Some of our opponents claim that the stigma that surrounds porn is just a result of society’s hang-ups about sex, rather than reflecting people’s aversion to the sexism, racism, exploitation, abuse, disease, crime and blight that are associated with porn and adult enterprises…
I don’t support the sort of zoning ordinance you advocate. I think such
ordinances are counterproductive. They don’t help the actual workers,
they don’t prevent anyone from actually *using* porn, and they serve [to]
reinforce the stigma surrounding it. I think that’s the wrong
direction.apparently Northampton is so cowed by the idea of grown-ups having sex
that you’ve let freaks like Cohen and Reiter — two people who clearly haven’t had sex in years
— hide behind their impenetrable fortress of hopelessly dull propaganda
and methodically impose their creepy puritanical fetish on the entire
town.Freridge argues that “anti-sexual values that are rooted in religion
and our puritanical culture” are the real motivation behind anti-porn
feminism.Capital Video attorney Michael Pill is quoted in today’s Republican as saying, “‘I hope we’ve gone beyond Puritan Massachusetts and the scarlet letter and public shaming.'”
Anything that broke down “prudish” sexual mores was good for business,
Hef reasoned. His targets included not only religious conservatives but
what he called the “puritan, prohibitionist…antisexual” element
within feminism.
In a similar fashion, American society waved away the stigma of segregation for many decades, saying the harm was illusory…
[T]he Supreme Court overturned segregation–after protecting it for a very long time–because the Court finally grasped its harm to people. The difference between the Court’s view in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 551 (1896), that segregation harmed blacks “solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it,” and its view in Brown v. Bd. of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 494 (1954) that segregation “generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone,” is dramatic and instructive.
— Brief Amicus Curiae of Andrea Dworkin, Amiercan Booksellers v. Hudnut, Indianapolis, Indiana (Excerpt), published in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.314).
Sometimes shame and stigma are unwarranted and toxic, but sometimes they are valuable signals that something is wrong. The key is assigning shame and stigma to where they belong–the oppressor, not the victim.
See also:
Shame, Not Always a Bad Thing
We say that profiting from suffering,
such as Capital Video and the Goldbergs are proposing to do at 135 King
Street, is shameful, and should be publicly known and criticized.
Movies and magazines that encourage viewers to use and dump women, to enjoy tying people up regardless of how they feel about it, are shameful. Movies that promote despair about marriage and celebrate cheating are shameful. Fighting a small town (Kittery)
over a well-documented health hazard (private viewing booths) is
shameful. Locating a large porn shop next to homes, schools, mental
health counseling centers and houses of worship, despite the well-known
risks of secondary effects, is shameful.
Porn, Slavery and Women: The Parallels
“Hearing those horror stories made me think of times in the history of slavery in this country in terms of black women–how they were at the bottom of the pile, how they were treated like animals instead of human beings. As I listened to these victims of pornography testify, I heard young women describe how they felt about seeing other women in pornography in such degrading positions, how they felt about the way women’s genitals and breasts are displayed and women’s bodies are shown in compromising postures. And I thought about how during the time of slavery, black women would have their bodies examined, their teeth and limbs examined, their bodies checked out for breeding, checked out as you would check out an animal–and I thought: We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?…”
I noticed that you compare me to a segregationist here. I think that’s an absurd and dishonest comparison. In the comment you’re quoting from, I stated my support for regulations that would force pornography companies to treat the employees well. I support laws making condom-use mandatory; that would require employers to furnish their employees with health insurance; that would provide a recourse for pornography workers whose paychecks bounce or are otherwise mistreated by their employers.
Your insinuation that I suggested that the harms of porn are illusory is equally dishonest and untrue. In the comment you quote from, I suggested that some of the (very real) harms of porn are caused by society’s disapproval, and that the harms could be ameliorated by a reversal of that disapproval. I refer to the harms I listed in the preceding paragraph.
In the comment you quote from, I objected to your zoning strategy not because I think the harms of porn are illusory, but on constitutional grounds. I suggested that your content-based zoning law is unconstitutional because it singles out adult businesses on the basis of the content of the speech, not on its secondary effects. You used to say that there were no secondary effects associated with small adult stores, which was why you advocated for the zoning ordinance. Now that the ordinance passed, and the store will be small, the fact that you’re still worried is evidence that either a) secondary effects are also associated with small adult stores, or b) you object to the content of the store, independent of any secondary effects. Either way, the ordinance was the wrong law for you. It doesn’t satisfy your needs. And if it’s (b), the ordinance is unconstitutional, too.
I do think that the doctrine of secondary effects is not true, or at least an exaggeration. I cite the Fulton County study, with which I assume your familiar, and the work of Dr. Daniel Linz, Ph.D, which you can find here. Reasonable people disagree about the nature and severity of secondary effects. The evidence in their favor is not conclusive. And we will see what happens when the King Street store opens.
In any case, I would appreciate it if you would disavow this comparison. I’m not a segregationist, and I’m not *anything like* a segregationist. I am a reasonable person who disagrees with you. I’ve been respectful of you, and I would appreciate the same treatment.
I am not claiming that you are a segregationist. I am trying to point out that, in the past, others have claimed that the harm from an abusive situation was an illusory perception. Later, people came to realize the harm was real. I believe we are going through the same process with porn. The abuse of one person by another, sexual or not, filmed or not, is not something that should be approved of.
A clear preponderance of the evidence indicates that secondary effects are real. I encourage you to check in with residents from Minneapolis and Springfield if you’re still not convinced. There may well be a few studies such as Linz which haven’t found a correlation. We don’t claim 100% certainty and the courts don’t require it, nor should they. We are dealing with human affairs, not principles of gravity.
If you think the residents of Minneapolis and Springfield are mistaken about the role of adult enterprises in the blight of their neighborhoods, I would like you to propose and document an alternate theory, and suggest how you might go about improving the situation.
We never claimed that a small porn shop will have no secondary effects, but it is reasonable to assume they will be less than a large porn shop. This line of reasoning is why courts uphold zoning that requires adult enterprises to be separated from each other.
I’m glad you support improved conditions for porn workers. That would be a major advance for the industry. Would you join us in asking local video rental stores to refuse to stock films that show penetrative sex without condoms?
I didn’t say you accused me of being a segregationist. I said you *compared* me to one, and I asked you to disavow the comparison. Which you haven’t done. I don’t say the things you suggest I say, and I don’t have the attitudes you suggest I have. I would appreciate that disavowal now, please.
Some apologists for segregation, such as the Supreme Court opinion quoted in our article, argued that the harm of segregation was illusory, a figment of the “victim”‘s imagination. I have the clear impression from your comments that you also believe the stigma surrounding adult enterprises is unwarranted, at least in part, and that the harms are a figment of residents’ imagination. You say that zoning is not an appropriate response to adult enterprises because it feeds into this ‘baseless’ stigma. I believe the comparison in the article is apt and we stand by it.
The common thread is that apologists for segregation and apologists for porn don’t seem to take the suffering of the oppressed seriously. Both dismiss it as an illusion. Both try to persuade the victims that they are not really being harmed. Civil rights activists punctured this ideology for segregation, and we are among those who are puncturing it for porn.
Here is a quote from your sidebar, which you claim to have taken from U.S. News & World Report: “Checks sometimes bounce. The borderline legal status of the industry makes performers reluctant to seek redress in court…”
This quote indicates that there is a problem: that porn workers are reluctant to seek legal redress when their paychecks bounce. The fact that they are reluctant, according to the quote, stems from the borderline legal status of the industry. Whether or not some industry has a “borderline” legal status is up to society, not the industry.
This is the kind of thing I was talking about in the comment you quote from. The fact that you placed this quote on your sidebar makes me think you endorse the claim, too. Since you agree with me that some, but not all, of the harms of porn stem from society’s disaproval of it, I must conclude that if I am like a segregationist, then you must be like one, too.
Also, the victims of the harms of pornography are not you, the residents. They are the workers. You’re not opressed, Adam.
If you got the idea that I think that *all* the harms of porn are illusory, you couldn’t possibly have gotten it from the comment you *quote from.* In that quote, I argued that other ways of solving the problem are more appropriate that content-based zoning ordinances. Such ordinances merely drive the problems away from the big, victorian homes of rich Harvard men. The do not help the workers.
I’d appreciate that disavowal. Or, you can continue to be a hypocrite. It’s up to you.
There are many reasons why U.S. News might refer to the “borderline legal status” of the porn industry. One reason might be workplace conditions, many of which apparently don’t conform to OSHA regulations. Another might be the presence of convicted criminals like Kenneth Guarino in certain porn production companies. Again, the stigma surrounding porn is well-earned, merited by the actions and failures of those who have power in the industry, and is not the product of some arbitrary legal distinction.
The solution is to enforce existing workplace safety regulations, and to take porn workers’ problems seriously, not to ignore them or to pretend that they’re not being harmed. I grant that you have indicated concern for porn workers. I would like to know if you are taking any steps to put this concern into action.
If an adult enterprise like Capital Video locates in my neighborhood, and crime, harassment and economic blight spread from it, you bet we’re victims and we’re not going to just accept it or pretend it isn’t happening.
Adult-use zoning is not “content-based”. Physical, secondary effects justify the ordinances, not the perceived offensiveness of the speech.
Secondary effects studies suggest that the problems are worse when adult enterprises are located in residential areas, as opposed to commercial ones. Zoning is not about pushing adult enterprises from one residential neighborhood to another. They are about keeping them away from homes in general.
If you don’t like adult-use zoning, you need to propose an alternate theory of why secondary effects arise around adult enterprises and what is to be done about them, in detail, in a way that a city council or a planning director can implement. I had trouble getting Peter Brooks to flesh this out, and you seem to be traveling down the same path. You can’t expect the people to take you seriously if you don’t give them effective tools to solve their problems, or if you don’t even accept their problems as real.
As for your insinuations of elitism, let’s retrieve another quote from our sidebar:
FAQ: Doesn’t your campaign smack of elitism?
Why no, the reverse is true. The most visible porn advocates have been
saying that freedom of speech is so important, it trumps all other
things people might value, such as a safe neighborhood, one that’s
comfortable to walk around in, economically prosperous, where people
won’t be harassed or solicited for sex.
Porn advocates appear to be indifferent to the suffering of ordinary people, whether it’s porn workers with STDs, spouses of porn addicts, or cities whose downtowns can’t grow due to the presence of an adult business. Despite mounting evidence of the social harms of porn,
the porn advocates assert they simply know better what’s good for
America, and that the people can’t be trusted to impose the slightest
regulation on adult businesses or soon we’ll all be burning books.
There’s no evidence that adult-use regulations in Hollywood, New York
or Boston have led to censorship, but the real world seems to matter
little to porn advocates. That’s elitism.
We can also look at this from a power perspective. Who has access to millions of dollars, fancy prep schools, exotic cars, expensive lawyers, Ivy League MBAs and luxury homes? The porn merchants. On the other side, vulnerable young porn workers, small towns with limited resources, parents busy raising children. Who are the elite in this situation?
The idea that porn performers are embarrassed about the failure of their workplaces to conform to OSHA standards, and that’s why they are reluctant to seek legal redress when their checks bounce, is preposterous. I know that the industry is not good. I support efforts to *make it better,* not just zone it away from your house.
I’m not sure why you think I insinuated that you’re an elitist. I insinuated that you’re well-off, which you are, and that you have a large home, which you do, and that you went to Harvard, which you did. If that adds up to elitism to you, then you know what they say: if you shoe fits….
Whatever problems may be associated with the porn store in our neighborhood, they are insignificant compared to what the porn performers go through. You often behave as though you were advocating for them, not for yourself. But in the above comment, you reveal your selfish motives. I think that’s a significant undercurrent to your “advocacy,” which is why I pointed it out.
By comparing me to a segregationist, you get to compare yourself to John Brown, or even Nat Turner. But you’re not the “Nat Turner” of this situation, Adam. The actual porn workers are. And you’re not even John Brown. You’re just a wealthy Harvard man who’s scared of what the porn store will do to the value of his home.
As for solutions, if there are no secondary effects associated with small porn stores, as you claimed in October and November, then we should be fine. If that’s not true, we’ve missed our chance to address the real causes of the effects. This is, in large part, your fault, since you spent so much time advocating and trying to convince the Council to pass a version of the ordinance you drafted. Which misdiagnosed the problems and enacts an impotent solution.
Here are some adult performer advocacy groups you or your readers might consider helping: coyote, Sex Workers Outreach Program, workers outreach program, Sex Workers Project, and adult industry medical health care foundation. Perhaps it would be appropriate to place links to these organizations on your sidebar, under the “what you can do” heading. Near the top.
I was directed to your site via the talkbacknorthhampton.com website by a post titled “NPN: Lessons from the Stigma of Segregation Apply to the Stigma of Porn.” Upon reading the comments between Paddy O’Waggle and NPNAdmin, I thought to myself, “Wow, what a great country we live in!” The ability to express one’s views in an open forum is amazing and due to the First Amendment’s Freedom of Speech, we have that ability. Reading the comments between the two of you was very entertaining but I found myself siding with Paddy O’Waggle. Not because of the arguments made but because of the danger of constraining our freedom of speech.
Anyone that is familiar with the justice system knows that the court can take a rule from one case and analogize it so that it fits into another case, even with dissimilar facts. When we start putting constraints on one area of speech those constraints will trickle over into other areas. I for one do not want a government that will tell me what I can and cannot say or what I can and cannot think.
I respect the fact that you do not agree with pornography and that is your choice but there are those people that do. Each party on opposing sides must practice tolerance and respect for the others views.
The other thought that came to me as I was reading was, what kind of law would North Hampton pass if someone built a homeless shelter near a residential neighborhood? What if that neighborhood was an affluent one instead of a middle class or poor neighborhood? There would certainly be secondary effects associated with the homeless shelter.
I agree that tolerance for other views is important, but that doesn’t mean that people should take secondary effects and other impacts of porn lying down. Porn not only harms many viewers but the people they relate to and the neighborhoods where adult enterprises locate. Living in safe, prosperous neighborhoods and having healthy, mutual respectful sexual relationships are important values just as freedom of speech.
Thanks for your support, Sarah. I appreciate it.
Mr. Cohen, I’m not sure you really responded to Sarah’s point. Will the residents of your safe, prosperous neighborhood take the secondary effects of a homeless shelter lying down, or will you oppose a homeless shelter with the same vigor with which you now oppose the porn store?
If it’s the effects you’re worried about, how could you justify not opposing it?
A homeless shelter might impose some harms on its neighborhood, but it’s also trying to perform a valuable service to the community. It’s more reasonable to ask the community to make some sacrifices. It’s much harder to justify the secondary effects of a porn shop, which is just in the business of entertainment.
Much of porn, as we have shown, is in the business of teaching people how to abuse others. This is part of its core mission. Homeless shelters, as far as I know, are not in the business of promoting such pernicious ideologies.
Mike Kirby, one of the people appealing Capital Video’s Site Plan Approval, had to grapple with this very scenario when the city proposed to build a homeless shelter near his home. He came to accept it because he understood the importance of the shelter’s mission.
It seems to me a common strategy of many in our opposition is to try to change the debate from being about adult enterprises to being about something else, be it homeless shelters, churches or Wal-Marts. We are talking about none of these. We are talking about enterprises that sell sex for money.
So, you tolerate secondary effects if you approve of the cuase, but you will not take them lying down if you disaprove of the cause. Right?
I don’t see how this is changing the subject. You say, “the store will cause secondary effects. We should stop the store.” But Sarah rightly points out that other things besides porn stores sometimes cause secondary effects.
So Sarah is right to ask how you’ll handle other secondary-effect-causing entities. If you respond to secondary effects one way one time, consistency demands that you respond to them that way other times, unless there’s a relevant difference.
The Supreme Court says that zoning ordinances against porn stores must be content-neutral. So the relevant difference can’t be based on *what the porn store sells.* But if you justify the difference in the way you treat porn stores and homeless shelters is based on their messages, or what they sell, or whether one thing is moral and the other is not, you’ve run afoul of the First Amendment. Sorry.
I feel you’re being unreasonable here, Paddy. Almost any activity has positive and negative attributes. Rigid ways of thinking will quickly lead you to absurd conclusions. The wise course is to consider all the effects of the activity as a whole.
If you have studies showing that the secondary effects of homeless shelters and halfway houses are frequent and severe, then indeed people should take that into account in deciding where to locate them.
Fundamentally, the law is a crude and clumsy substitute for individual judgment. We have to reach for law in the case of adult enterprises because many porn merchants and other businesspeople refuse to exercise sound judgment.
I’m sorry, but I have no idea why you think I’m being rigid and unreasonable. You’ve proposed a general principle: that it’s Ok to use a content-neutral zoning ordinance to move potentially harmful uses of property away from residences, churches, etc.
Sarah–I’m just following up on her original question–is asking you how you’d apply that principle to other cases. If the principle is true, and the zoning ordinance content-neutral, then you should be able to successfully apply it to other cases.
There’s nothing unreasonable or rigid about that. That’s how you test principles. Consistency in thought and action is valuable. Inconsistency is dangerous and often hypocritical. Although Emerson said that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, a wise consistency is the dominant shaping feature of a big one.
So it makes perfect sense to ask how you’d handle other cases. Consistency demands that you handle similar cases in similar ways. It makes sense to ask you how you’d apply zoning ordinances to property uses you don’t find vile and repugnant, and it also makes sense to ask you whether you’d supercede other rights besides free speech.
For example, would you be willing to suspend Capital Video’s right to due process, as guaranteed by the fifth amendement, or from unreasonable search and seizure, as guaranteed by the fourth amendment?
Both of those rights make it harder for you to keep the porn store out of your neighborhood. Are they also not absolute? Are they negotiable too? Can you brush them aside whenever it’s convenient. If not, why not, when you clearly think the first amendment *is*?
Paddy, we can spin around forever arguing about hypothetical cases. I am content to stick to adult enterprises and how to mitigate their harms while respecting the First Amendment.
I really don’t understand why you think these questions are irrelevant. If you think it’s OK to zone adult oriented businesses out of town on the basis of their secondary effects, what other things to you think it’s ok zone out of town? If you think it’s OK to abridge freedom of speech on the basis of secondary effects, what other freedoms do you think it’s OK to abridge on the basis of secondary effects?
Your short-sighted refusal to consider “hypothetical” implications of laws you endorse dangerous in the extreme. What people who claim that Gay and interracial marriage leads to secondary effects? If the zoning ordinance is really content-neutral, it shouldn’t matter *what’s* causing the effects, just that the effects exist.
I think that we need to be vigilant against this sort of thing, and not just cross our fingers and hope it won’t happen here. So, answer the questions.
The difference is that you haven’t shown me that these other operations cause secondary effects the way adult enterprises do. I see no point in discussing imaginary harms when we have plenty of real ones to deal with.
You appear to be priviliging speech above all other values, which I feel is extreme, unreasonable, unwarranted, and leads to bad outcomes, such as grossly inappropriate locations for adult enterprises. Fortunately most US courts today take a more balanced perspective.
It is false to claim that we support zoning adult businesses “out of
town”. We support zoning them so they are a reasonable distance from
schools, homes, churches and other places where children are likely to be found. This does not mean banning them from the
town.
By the way, you’ll recall that we showed that fears of follow-on censorship from adult-use zoning are baseless.
The point of discussing “imaginary” harms is that it’s the only way to determine whether the general principles you suggest we use to govern our community are sound. Can this principle be extended to other things, or not? Can the principle be extended to other rights, or not?
I don’t know why you think I privelege freedom of speech over all other values. I don’t. I put a bunch of other rights up there with it: freedom of assembly; freedom of religion; freedom from unreasonable search and seizure; access to due process of law; et cetera. You can tell that I value other rights because I was asking about them in that comment up there.
I’m sorry about the slip of the fingers. I should have said: “zone away from your house.”
I recall the article about the librarians, but I don’t remember where you showed that fears of censorship were baseless. I concede that librarians are probably pretty up on what goes on in libraries, but I’m confused about why you think they’re experts on what goes on in bookstores, or pornography stores, or lingerie stores, etc.
So, answer the questions. f you think it’s OK to zone adult oriented businesses away from your house on the basis of their secondary effects, what other things to you think it’s ok zone away from your house? If you think it’s OK to abridge freedom of speech on the basis of secondary effects, what other freedoms do you think it’s OK to abridge on the basis of secondary effects?
I’m glad you acknowledge other values besides free speech. That said, I’m concerned you don’t place sufficient value on residents’ desire for safe, prosperous neighborhoods. Adult-use zoning doesn’t seem like much of a carve-out from free speech to serve these important ends. There are plenty of other carve-outs. Do they bother you as well, or is there something about sex that merits a super-absolute First Amendment even stronger than the standard amendment?
The justification for adult-use zoning is that secondary effects are a documented fact. It is meaningless to discuss scenarios for other kinds of operations if you can’t produce, with substantial evidence, that they cause secondary effects. The general principle is making way for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Secondary effects cut into this principle. The liberties exercised by many adult-enterprise patrons cut into the rights and liberties of residents. Adult-use zoning is part of the solution, and so is awareness-raising.
I appreciate a desire for a logical, orderly world that can be reduced to an unchanging set of neat principles. Unfortunately, reality is messier. Callous people like to pervert neat principles to their own ends. The people must respond to them dynamically, as experience unfolds.
We challenged Peter Brooks for months to come up with examples of censorship following from adult-use zoning. He came up with virtually nothing. He resorted to concocting implausible scenarios to try to stir up fear among the people.
“It is meaningless to discuss scenarios for other kinds of operations if you can’t produce, with substantial evidence, that they cause secondary effects.”
This is precisely what I’ve been asking for for some time now. Can you produce substantial evidence that will show that a Capital Video store will produce the effects you’ve outlined? And can you explain whether these effects will be permanent and when these effects will begin? I’ve read all about St. Paul and Springfield and the other cities you’ve mentioned, and I’m not dismissing their experiences. However, here in Northampton we have at least two adult businesses that sell pornography, not to mention what’s available on the Internet and television, and we haven’t seen the effects you’ve indicated are inevitable.
And your accusing someone else of stirring up fear among the people is laughable considering the lengths you’ve gone to to make people afraid, including the insinuation that patrons of the Capital Video store will be snatching people off of the bike path.
Where’s your substantial evidence for that scenario?
Welcome back, Andrew. Once again, I must refer you to our package of Secondary Effects studies, a package that satisfies most US courts when it comes to adult-use zoning. Of course, we are always looking for more data, and look forward to presenting it to you.
We have long since discussed the differences between Capital Video, Oh My, and Pride and Joy.
With all due respect, you haven’t answered my question.
I believe we have met our burden of proof with respect to your questions. I can’t, of course, compel you to agree, so we may have leave it at that.
So, are the children of Northampton in danger of being kidnapped by the customers of the Capital Video store as they ride on the bike path or not? If they are, how do you know? If they’re not, why did you mention it?