An Open Letter To Nopornnorthampton
Dear Nopornnorthampton:
Your point of view makes many valid points. Harm results from porn just as much as harm results from the production and consumption of goods in many other industries, such as the alcoholic beverage industry.
But pornographic material does make a social statement that sex, even uncommitted and so-called deviant sex, can be and is good for us and should be enjoyed without guilt and shame by those who wish to engage in it. Disagree with this point of view as you wish, but you should not have the right to deny First Amendment protection to adult material equal to your own.
You state that you would not banish “erotica” that you define as sexually explicit material depicting romantic love between committed couples. But one person's version of acceptable erotica is another person's porn. One should be able to browse the erotic material of their choice in any form as readily as any other type of material offered in hard copy downtown, particularly because for many of us living downtown the usual mode of transportation is by foot.
While I am not interested in most of what Capital Video offers, the proposed changes to the zoning law which you support may effectively zone out of our downtown area the stores most likely to carry the material many of us consider desirable erotica. Be careful, Nopornnorthampton, lest you throw the baby (our freedom) out with the dirty bath water. Your “erotica” is next.
Make no mistake - obstructing access to pornographic material by zoning it to the outskirts of town is, as a practical matter, actual and real censorship. If the subject matter of the material of the establish was solely religious or ideological in nature no one would seriously contend that zoning it to the outskirts of town represented anything but wrongful censorship. So, stop continuing to insult us by claiming that it not censorship. It is.
Indeed, more harm has been committed against women and children, past and present, by and in the name of religion and ideology than all the porn put together ever did.
Furthermore, the revolting or degrading nature of the material does not justify its banishment. Gay erotica is degrading and revolting to many heterosexual men, but no one would dare draft an ordinance banning homosexual erotica in this town. The truth is that when people justify banishment of pornography to protect women and children, they usually are merely seeking to protect themselves from the embarrassment or shame they feel about sex.
I also wish to see the King Street area improved upon. But instead of targeting the expressive content of the wares the King Street vendors offer inside their establishments, let’s work together on zoning requirements and restrictions which may improve the area, such as signage and storefront specifications, rather than dally with governmental restrictions that raise the specter of censorship.
Yours sincerely,
A. C.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
NoPornNorthampton responds to this letter at http://nopornnorthampton.org/2006/09/21/a-response-to-first-amendment-concerns.aspx
NoPornNorthampton said, "The risk of real-world harms of a porn shop, in the forms of crime, blight and harassment of passersby, is real, well-documented, and the people have a right to ask porn merchants to compromise."
You are wrong. See http://pornstudies.net/news/Porn-Stores-Crime.htm.
"But experts in the field say there's no proof that a store that sells pornography will cause additional crime.
"Lori Sudderth, an associate professor at Quinnipiac University with a doctorate in sociology, says there's no evidence that pornography causes 'sexually aggressive behavior.'
"Clinton Sanders, a University of Connecticut professor and an expert in deviant behavior, strongly agrees.'There's absolutely no causal relationship,' he says. 'All those arguments are a smokescreen for the main concern: That these are dirty things and we don't want dirty people coming here.'
It's the anti-porners who harass as they picket porn businesses and attempt to embarrass customers.
NoPornNorthhampton claims that its purpose is to “…increase awareness about the impact of porn on people and communities.” That very statement suggests that the connection between porn and adverse “secondary effects” is a difficult one to make. If the residents of the community have to be “educated” by websites like NoPornNorthhampton, it is obvious that they are not making this connection themselves. This also means that the community members must rely on the evidence provided by these websites supposedly proving that store’s like Capital Video do produce harmful “secondary effects.” My disagreement is with how and where this evidence is being gathered.
The “Gazette: “Zoning laws set; But porn store’s plans unchanged”” post on NoPornNorthhampton’s site provides evidence of the owner of Capital Video as having a previous criminal record and ties with various organized crime families. Although this evidence may support a view that unwarranted criminal activity may be a result of the store’s opening, it is an isolated incident involving one particular owner. I can assure you that every pornographic store owner is not a convicted criminal with ties to organized crime. NoPornNorthhampton provides no specific evidence of “secondary effects” that have take place in Northhampton. The city ordinance claims that it has evidence that stores over 1000 square feet create adverse “secondary effects,” but it provides no specific scientific data.
In Government Regulation of “Adult” Businesses Through Zoning and Anti-Nudity Ordinances: Debunking the Legal Myth of Negative Secondary Effects, the authors applied four criteria for evidentiary validity of studies that cities have done to show “secondary effects”. First, a number of studies attempting to compare areas containing adult businesses to areas containing no such businesses failed to include comparison (control) areas that were sufficiently matched regarding important characteristics, such as age of housing stock or racial make-up. This lack of comparability between study and control areas prevents researchers from determining whether neighborhood deterioration is related to the operation of adult businesses in an area or that some other confounding variable is responsible for the outcome. Bryant Paul, Daniel Linz, and Bradley J. Shafer, Government Regulation of “Adult” Businesses Through Zoning and Anti-Nudity Ordinances: Debunking the Legal Myth of Negative Secondary Effects. 6 Communication Law & Policy 355 (2001). Second, a number of the studies using neighborhood crime measures have collected these statistics improperly. Id. Third, the majority of studies failed to include a sufficient period of
elapsed time, both prior to and following the establishment of an adult entertainment business, when measuring the relationship between the presence of adult businesses and a number of negative outcomes, such as higher crime rates and lower property values. Without a sufficient study period, it is difficult to determine whether a relationship exists between adult entertainment businesses and negative secondary effects, or whether the data are simply a reflection of an erratic pattern of local activity. Id. Finally, most of the studies that included survey results utilized non-random and therefore biased samples of residents and/or business owners, rendering them scientifically invalid. Id.
NoPornNorthhampton is just another website that promotes their ideologies through past studies of adverse “secondary effects” that have no connections with their local communities.
-Nick Grimm
Post a Comment