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The cover of the Meese Report

The final report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (sometimes called The Meese Report for U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese) is the result of a comprehensive investigation into pornography ordered by Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten Ronald Reagan. It was published in July 1986 and contains 1,960 pages.

Die Kommision These people comprised the commission (nicknamed The Meese Commission):

Henry E. Hudson, Vorsitzender Diane D. Cusack Park Elliott Dietz James Dobson

Father Bruce Ritter Frederick Schauer Deanne Tilton-Durfee Judith Becker Ellen Levine

The report is divided into five parts and thirty-five chapters and details most aspects of the pornography industry, including the history of pornography and the extent of 1. Zusatzartikel zur Verfassung der Vereinigten Staaten protections. The report also documents what the committee found to be the harmful effects of pornography and connections between pornographers and Organisierte Kriminalität. The report was criticized by some of the scientists whose research was utilized; they claim that their results were distorted and are incongruent with the final report. Some believe that Meese minimalized evidence indicating that pornography is not dangerous, and others regard the commission members as a pre-selected cohort of anti-pornography campaigners. The report was criticized by many inside and outside the pornography industry, calling it biased, incredible, and inaccurate. One member of the commission - Bruce Ritter - later made payments for sexual favors to male prostitute and adult movie actor Kevin Kite using funds earmarked for the Covenant House charity.

Vorgeschichte

In the United States, a 1969 Supreme Court decision which held that people could view whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes, STANLEY v. GEORGIA, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), caused Congress to fund and President Lyndon B. Johnson to appoint a commission to study pornography.

In 1970, the Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography concluded that "there was insufficient evidence that exposure to explicit sexual materials played a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior." In general, with regard to adults, the Commission recommended that legislation "should not seek to interfere with the right of adults who wish to do so to read, obtain, or view explicit sexual materials." Regarding the view that these materials should be restricted for adults in order to protect young people from exposure to them, the Commission found that it is "inappropriate to adjust the level of adult communication to that considered suitable for children." The Supreme Court supported this view.

A large portion of the Commission's budget was applied to funding original research on the effects of sexually explicit materials. One experiment is described in which repeated exposure of male college students to pornography "caused decreased interest in it, less response to it and no lasting effect," although it appears that the satiation effect does wear off eventually ("Once more"). William B. Lockhart, Dean of the University of Minnesota Law School and chairman of the commission, said that before his work with the commission he had favored control of obscenity for both children and adults, but had changed his mind as a result of scientific studies done by commission researchers. In reference to dissenting commission members Keating and Rev. Morton Hill, Lockhart said, "When these men have been forgotten, the research developed by the commission will provide a factual basis for informed, intelligent policymaking by the legislators of tomorrow" [2]

President Ronald Reagan announced his intention to set up a commission to study pornography, apparently with the goal of obtaining results more acceptable to his conservative supporters than the conclusions of the 1970 Commission. The result was the appointment by Attorney General Edwin Meese in the spring of 1985 of a panel comprised of 11 members, the majority of whom had established records as anti-pornography crusaders.

In 1986, the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, often called the Meese Commission, reached the opposite conclusion, advising that pornography was in varying degrees harmful. A workshop headed by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop provided essentially the only original research done by the Meese Commission. Given very little time and money to "develop something of substance" to include in the Meese Commission's report, it was decided to conduct a closed, weekend workshop of "recognized authorities" in the field. All but one of the invited participants attended. At the end of the workshop, the participants expressed consensus in five areas:

• (1) "Children and adolescents who participate in the production of pornography experience adverse, enduring effects,"
• (2) "Prolonged use of pornography increases beliefs that less common sexual practices are more common,"
• (3) "Pornography that portrays sexual aggression as pleasurable for the victim increases the acceptance of the use of coercion in sexual relations,"
• (4) "Acceptance of coercive sexuality appears to be related to sexual aggression,"
• (5) "In laboratory studies measuring short-term effects, exposure to violent pornography increases punitive behavior toward women" According to Surgeon General Koop, "Although the evidence may be slim, we nevertheless know enough to conclude that pornography does present a clear and present danger to American public health"

Weblinks

• Full text via porn-report.com
• The Obscene, Disgusting, and Vile Meese Commission Report, by Pat Califia, an essay criticizing The Meese Report
• Politics and Pornography: A Comparison of the Findings of the President's Commission and the Meese Commission and the Resulting Response, by David M. Edwards

http://www.aliceschwarzer.de/236.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pornography_movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meese_Report

Category:Pornography]]