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PORNOGRAPH
DRUGS
&
THE
FIRST
AMENDMENT
How the Dope and Porn. Lobby
Created Hustler Magazine
p, ornography can be bought " while their legal protection from Amendment guarantee of free
everywhere, and even if you such abuse has been stripped away. expression prohibits setting a
don't buy it you can't help seeing Thirty years ago it was illegal standard that distinguishes beand
being influenced by it. Turn to produce, distribute, and in some tween art and obscenity.
on the television, take a trip to the states, to buy obscene literature, Thus, whereas in 1950s movies
local newsstand, examine the best- movies, or paraphernalia. Produc- husbands and wives rarely owned '
seller list, go to the movies--ob- ers and distributers of pornogra- a double bed, and a kiss was the
scenity has been accepted as part phy were treated as part of the only expression of romance, by
ofeverday life. criminal element of society and the 1970s even movies not restrict-
This flood of filth is not the arrested, tried, and jailed, ed to adult audiences portrayed
result of a spontaneous moral de- Over the past three decades, explicit sexual scenes, as often of
generation of the Afiaerican pop- however, pornography has been violence as of love.
ulation. A concerted and well-fi- legalized in America. The highest In 1953 Playboy was launched
nanced campaign has undermined court in the land has ruled that with a few artfully draped, prothe
constitutional ' and cultural even "deviants" have the right to vocatively posed photographs of
standards of the nation. Americans their own "brand" of entertain- movie stars. By the 1970s, Playboy,
have been innundated with smut, ment. It hag ruled that the First Hustler, 'Penthouse, Chic, and a
CAMPAIGNER / February 1981 13