MISSOURI LAW ALLOWS FOR PROHIBITION

Jon K. Rust is the editor of Perspective.

A curious drama has been taking place in Cape Girardeau over the past several months with the main protagonists being the two writers on the left and right of this page: Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle and the president of the local chapter of the American Family Association, Donna Miller.

While somewhat of a spectacle, this curious drama has certainly not been insignificant. In the debate about pornography, many fundamental issues about law, government, social interaction and morality come into play. This is not a game. And both Swingle and Miller make this clear.

Jeffrey Militti, who writes below, even argues that the ready availability of pornography, combined with modern culture's shift to a "nothing should be considered wrong" amorality, is one of the greatest crises facing our country today.

I'm not convinced that Militti is correct. While I agree that the emergence of a valueless society is, indeed, reaching a crisis proportion, I'm not sure that pornography leads the list of causes.

Nevertheless, the more research I do, the more compelling becomes the argument that many types of pornography can and should be banned.

Unfortunately, the debate here has been distorted, thanks to both Miller and Swingle. Each, in his or her own well-intentioned way, has made misleading claims over the past several months. And that's a shame.

Truth

When a person intentionally misleads, in the end, they always harm their own cause. They also threaten the democratic system under which we all live, because democracy depends upon truthful communication.

Donna Miller's cause has been jeopardized because she began her mission to rid Cape Girardeau of pornography with a false claim. When she had her husband sign up for a membership to rent a triple X-rated film from a Cape Girardeau video store, and then turned the rented video over to the police, she told the police (to quote from the police report): "She had been addicted to `pornographic movies' and had to view them in order to have `sex.'"

Now, Miller says she has never been addicted to pornography and that the police report was an exaggeration. In reviewing the record and talking with reporters, however, I have discovered that Miller has taken at least two other positions about what she said originally. I made several phone calls to check on these.

I am convinced that Miller did say what the police reported. This does not mean I believe she was ever addicted to pornographic movies. On the contrary, I believe she probably was not.

Instead, Miller said what she did probably because she believed it would be a good tactic in her mission to eliminate pornography. The charge would gain the public's attention, and it would serve as symbol for the dangers of pornography.

What, in fact, happened is that this claim turned out to be a horrible mistake for her, because it destroyed her credibility.

Jeffrey Militti complains in his piece today that too often "those who still `dare' to believe in moral absolutes are accused of being extremists, radicals, even fascists. When in reality they are housewives, working women ... and others who want to keep their communities and families `porn free.'"

This may well be true about many of the people involved in the fight to ban pornography, but it is not true about Miller. Anyone who makes false claims (and thus sacrifices the means in order to achieve a certain end) is, indeed, an extremist.

Cornering the prosecutor

There are other points I could focus on about Miller, but I will not. This first mistake is the most damaging, because it also painted the prosecuting attorney into somewhat of a difficult corner.

Although he does not say it in his column today, Swingle has said it before. Miller, because of the circumstances, would have made a poor witness in court. And because of the circumstances, it would have been difficult if not impossible to have won a case to ban triple X-rated movies based on her complaint. He is right. And he proved it when he waged a publicity campaign against Miller in the cover letter to the survey he conducted as well as in this newspaper and on the radio and the public agreed with him.

Let me specifically address the issue of the survey succinctly: It is a farce. First, it is a respondent-generated survey. While those who received the questionnaire might have been selected randomly from an already random (but limited) group, those who responded did so of their own initiative. This necessarily skews the results.

Second, the cover letter, written by Swingle, had a very specific agenda. To quote from it:

"I am in the process of trying to come up with a formal policy about how to handle pornography complaints. This was triggered by a woman who claims she and her husband were `addicted' to pornography. She rented a dirty movie and turned it over to the police and wants us to prosecute the store she rented it from.

"The issue of pornography is complex. On the one hand, my general approach has always been that if adults want to watch a dirty movie in the privacy of their own homes, the government (prosecutor) has no business getting involved. On the other hand, I also feel strongly that anyone who would distribute X-rated films to a minor should be prosecuted and we have prosecuted child pornography cases.

"I am wondering if I am 'in tune' with our community on this issue."

By telling Miller's story, this cover letter influences the respondent. As Miller herself has noted, it makes her as much an issue as pornography. Moreover, the cover letter gives an agenda to the respondent to say whether or not the prosecutor is "in tune." No where does the letter or survey explain what the law actually is concerning pornography.

Third, the survey questions are poorly written. They are centered around the issue of "sexual explicitness." Sexual explicitness, however, is not the main issue in the law. There is nothing illegal about sexual explicitness. What the law deals with is "obscenity" and "offensiveness." Swingle does not address these issues except to offer up various pornographic scenarios. As a young man who worked with the Fremont, Calif. vice squad and who saw more than his share of pornography in the line of work, let me say that Swingle's scenarios were rather generous.

The most problematic aspect about the survey, however, is how Swingle announced it to the public. Time after time he stressed to reporters that the survey was "an accurate portrayal of the local community standards on the question of pornography." To bolster this claim, he produced a document which said that, based on the size of the sample, there is a 95 percent certainty that the results are accurate within 8 percentage points, according to the Criminal Justice Department at Southeast Missouri State University.

The implication was that the entire survey was assessed as being accurate. In fact, all the Criminal Justice Department did was look at the sample size, the community population, and go to a statistical chart to figure out a confidence level. When I asked the professor cited by Swingle on the report if the accuracy rating had anything to do with the actual questions, she said, "Oh no."

Let me finish by pointing out a flaw in the prosecuting attorney's logic. In his column, he describes and writes about "snuff films." He said if such pornography were to come into this community, he would quickly and confidently prosecute. The problem with this is, how has he determined that snuff films are outside the law and violent, gang-bang rape films are not? Neither one was included his survey.

Both Miller and Swingle, I believe, are ultimately well-intentioned. But good intentions are not enough, especially in the hype of public campaigns where personality and private victory can so quickly out-tempt the virtues of truth and dialogue.

But what about pornography? Where do we go from here?