Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality

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sents) summarily affirmed the Court of Appeals decision, bare

of supporting authority, presumably because there is none. In

this arrogant way, the Indianapolis Ordinance was in effect

found unconstitutional.

Technically, a summary affirmance upholds only the result

and whatever is essential to it; no view is expressed on the reasoning the court below used. So there is no way of knowing what the Supreme Court really thinks about the civil-rights

approach, because it said nothing about its reasons. The

Seventh Circuit’s decision remains a precedent until another

case on the Ordinance is heard. But the Supreme Court could

take another case on the Ordinance at any time without being

bound either by the logic of the Seventh Circuit decision or

by its own prior summary action. So the ultimate constitutionality of the civil-rights approach has not yet been determined.

The current barriers to its reenactment and use are political,

not legal—or, rather, they are politics disguised as law.

The truth is, a revised Ordinance taking the civil-rights approach could be passed today and ultimately receive new scrutiny before the Supreme Court. In a test of the constitutionality of such an Ordinance—perhaps in a real case brought by a victim of pornography, rather than by a media plaintif —

the role of the Seventh Circuit decision and the Supreme

Court’s summary affirmance would be one mat er to be argued. The summary affirmance would not mean that such an argument could not happen or that its outcome was already

decided in advance. If this was any problem other than pornography, any problem power wanted to solve—especially given the virtual invitation to try again provided by the three

Supreme Court dissents—state, local, and federal legislators

and their legal counsel would be falling al over themselves and

each other to be the first to devise an antipornography civil-

rights ordinance that would solve the problem yet be found

constitutional. Instead, in a capitulation to authority, it is

widely supposed that nothing more can be done. Media lies

have been widely believed that because of the summary affirmance, the civil-rights approach to pornography is constitutionally dead. As with slavery and segregation, which the U. S.

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Pornography and Civil Rights

Supreme Court once held constitutional, what the courts say

is accepted and the truth is not. And, as with the pornography

itself, what the media says is believed and the truth is not.

Where we stand now is that protecting and defending pornography is the official state position. The courts have decided that an entire class of women wil be treated in these ways so that

others can have what they call freedom of speech: freedom

meaning free access to women’s bodies, free use of women’s

lives, speech meaning women’s bodies as a medium for those

others’ expression. As Black people were once white men’s

property under the U. S. Constitution, women are now men’s

“speech. ” It seems that our pain, humiliation, torture, and use

is something they want to say.

The complicity of law with the harm of pornography to

women has now gone a full step beyond tacit inaction, bungling, waffling, evasion, ineptitude, deceptiveness, or lack of wil . Now, the law has expressly lined up on the side of the