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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."