Jeremy Patrick (jhaeman@hotmail.com)

September 2, 2000

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others."

--Thomas Jefferson

In Omaha the saga of Dr. John’s is well-known. John Haltom, proprietor of an Omaha lingerie and adult novelty store, has been repeatedly arrested and charged by City Prosecutor Martin Conboy for selling "obscene" videos. So far Conboy has won three out of four bouts, securing convictions in April (a 120-day jail sentence) and July (a nine-month sentence) and a no-contest plea Thursday (a $ 2,000 fine) but losing a trial in May. Under state law, Haltom could lose his store.

The repeated arrests of Haltom are curious, not so much for what he has done, but for what he hasn’t done. By all accounts the type of videos Haltom sells are much tamer than that sold in many stores around the country. Marketed as "marital aids," the videos lack fictional depictions of rape, incest, or bondage and generally consist of only one male and one female having sex at a time.

Apparently, however, some residents in Omaha consider the city too "decent" a place for a store such as Dr. John’s and have pressured city authorities to do something about it. Don Kohls, chairperson of Omaha for Decency, argued that "pornography destroys marriages and leads to increased crime."

Indeed, justifications of this sort are frequently given for the existence of obscenity statutes: "pornography causes rape," "pornography destroys families," "pornography degrades women." One letter writer to the Omaha World-Herald, for example, asserted as proof of the claim that pornography causes crime the fact that many convicted rapists admit to having looked at adult videos or magazines.

The error is clear. There is a fundamental difference between causation and correlation. Causation means A causes B. Correlation means A and B tend to occur together. To assert that pornography causes rape because many rapists admit to having seen it is akin to asserting that cigarettes cause violent crime because a higher proportion of convicted felons smoke than does the general public. Often there are other factors that cause both A and B. For example, use of pornography may be influenced by an individual’s socioeconomic status or residence in urban areas where it is more available. An argument that pornography causes, instead of merely correlates, with crime requires much more: Why does it cause only a tiny percentage of consumers to commit crime, which types of pornography cause it, and most importantly, what is the causal mechanism at play?

In fact, one of the most careful and balanced assessments of the effects of pornography concluded that it does not cause increased crime rates. In The Question of Pornography (1987), three social scientists of varying backgrounds and operating under grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health conducted five years of research on the issue and concluded: "To date, the evidence supporting the contention that [nonviolent,] so-called degrading pornographic materials . . . are harmful is sparse and inconsistent."

In effect, John Haltom will be imprisoned and probably lose his livelihood based on evidence that is "sparse and inconsistent."

The assertion that pornography destroys marriage is equally without evidence, and any marriage destroyed by the mere existence of adult videos could not have been very strong to begin with. The argument of some feminists that pornography degrades women has more merit but is still unsatisfactory. A fundamental tenet of feminism is that women have the right to decide how to use their own bodies. There is nothing inherently "degrading" about sex and, in any event, criminal statutes are clearly not an effective method of dealing with the problem. Women (and men) appearing in pornographic movies ultimately have to decide for themselves whether the money is worth it.

This type of paternalistic attitude was once used to keep women from voting, holding jobs outside the home, and even owning property. It is, in essence, saying that women of consenting age are unable to make decisions for themselves and therefore the government must do it for them. As H.L. Mencken once said, "I believe in one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone."

Allowing jurors to decide when adult materials "violate community standards" sacrifices individual rights to the dictates of the majority. Dr. John’s grosses $ 78,000 a month and sells or rents 800 tapes a week; indisputably, a substantial segment of the "community" doesn’t have a problem with the store. Closing Dr. John’s simply shifts sales of pornography in Omaha to the internet, mail-order outfits, and pay-per-view television channels, thus depriving the city of the tax revenues it would normally acquire.

In July of 1818 John Adams wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: "When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking, or thinking, I cannot choose but to laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more." Perhaps, until that time comes, and in the interests of accuracy, the city of Omaha should create a new position and appoint Martin Conboy to fill it: chief of censorship.

(c) 2000 Lincoln Journal-Star (www.journalstar.com)