Sex Busters

Americans have always wanted it both ways. From the first tentative settlements in the New World, a tension has existed between the pursuit of individual liberty and the quest for Puritan righteousness, between Benjamin Franklin's open road of individualism and Jonathan Edwards' Great Awakening of moral fervor. The temper of the times shifts from one pole to the other, and along with it the role of the state. Government intrudes; government retreats; the state meddles with morality, then washes its hands and withdraws. The Gilded Age gave way to the muscular governmental incursions of the Age of Reform. The Roaring Twenties gave rise to the straitlaced Hays Office of the '30s. The buttoned-up '50s ushered in the unbuttoned '60s. And, most recently, a reaction to the sexual revolution spurred a spirited crusade to reassert family values that helped sweep Ronald Reagan into the presidency.

Each swing brings to the fore a series of questions. What is the role of the state in enforcing the morality of its citizenry? How far should government go in regulating private conduct? Is morality a question of individual rights? Or should the state play an active role in nurturing values deemed worthy by the community?

These questions were at the heart of the debate last week surrounding the release of the final report of Attorney General Edwin Meese's Commission on Pornography and a series of restrictive Supreme Court decisions that, among other things, allowed states to outlaw homosexual sodomy. Though significant, neither the report's findings nor the court's rulings were, on their own, momentous. Taken together, however, they seemed emblematic of a new moral militancy evident in communities around the country and of a willingness of government officials, from federal to local levels, to help enforce traditional values. In addition to the pornography report and the sodomy ruling, consider:

-- More than 10,000 stores across the country, including such mammoth chains as 7-Eleven and Rite Aid, have removed Playboy and Penthouse from their shelves, many of them acting after receiving a letter from the Meese commission suggesting that they might be cited for distributing pornography.

^ -- The Supreme Court last week upheld a New York State public-health nuisance law that would permit officials in Buffalo to close an adult bookstore for one year because of solicitation for prostitution on the premises.

-- In another decision last week, the court gave a narrow interpretation to the First Amendment in a case involving the suspension of a student who gave a speech colored by sexual innuendo.

-- The court ruled two weeks ago, in a case involving advertising by gambling casinos in Puerto Rico, that even truthful ads for lawful goods and services could be restricted by the state to protect the "health, safety and welfare" of its citizens.

-- The Justice Department issued a ruling that would allow businesses to discriminate against workers with AIDS if there was a fear that the health of other employees was jeopardized.

-- A proposal that could quarantine AIDS victims, sponsored by followers of Lyndon LaRouche, has gathered nearly 700,000 signatures to win a spot on the ballot in a California referendum this fall. -- Despite a voter referendum in Maine last month in which citizens soundly rejected an antipornography measure, large-scale efforts to restrict the sale of sexually explicit material are under way in more than a dozen states from Massachusetts to Arizona.

To civil libertarians, these actions raise the specter of an invasive moral vigilantism that could erode the constitutional right of free speech and penetrate the protected realm of privacy. Democrats who have long advocated federal activism note with irony that the traditional Republican principle of getting government off the back of its people has been subverted by the evangelical right, seemingly intent on transforming Big Brother into a bedroom busybody. Conservatives and many mainstream Americans, on the other hand, view the trend as a welcome response to the breakdown of sexual and family values. The reassertion of traditional moral values, they say, is part of a broad conservative realignment in the political process.

The current atmosphere does seem to be part of a national retrenchment from the giddy permissiveness of the '60s and '70s. As the baby-boom generation settles into respectable middle age, many of the trends associated with it are in decline: singles bars seem to be on the wane, promiscuity is becoming a fickle memory. The sexual revolution, which celebrated polymorphous diversity, ended with cruel jolts: first herpes, then AIDS. Says Michael Novak, a social philosopher at the American Enterprise Institute: "The coming theme for the liberal society is virtue and character. In its youth liberal society could claim that the sex shops on 42nd Street represented emancipation. Adulthood means learning to choose, and above all, to say no."

Yes . . . and no. There it is, the old duality, the split personality of the American character. While polls show that many Americans have a renewed appreciation for traditional values, their tolerance of their neighbor's right to reject those values has not declined at all. Notes California Pollster Gary Lawrence: "More people than ever are embracing moral traditional values. But they're saying, I don't want anything to be repressed or oppressed, either."

The debate has been crystallized by the completion of a government-sponsored study that was initially dismissed as a small sop to Reagan's New Right constituency. After hearing testimony in half a dozen cities on topics ranging from sex with fish to baroque forms of bondage, making three field trips to porn shops like Mr. Peepers in Houston, and spending $500,000, the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography issued a two-volume, 1960-page report. In ceremoniously accepting it from Chairman Henry Hudson at a Justice Department news conference, Meese seemed both proud and sheepish as he stood before a seminaked statue of a female figure called Spirit of Justice.

The commission's conclusions were couched amid careful clauses that only partly tempered the strong attack on pornography: the panel stated that there is a causal link between violent pornography and aggressive behavior toward women. Furthermore, it said that exposure to sexually explicit material that is not violent but nevertheless degrades women -- a category that "constitutes somewhere between the predominant and the overwhelming portion of what is currently standard fare heterosexual pornography" -- bears "some causal relationship to the level of sexual violence." The Meese panel's findings are diametrically opposed to those of the 1970 report of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, which asserted that pornography was not a significant cause of sexual crime and recommended better sex education in schools. The 1970 analysis, the new report claims, is now "starkly obsolete." Since 1970, according to the Meese panel, pornography that is far more violent and explicit has flooded the market, and this has been accompanied by a commensurate increase in the number of sex crimes.

In addition to being a catalyst for violence, the report said, sexually violent pornography "leads to a greater acceptance of the 'rape myth' in its broader sense -- that women enjoy being coerced into sexual activity, that they enjoy being physically hurt in a sexual context." The commission was less certain about material it labeled nonviolent but "degrading"; such items, it said, foster a similarly lax and accepting attitude toward rape, but do not necessarily arouse violence. A third category, erotica that is neither violent nor degrading, proved to be the most problematic; the commission acknowledged that there was no evidence to suggest it promotes violence, but did say that "none of us think the material in this category, individually or as a class, is in every instance harmless."

Although the panel rejected any efforts to expand the legal definition of obscenity (which the Supreme Court has declared depends partly on the "community standards" of each locality), it did call for the enactment of federal laws to make it easier to seize the assets of those involved in the trade. It also proposed that Congress enact unfair-labor-practice laws to be used against producers who pay performers in pornographic films. The Federal Communications Commission, it said, should restrict pornographic cable television shows and "Dial-a-Porn" telephone services. It also recommended that peep-show booths not be equipped with doors, so that the occupants can be clearly seen, thereby discouraging sexual activity.

The commission placed a special emphasis on the problem of child pornography, which it says has undergone the greatest growth since the 1970 commission. To combat what it calls the rise of the "kiddie-porn industry," the commission proposed that the knowing possession of child pornography be considered a felony.

In addition, the report contains 37 pages of suggestions that are, in effect, a how-to guide for citizen action against pornography. The text includes suggestions on how to conduct a "court watch" program ("Citizens . . . will write to the prosecutor, judge or police officer and relay their opinions of the investigation, prosecution and disposition of the case") and how to monitor the lyrics of rock music ("Many popular idols of the young commonly sing about rape, masturbation, incest, drug usage, bondage, violence, homosexuality and intercourse").

- The social significance of the report goes beyond its specific findings. It serves to document the evolving attitudes toward sexual morality that have gained acceptance during the Reagan era. In many ways it reflects society's ambivalence, mixing some moderate views about the rights of individuals with some visceral moralizing about pornography and promiscuity. Says the commission: "There are undoubtedly many causes for what used to be called the 'sexual revolution,' but it is absurd to suppose that depictions or descriptions of uncommitted sexuality were not among them." At times the report hesitantly departs from an examination of pornography and discusses the need for a moral compass in society. "We all agree that some degree of individual choice is necessary in any free society, and we all agree that a society with no shared values, including moral values, is no society at all." While they refrain from seeking to impose their view by legislation, the commissioners make clear what they feel about sex outside the framework of love and marriage: "Although there are many members of this society who can and have made affirmative cases for uncommitted sexuality, none of us believes it to be a good thing."

The $35 report could prove to be a best seller partly because of a straight- faced 300-page section that provides graphic descriptions of sex scenes and no-expletives-deleted excerpts of steamy dialogue from such movies as Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas. In addition, it gives a clinical accounting of pictures in magazines like Tri-Sexual Lust, along with a list of 2,370 film titles and 725 book titles ranging from Horny Holy Roller Family to Thoroughly Amorous Amy.

During its intermittent, yearlong investigation, there were times when the commission seemed to be on a kind of surrealist mystery tour of sexual perversity, peeping at the most recondite forms of sexual behavior known -- though mostly unknown -- to society. The report details testimony about practices involving human excretions, asphyxiation and anilingus, along with even more arcane fetishes, such as collecting toenail clippings and sniffing sweat. The panel heard from a Houston police officer whose vice squad had confiscated and was storing some 27,000 "rubber goods." Many of the so- called victims described the harm that had befallen them after being lured into the world of pornography. In Miami, for example, Larry Madigan, 38, told the commission he had been "a typically normal, healthy boy," whose subsequent life of solitary masturbation, bestiality and drug addiction could all be traced to the finding of a deck of pornographic playing cards when he was twelve.

An early draft of the report seemed to several commissioners to be an overzealous reaction to such testimony. It had been written by a number of commission staff members and overseen by the group's executive director, Alan Sears, a former assistant U.S. Attorney and an ardent antipornography crusader. One panel member, Frederick Schauer, a respected University of Michigan law professor, criticized its oversimplification and reliance on the bizarre. To avoid having it become a laughingstock, he wrote a 200-page draft that became the basis for the main part of the final report. As a result, more consideration is given to the need to protect the rights of free speech and privacy as defined by the federal courts.

Nevertheless, two members of the commission, Judith Becker, director of the Sexual Behavior Clinic at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Ellen Levine, editor of Woman's Day, objected to the premise that there is evidence linking pornography and violence and wrote an 18-page rebuttal. In it they noted that the panel's "efforts to tease the current data into proof of a causal link . . . simply cannot be accepted."

The fundamental issue involved -- whether certain forms of pornography are harmful to the public and thus might be legitimately restricted by the government -- is unlikely to be settled by the publication of the Meese commission's report. Because the group had limited funds, it was not able to commission academic research of its own on the topic. Instead it relied on past academic studies, testimony from victims and law-enforcement officials, and "common sense."

A small amount of work done in the past decade does in fact suggest that hard-core pornography involving violence has a certain harmful effect. Other evidence, mostly of the anecdotal variety, is far more murky. Edward Donnerstein, a University of Wisconsin psychologist who has studied the effects of sexually violent material, was billed as one of the committee's star witnesses. But in his testimony he refused to make a direct causal link between pornography and violence. Although he does not repudiate the report, he suggests that the crucial variable is not explicit sex but graphic violence. Violent films without sex, like Rambo, he suggests, cause the same changes in attitude as sexually violent ones. "If you take out the sex and leave the violence, you get the increased violent behavior in the laboratory setting, and these 'changes in attitude.' If you take out the violence and leave the sex, nothing happens."

Donnerstein is particularly perturbed by what he sees as the pervasive depiction of violence toward women on broadcast television and in movies. "Why all the sudden talk about sex?" he says. "Why do people find it offensive and violence acceptable?" The emphasis, he suggests, should be on controlling violence. The columnist TRB in the New Republic pointed out recently that while the Reagan Administration decries the spread of sexual pornography, the President has invited Sylvester Stallone, whose movies glamourize violence (and whose wife appears undraped in the current issue of Playboy), to the White House on more than one occasion.

Many social scientists believe that an individual's sexual attitudes are determined long before he or she is exposed to pornography and that pornography is a symptom of deviant sexuality rather than a cause of it. Says A. Nicholas Groth, who runs the sex-offender program at the Connecticut Correctional Institution: "We've had men who were very much turned on by looking at the underwear ads of kids that appear in the Sears, Roebuck catalog, which doesn't make the Sears, Roebuck catalog a kiddie-porn magazine."

Even before the commission issued its report, the American Civil Liberties Union published a critique by Barry Lynn, a lawyer who attended meetings in each of the six cities where they occurred and obtained its internal papers under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Lynn dismissed the report as "little more than prudishness and moralizing masquerading behind social- science jargon." He charged that the conclusions were precooked, and labeled the commissioners "quintessential censors," noting that six of the eleven were already committed to stamping out pornography before the hearings began. (Chairman Hudson, for example, is a U.S. Attorney in Virginia who made his name by clamping down on adult bookstores.) "They truly want to regulate everyone's sex life," Lynn says. "If they had their way, they'd like to crawl into your bedroom and tell you what is and is not appropriate."

Members of the commission emphasized that they had refrained from advocating any form of censorship. "Those people that anticipated a document supporting ^ censorship are going to be disappointed," said Hudson. Park Dietz, a sociologist who is a member of the panel, felt vindicated after the report was released: "The big news here is that . . . the report says exactly the opposite of what the A.C.L.U. claims. It says that 'slasher' films are bad, Playboy is O.K., and no books should be prosecuted."

But Lynn, paraphrasing Justice Potter Stewart's standard for obscenity, said he knew censorship when he saw it. "He can say that this is not about censorship. In fact, whenever you use the powers of the state or Federal Government to punish, to criminalize, to imprison people who sell certain kinds of sexually explicit material, that is censorship." Leanne Katz, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, charges the approach is similar to ones used in the past: "I have been working in the anticensorship cause for about 30 years, and I have never encountered a censorship controversy in which the other side wasn't saying 'This isn't censorship.' They also always argue that they are talking about harm. It's always harm to women, harm to children, harm to somebody. In truth, however, it is harm to our precious idea that all of us are supposed to be able to decide for ourselves what we can see and read and think."

Critics asserted that the commission's guidelines for citizens' actions, which the panel specifically noted could be undertaken against publications that were not legally obscene, indirectly amounts to censorship by seeming to give a government imprimatur to efforts to prevent the sale of various publications. Noted Legal Scholar Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago: "To the extent the report directs private citizens to protest against constitutionally protected acts, there are serious First Amendment problems. The government has no business encouraging people to do things that it can't do."

Christie Hefner, president of Playboy Enterprises, objected that the commission, despite its claims to have focused on pornography dealing with children or violence, implicitly coupled Playboy with raunchier material, especially in its advocacy of citizens' action against magazine sellers. This was accomplished in part through the panel's extremely broad definition of the type of erotic material that could be considered "degrading." There was also the feeling expressed by some panel members that magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse can be in effect an appetizer that inculcates a taste for hard porn. "What the report does," said Hefner, "is condemn everything that has a sexual content." First, she says, the commission talks about violence, "and then there's a little bit of a soft shoe and a shuffle, and all of a sudden we're talking about Playboy magazine."

One example of how the commission, in its zeal, apparently infringed on the rights of Playboy and other mainstream publications involved a letter sent out by Director Sears. He cited testimony from an unnamed witness (who turned out to be the Rev. Donald Wildmon, head of a group called the National Federation for Decency, in Tupelo, Miss.) accusing convenience stores like 7-Eleven of being purveyors of pornography. Sears asked those mentioned to respond to the accusations, warning that failure to do so would be interpreted as acquiescence. This was followed rather rapidly by the decision by some chains and stores to remove Playboy and other magazines from their shelves. Playboy, joined by the Magazine Publishers Association, went to court to have the letter rescinded and prevent publication of what it called a blacklist.

Judge John Garrett Penn of the federal district court in Washington, in an emphatic ruling, ordered the commission to send out new letters retracting the implied threat, and he prohibited publication of Wildmon's list. Said Penn: "It is clear that something has occurred in the marketplace. A deprivation of a First Amendment right, that is, a prior restraint on speech, a right so precious in this nation, constitutes irreparable injury." Playboy has even managed to retain its trademark smoking-jacket smirk: it put out a call to female employees of 7-Eleven stores for a December pictorial titled -- What else? -- "Women of 7-Eleven."

The findings of presidential commissions are often a kind of mirror of the public sensibility at the time -- one reason, perhaps, that the latest porn report is so different from the 1970 one. The Supreme Court, too, reads the papers and looks at election returns. The tenor of the decision allowing a state to outlaw sodomy among homosexuals is an echo of cultural conservatism, a statement that is in tune with the times. Notes Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy: "The law is now catching up with the rightward swing politically and culturally."

What is disquieting about the decision for many constitutional scholars is that it could unravel the evolving constitutional right of privacy, the $ court's creation of a realm of personal life that the state cannot enter. This concept of privacy has been enshrined during the past two decades in decisions such as those allowing the use of contraceptives and asserting a woman's right to have an abortion. "What's frightening," says Kennedy, "is that if what (Justice Byron) White's decision says is true, the history of these other decisions is in trouble." The principle of liberty, wrote Justice Harry Blackmun in his dissent, includes intimate associations and private conduct central to one's fulfillment as a person, and those include sexual activity. Some scholars, however, like Stanford Law Professor Thomas Grey, have maintained that the court has never given support to the notion that the right of privacy protects sexual freedom.

Justice White's invocation of the "ancient roots" proscribing homosexuality is not unlike the Meese commission's homage to family values. But there is a kind of fallacy in resorting to the presumed wisdom of the ancients. Slavery has ancient roots. So too did laws forbidding marriage between people of different races. Says Kennedy: "The court makes ancient roots into something which we, ipso facto, should pay deference. We should critically see if these practices are complementary with a just society."

Many conservatives saw the sodomy decision as a laudable attempt to adhere to a strict interpretation of the Constitution rather than read into it new rights that are more suitably left to the discretion of elected legislatures. Whether or not they favor laws restricting homosexual activities, they argue that there is nothing in the Constitution that specifically prohibits such laws. Religious-rights activists went even further, saying that the decision was a clear statement about the "unnaturalness" of homosexuality.

If Jerry Falwell had a divine plan for America, then the Supreme Court's sodomy decision and the Meese report would both be on his drawing board. Falwell views these two events as the trophies of the New Right's gradual rise to power. "The new moralism in this country," he says, "has been growing for the past two decades. The awakening is manifesting itself in the change in the national life-style." Falwell sees the court's decision as a kind of last-straw vote, a moral denunciation of Sodom. "It was a clarion call that enough is enough." Enough is much too much in the case of pornography: "We recognize the existence of pornography and the impossibility of stamping it all out. But we do want to push it back to Sleaze Town to live amongst the roaches where it belongs."

Pat Robertson, head of the Christian Broadcasting Network and the favorite son among evangelical Christians for the Republican nomination in 1988, envisions a moral resurgence in America. "I see a definite spiritual revival that is touching the standards of conduct of the entire society, which has gone too far toward sexual freedom . . . Americans perceive a serious crisis to the long-range stability of the American family. The American people are looking for a return to moral values that strengthen the family." The theme is not just limited to the preachers of the right. Jesse Jackson, for one, has spoken out against "sex without love," arguing that teenage pregnancy is blighting the next generation of blacks.

Falwell sees Reagan as both a cause and an effect of the conservative moral movement. "The country is moving politically to the right, and Ronald Reagan is a product of that phenomenon. He has been produced by it and has contributed to it." Reagan marches to his own drummer, but he also manages to be in step with the parade. "The trick," says Deputy White House Chief of Staff Dennis Thomas, "is to be far enough ahead to be a leader, but not so far that you're out of touch."

Though he has never departed from his ideological passions, Reagan has proved to be consistently pragmatic about avoiding crusades that could forfeit his popular support. He has long preached family values but has not pushed any significant legislation advancing the conservative social agenda into law. He sends staunch messages of support to antiabortion rallies but never appears himself; he makes the right noises about school prayer but does not press for a constitutional amendment to legalize it.

Reagan's greatest contribution to the conservative moral agenda has been through his appointments to the federal judiciary. So far, however, he has had only mixed success with the Supreme Court. Although the high court has recently shown a willingness to be more restrictive in its interpretation of free speech and privacy rights, it is still at least one vote away from reversing its 1973 abortion decision.

White House Communications Director Patrick Buchanan predicts a new, more vigorous incarnation for social conservatives. "The right-to-life movement is as strong or stronger than ever. The number of gay-rights marchers at various demonstrations has been a fraction of their old strength. The Christians are taking over the Republican Party in Missouri, Washington and Michigan."

One of the most active groups of antipornography crusaders is Wildmon's National Federation for Decency, which grew from its Tupelo headquarters to encompass 350 chapters nationwide. Leslie and Ronald Pasquini run the chapter in Springfield, Mass., which coordinates efforts in New England. It claims 1,000 members and has staged pickets at 30 adult-magazine outlets in the region. The group's relentless pressure on the Rhode Island-based CVS drugstore chain, along with the commission letter, apparently bore fruit last month: the company announced it was removing Playboy and Penthouse from its 600 shops.

A similar organization, the Dallas-based American Renewal Foundation, distributes window decals for store owners to proclaim their refusal to sell porn. The group is currently threatening to boycott Circle K convenience stores, whose chairman has thus far withstood pressure to remove offending magazines. Another chain that has resisted is Dairy Mart convenience stores, with 950 outlets in the East and Midwest. Following a boycott organized by an affiliate of the N.F.D. in April, Dairy Mart conducted a survey of its patrons in four states, asking whether it should stock magazines like Playboy. The result: 55% said yes, 35% no, and the rest had no opinion.

Frank Herrera, president of ICD/ Hearst, which distributes 120 magazines ranging from Cosmopolitan to Popular Mechanics, says distributors are under growing pressure from Fundamentalist groups. "We're extremely sensitive," he says, "because of the apparent success of the Wildmons and Falwells in putting their own definition on pornography." One recent confrontation took place in Tyler, Texas, where a city ordinance bans nudity below the navel. Local marshals warned stores in the city that the July issue of Cosmopolitan had to be taken off the shelf because of an article showing tummy-tucking operations for chubby women; the local district attorney stepped in, however, and told the marshals that the law did not apply in this case.

The antipornography movement has some close cousins. One prominent grass- roots movement is the Parents Music Resource Center, led by Tipper Gore, the wife of Democratic Senator Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee. The P.M.R.C., through well-publicized hearings and letter-writing campaigns, has succeeded in persuading record companies voluntarily to identify recordings with explicit lyrics. Says Gore: "This is where the action is these days. I think it's very exciting what's happening all over the country. People in the communities are reawakening and reaffirming their commitment to values."

In Iowa, militant moralism is making its way into the mainstream after a group of evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians seized control of the Polk County Republican convention. Iowa Governor Terry Branstad penciled in child- porn laws as one of his top legislative priorities for 1986. The legislature responded by passing a bill that makes it a crime to purchase child porn. The trickle-down theory of antiporn was in evidence when a planned fund-raising softball game south of Des Moines, featuring a group of Playboy Bunnies and Rabbits, was canceled after phone calls to the local athletic booster club protested that the game would be promoting pornography.

In Kansas, the legislature passed a law that makes retailers of pornography responsible for the content of what they sell. The legislature also expanded a law prohibiting "sexual exploitation of a child" (previously defined as under 16, now under 18) and outlawed possession of "kiddie porn" materials. Another measure this year banned vibrators, artificial vaginas and any device primarily used for the "stimulation of human genital organs."

The clean-living capital of the antipornography crusade might be Cincinnati, where Charles Keating Jr. began a moral crusade in the 1950s that residents have carried on ever since. Arthur Ney, the county prosecutor, says, "There is not one X-rated movie house or bookstore in the county today. They know if they bring them in here, we're going to enforce the law." The Meese commission report, says Steve Hallman, director of Citizens Concerned for Community Values of Greater Cincinnati, "will give momentum nationwide to obscenity-law enforcement."

In the tiny town of Belgrade, Mont., a legislative committee was formed to ban pornographic materials inside the city limits. It so happens that there are no adult bookstores in Belgrade (pop. 3,200); the city elders just want to make sure that it's kept that way.

Campaigns against pornography are not being orchestrated solely by conservative Republicans from the heartland. Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn, a populist Democrat in the cradle of liberty, has been trying to clean up the city's "combat zone," which was officially designated an adult-entertainment area in 1974.

Opposition to government intervention in individual lives has always been a pillar of conservative thought. In the 1960s and '70s, while liberals agitated for federal intervention on civil rights and the Viet Nam War, conservatives felt smothered by a leftist tyranny of activism. The roles have now reversed. As the New Right presses its case against pornography and homosexual activities, liberals argue that this amounts to unwarranted government intrusiveness into the homes of private citizens. There are, of course, distinctions among the issues, yet the sea change reveals the inherent contradictions in the way Americans feel about Government. As Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish Nobel laureate, once pointed out, Americans will say, practically in the same breath, "No one can tell me what to do" and "There ought to be a law against that."

For Republicans, the moral revival has been a distinct political blessing. But it could turn into a risky one. "Morality is a very dangerous issue for the Republican Party," says William Schneider, a political analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "Religion is to Republicans what race is to Democrats. Religion could tear the G.O.P. apart in the next election." Tony Podesta, executive director of People for the American Way, which was formed as a foil to Falwell's Moral Majority, says that Republicans are in danger of becoming dominated by a narrow segment of the ideologi- cal spectrum. "In many places," he says, "the Republican Party machine thought it would be good to broaden their base and ended up getting swallowed up by the religious-right movement."

Both Democrats and Republicans are jealously eyeing the votes of baby boomers, who do not, as a rule, share all the values or the goals of the religious right. "The key word for 1988 is tolerance," insists Republican Strategist Roger Stone. A fellow analyst of baby-boom voters, George Bush's strategist Lee Atwater says that whoever succeeds Reagan will have to emulate him: "Reagan won the baby-boom vote in 1984 because he projected tolerance. They did not think that Reagan would impose his personal views on them. A Republican can afford to be more conservative on social issues as long as he conveys the notion of tolerance."

Tolerance: a word seldom heard from those engaged in a crusade. But on issues like sexual freedom, those who ignore it do so at their peril. In every era when moral fervor held sway, a counterreaction began to build when the community became intolerant of individual liberties. That is why the Meese commission, even while helping to foment a more repressive stance toward pornography, made a point of mentioning that tolerance for private choices must still be respected. Political and social leaders who carry their moral zeal too far are in danger of being left stranded when the pendulum swings the other way. And it always does.