harms of pornography from one district to another, but
do nothing to address them. Criminal laws exist against rape,
battery, assault, kidnapping, sexual molestation of children, and
many other acts that are standard practice in the pornography
The Ordinance
31
industry. The problem is, police and prosecutors and judges
and juries view the women in the materials the way the pornography does: because of what they are doing, they are not hurt by it. Consider also that the women in pornography are prostitutes, hence unlikely to find the criminal-justice system hospitable to their claims. Privacy laws also exist against commercial exploitation of image in some states. I n theory, these would seem
to protect some coerced models; in practice, they have proven
virtually useless. Some states provide special laws restricting the
use of a person’s image after they are dead—smal consolation
to the victim, one imagines. Attempts are being made through
sexual-harassment law to address pornography in the workplace; results are extremely mixed. Nothing addresses pornography forced on victims at home.
It is not unusual for civil-rights violations to include many
acts that the dominant group has previously recognized as injurious, just not in a way that is workable for the subordinate group. For instance, the acts comprising lynching and much
sexual harassment were formally illegal before they were recognized as abuses of civil rights, but until they were so recognized, nothing was done about them. Moreover, if laws currently addressed pornography through its harms to victims, such laws would be precedent for the Ordinance, not necessarily a reason it should not exist. This is only to say that the Ordinance cannot be both unconstitutional and legally redundant. But, in the real world, women who are abused through pornography have essentially made the same realistic assessment of their chances in the legal system that the legislatures who pass the Ordinance make: no laws now on the books are
likely to work because they have not worked. Defending the
legal status quo at a point like this is nothing but complacency
and complicity with human suffering.
Findings
When legislatures pass a law, they often tell courts what they
have learned and decided and why they are concerned about
the subject. Hearings, constituent letters, and documents usu32
Pornography and Civil Rights
ally substantiate these conclusions of fact and statements of intent, called “findings. ” Findings provide the factual basis for a law; they show the need and grounds for it. They also communicate to the courts that wil apply it what the legislature saw and wanted, and the spirit in which the law is to be interpreted. Courts, as a result, often look at findings to see what the legislature was trying to accomplish, taking findings as
authoritative evidence of legislative intent. Here are findings
similar to those passed by the Minneapolis and Indianapolis
city councils: *
Pornography is a systematic practice of exploitation
and subordination based on sex that differentially
harms women. The harm of pornography includes dehumanization, sexual exploitation, forced sex, forced prostitution, physical injury, and social and sexual terrorism and inferiority presented as entertainment. The bigotry and contempt pornography promotes, with
the acts of aggression it fosters, diminish opportunities
