She is the author of Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights (New York University Press; Nov. 2000; ISBN: 0-81-478149-7384 pages; $18.95); she is Professor of Law at New York Law School; and, as many of our readers know, Nadine Strossen is not only a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union (www.aclu.org), but for the past decade, she has been president of the United States' oldest and largest organization dedicated to defending freedom of expression.
"Most of the ACLU's work now is in the realm of cybserspace," Strossen tells AVN Online. "It's so amazing. It's hard to believe that six years ago, most people hadn't heard of the Internet, or of the term cyberporn. I say in the introduction to the new edition of Defending Pornography, nothing has changed in terms of the law, and not much in terms of politics. But the factual setting in which we're fighting over the same old legal principles and political battles has changed enormously - to cyberspace."
"The ACLU's mission is to fight civil liberties violations wherever and whenever they occur," the 300,000-member organization's official Website proclaims. Founded in 1920, the ACLU's record of defending dissidence and free expression - sexual and otherwise - is truly far-reaching:
* In 1920, the ACLU defended politically radical immigrants and others from harassment and deportation ordered by the U.S. Attorney General.
* In 1925, the First Amendment stalwarts helped defend Tenn. Public school teacher John Scopes against the state's ban on the teaching of evolution in the classroom, in the infamous "Scopes Monkey Trial."
* In 1933, the organization helped to end a U.S. Customs Service ban on the domestic sale of James Joyce's novel, Ulysses.
* Almost alone, the group opposed the internment of some 110,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.
* Throughout the 1950s, the ACLU fought against loyalty oaths imposed on federal workers and certain state employees.
* In 1954, the organization played a pivotal role in the historic anti-segregation case Brown vs. the Board of Education, and participated in the ensuing civil rights movement.
* The ACLU was instrumental in the decriminalization of abortion in 1973.
* Flag burner Joey Johnson of the Revolutionary Communist Party was defended by the group in 1989.
* In 1996, ACLUers defeated an anti-gay provision of Colorado's State constitution.
* In January 2001, along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the ACLU filed suit in a Federal court alleging violations of voting rights in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.
On its Website, the nation's largest public interest law firm explains that it represents all interests, including those of many controversial (or even downright unpopular) entities - neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, the Nation of Islam, and others - not because it agrees with them, but because "the ACLU defends their right to free expression and free assembly. Historically, the people whose opinions are the most controversial or extreme are the people whose rights are most often threatened. Once the government has the power to violate one person's rights, it can use that power against everyone. We work to stop the erosion of civil liberties before it is too late."
The unpopular entities the organization refers to includes the adult Internet community. In "Defending Pornography" Strossen notes, "I find it particularly striking, for instance, that one of our clients in Reno v. ACLU was Planned Parenthood Federation of America... During the ACLU's first decade of existence, one of our clients was Margaret Sanger... Sadly, more than three-quarters of a century later, we had to defend the organization that Sanger founded against the Internet era's first federal cybercensorship law, which criminalized the very same [reproductive health] information," Strossen ironically points out. In a landmark 1997 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Communications Decency Act.
The ACLU also actively opposes the 1998 successor to CDA, the Child Online Protection Act. Strossen says that although COPA's language is somewhat narrower than CDA's, it is still so broad that ACLU's COPA-related clients include the New York Times and Times magazine - for publishing the Starr Report online.
"The ACLU challenged that second federal cybercensorship law, and so far, as of December 2000, we've been winning in the courts," Strossen asserts. "We won in the lower court, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the federal court. The government then appealed - under the Clinton administration, interestingly enough - to the Intermediate Appellate Court, which is a Third Circuit court of appeals. We won in that court, as well, and the government has appealed again. They're seeking both a rehearing in the Third Circuit, and also asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review that decision," updates Strossen. "My prediction is that we will ultimately strike COPA down in the courts, but the politics are such that Congress, as well as the Executive Branch, will then go and try again," she adds. "I think we're going to be fighting CDA I, CDA II, and CDA III for the foreseeable future. Because there is so much political mileage to be gained on both sides of the aisle from demonizing sexually-oriented expression online.
"In December 2000, we brought another lawsuit against the law sponsored by Senator John McCain," Strossen goes on to say. "It requires any public library that gets federal funding - which means essentially every public library in the country - to install filtering or blocking software to screen out sexually oriented materials. We're representing a number of libraries and librarians and patrons, and arguing this is a gross violation of First Amendment rights. As well as rights of parents to shape the upbringing of their children, and minors' own rights of free speech, and freedom of access to information. Make no mistake about it, we're not only talking about kids having access to ?hardcore pornography' - whatever that might mean. Blocking software programs are so overly broad that any material with any sexual content or even suggestions of it, are blocked out, including, in some cases, the ACLU's own Website, because we have information about defending freedom for sexually oriented expression, abortion, and gay and lesbian rights.
"It's absolutely clear this law does not contain an exception for materials with serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value," the ACLU president insists. "It uses the concept of ?harmful to minors,' which doesn't contain an escape clause for material that has value, including lifesaving and health preserving value, when it comes to information about safer sex and contraception.
"They always say they want to protect children, and use that as a rationale to deny adults access to material, including material that is completely lawful for adults," Strossen points out. "It's only a very narrow spectrum of sexually oriented material which is now illegal under our so-called ?obscenity laws.' It's true historically, every time a new medium comes along, which is easier, cheaper, and faster for people to access, including young people, that's where censorship efforts focus. Because those with an authoritarian bent become concerned about preventing young people from getting access to this material. Precisely because people are so interested in sex, and always have been, sexually oriented sites are flourishing on the Net."
Strossen says she originally wrote Defending Pornography to argue against an extremist wing of the feminist movement which advocates laws censoring adult material. In the new introduction to her highly recommended book, the author lists other ACLU online clients, including Obgyn.net, which provides obstetrics and gynecology information; PlanetOut, a Website for gay and transgendered people; Queer Resources Directory, a large distributor of gay, lesbian, and bisexual resources; Salon magazine, which includes sex therapist Susie Bright's "Sexpert Opinion" column; and Oasis magazine, which provides news and safer sex advice columns by and for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and questioning youth.
As Hustler publisher Larry Flynt has often said, unpopular speech is the speech most in need of protection. Under the new Republican regime, you, Dear Reader, may become one of the ACLU's next defendants. With the possible exception of the Free Speech Coalition (www.freespeechcoalition.com) - a trade organization which concentrates on defending the rights and interests of the adult entertainment industry - the ACLU may be online erotica's best friend. To paraphrase the old labor ballad about the Wobbly Joe Hill: "Wherever working men - and grrrls - defend their rights, it's there you'll find the American Civil Liberties Union."
