(2 of 3)
Echoing Brennan. Some publishers and movie officials felt the decision might help force porn-hunting prosecutors to distinguish between purple movies and publications and those that are merely blue. The ruling, said Film Industry Spokesman Jack Valenti, had strengthened "the freedom of the film maker to tell an honest story without hard-core pornography." Others were less enthusiastic. Echoing Justice Brennan, Playboy Enterprises' Robert A. Gutwillig complained that Carnal Knowledge was "a pitching back to the case-by-case review. The court is saying we don't know what it [pornography] is, but we'll know it if we see it."
The court did indeed see hard-core porn in a companion case. As if to emphasize that they had not really gone soft on obscenity, the Justices upheld the conviction of William Hamling and five other defendants from the Los Angeles area for mailing some 55,000 copies of an advertisement for The Illustrated Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. The obscene ad included pictures "portraying heterosexual and homosexual intercourse, sodomy and a variety of deviate sexual acts."
Having been urged by the high bench to establish their own community standards, many states have been rewriting their obscenity laws—often to the distress of serious publishers and film makers. Last week Massachusetts enacted a law that will allow district attorneys to order arrests on pornography charges without a prior court ruling on whether the material involved was in fact obscene. Publishing executives worry that the mere threat of such arbitrary arrests will have a "chilling effect" on the industry.
In most places, however, a chill has yet to be felt. Contrary to the expectations of civil libertarians, smut peddlers and bluestockings alike, last year's tough anti-obscenity rulings have had relatively little effect. The first few months after the Miller decision did see a rash of hasslings, raids, busts and prosecutions in Los Angeles, Tulsa, New Orleans, Tampa, Montgomery, New York, Bangor, Detroit, Chicago, Kankakee and elsewhere. Books were quietly shelved in many libraries and even burned (32 copies of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five) in Drake, N. Dak. But, by and large, even smutty books and magazines still sold; the X-rated movies still showed. Says Barney Rossett, head of erotically oriented Grove Press: "Despite the fears, nothing much happened."
Why not? Beyond the legal confusion, some credit the failure of the porn crackdown to the quiet spread of a kind of laissez-faire attitude toward pornography below the level of judges and prosecutors. It may well be that both the Supreme Court and its critics have lagged behind the country. The national mood could be pointing to an uncensored future, envisioned by Justice Brennan, in which consenting adults will be free to decide for themselves what they will read and see.