This month marks the 20th anniversary of the so-called "Meese Commission Report" — officially, "The Attorney General's Commission on Pornography Final Report" — said to be the best selling publication in Government Printing Office history.
It was on July 9, 1986, when Attorney General Edwin Meese III stood in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice, before the bare-breasted Spirit of Justice statue, proudly announcing the 1960-page report that his Commission had produced, dealing with the non-problem of pornography. We are today living in the problematic tail of the Meese-Report comet in many ways. And while some of you may remember the Reagan Administration's hand-chosen conservatives rolling their eyes during the testimony of John Weston, Bill Margold and Richard Green at the Commission's hearings, others of you were still learning their ABCs in 1986. Accordingly, this is a reminder for some and an education for others.
The history of all of this goes back to the 1960s, when the Vietnam War and the "Mickey Mouse Club" Generation caused much of America to question some values that once were viewed as "core." Just exactly why were things like marijuana, prostitution, gambling and pornography illegal? What was in some quarters called the "pro-communist Warren Court" — anyone who disagreed with a conservative in those days was labeled a "communist" — had significantly upended a great deal of conventional thinking. Government could no longer dogmatically regulate erotic speech, because that "commie" William Brennan said in the 1957 Roth case that, while legally obscene speech, as carefully defined, was not protected by the First Amendment (he later would change his mind and say that it was impossible to draft a sufficiently precise definition of "obscenity" to pass muster with the First Amendment), there were limits:
"The fundamental freedom of speech and press have contributed greatly to the development and well-being of our free society and are indispensable to its continued growth. Ceaseless vigilance is the watchword to prevent their erosion by Congress or by the States. The door barring federal and state intrusion into this area cannot be left ajar; it must be kept tightly closed and opened only the slightest crack necessary to prevent encroachment upon more important interests. It is therefore vital that the standards for judging obscenity safeguard the protection of freedom of speech and press for material which does not treat sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest."
Against all of that background, President Lyndon B. Johnson, near the end of his administration, appointed a committee to look into the pornography issue. President Richard M. Nixon appointed one to look into marijuana. The problem — at least for the government — was that the commissions were not stacked. Rather, they were assigned to seriously look into the issues. Accordingly, the pornography commission found that government "should not seek to interfere with the right of adults who wish to do so to read, obtain, or view explicit sexual materials." (United States Report of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography; U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970). The marijuana (or "marihuana") commission report, entitled "Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding," proclaimed that "neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety," and recommended that Congress and state legislatures decriminalize the use and casual distribution of marijuana for personal use. (For the record, this author is terribly allergic to marijuana, so no personal motivation is involved here.)
Nixon reportedly refused to so much as read the marijuana report, and obviously didn't much like the pornography report, either. The Senate voted 60-5 (with 35 abstentions) to reject the findings and recommendations of the pornography commission. But, then, Nixon had his own problems, although before they developed he managed to appoint four promised "strict constructionist" justices to the Supreme Court who, along with Justice Byron "Whizzer" White (a Kennedy appointee), formed the 5-4 majority that allowed the government to regulate obscenity.
Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984 with massive support from the Religious Right; support that he likely did not need, since Walter Mondale offered no real opposition. On January 20, 1985, President Reagan was inaugurated for his second term; Edwin Meese III was nominated that month and confirmed on February 23, 1985 as attorney general. On May 20, 1985, Meese announced the formation of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, Reagan's first installment payment to the Religious Right. But, unlike the 1968 committee, this one was stacked. Moreover, the first commission's $400,000 budget was dwarfed by the $5+ million (in 1984 dollars) that was earmarked to match what the 1968 Commission spent on research.
However, rather than conducting actual research, the Commission traveled around the country holding hearings in a purported effort to learn about pornography. The hearings, of course, were sprinkled with friendly witnesses who were themselves "victims" of pornography, but they also gave lip service to those opposed to what everyone knew the Commission ultimately would find. After all, it was created for the purpose of overruling the earlier committee, which had spent considerably more money, time and effort on empirical research, rather than dog-and-pony shows.
On the day in July of 1986 when the results were announced, Meese did so while standing before the bare-breasted Justice statue — a fact that was not lost on analysts such as Los Angeles Times political cartoonist Paul Conrad, who drew what was one of the best cartoons of his career, depicting the scene. Significantly, the Final Report couldn't bring itself to find that "non-violent pornography" was really harmful to anyone. But the Report included scores of recommendations on how to "deal with" pornography, and those recommendations included many that will ring familiar to readers: Record-keeping requirements for producers, which evolved into 2257; doors off arcade booths in adult bookstores; red-light abatement actions against adult businesses; zoning regulations; stepped-up obscenity prosecutions; and more — every nuisance that the law would allow to be imposed on the industry.
Today we live with the Final Report, right down to Attorney General Ashcroft's later-overruled order that the statue's breasts be covered by a curtain — to avoid a redux of Paul-Conrad-type cartoons after his planned announcement of the new war on pornography, which was side-tracked by September 11th.
For 35 bucks, you can have your very own copy of the Final Report! It is intriguing reading. Just go to http://www.gpoaccess.gov/.
(Clyde DeWitt is a Los Angeles attorney whose practice has been focused on adult entertainment since 1980. He can be reached through AVN's offices, or at [email protected]. Readers are considered a valuable source of court decisions, legal gossip and information from around the country, all of which is received with interest. Books, pro and con, are encouraged to be submitted for review, but they will not be returned. This column does not constitute legal advice but, rather, serves to inform readers of legal news, developments in cases and editorial comment about legal developments and trends. Readers who believe anything reported in this column might impact them should contact their personal attorneys.)
