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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 Playboy, joined by the Magazine Publishers Association, went to court to have the letter rescinded and prevent publication of what it called a blacklist.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."