Topsy-turvy.

TOPSY-TURVY

THE ATTACK on the report of the Pornography Commission continues. Its weapons are ridicule, and simulated fear. The ridicule centers on the idea of a dozen investigators traveling industriously through pornland taking notes; the fear is expressed in terms of taking from the people what is theirs through the patrimony of the First Amendment.

It is worth, I think, a moment or two to reflect on the inherent position of those who find the whole anti-porn venture so preposterous. What emerges is a contempt for those who accepted the commission--to investigate the volume of the porn industry and the reaches of its perversity, and to inquire whether that industry induces anti-social behavior--and a protective feeling toward the porn merchants.

Here is a nice example. Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times and Playboy, describing the investigative activities of the commission, came to an on-the-spot visit to "one of those establishments" in Houston that sell porn and otherwise cater to their customers in individual booths. "As everyone watched, a bullet-headed vice cop yanked open the door [of a booth] and announced in a loud voice, 'And here we have two men engaged in an act of oral copulation!' The men looked up in astonishment at the 11 commissioners."

Scheer's comment: ". . . What business was it of a U.S. Commission on Pornography to get down and dirty into the pathetic attempts of some of this world's most forlorn, desperate, and lonely inhabitants to find a few moments of whatever brings them as close to joy as they will get? These were two human beings!"

It apparently does not occur to the critics that precisely it is a concern for human beings that animates those who worry about the volume of porn being manufactured. The scenw within the booth was a pretty clear expression of the three-dimensional facilities being provided by those pron merchants whose services extend beyond merely graphic displays of carnal activity. And the intellectual argument has to be rescued, that argument being that society has a stake in what appetites are being slaked and stimulated by the free market. The apparent rubric by which the critics are being guided is as simple as this: There is manifestly an appetite for porn. There are people willing to cater to this appetite. Why should not the willing buyer and the willing seller enter into conventional arrangements?

Surely the reason is that lust is an appetite that needs to be regulated. We live in a free society that, just to begin with, regulates that appetite by authorizing only a single marriage at one time. The mere assertion of the authority to do so distinguishes the attitude of society toward those appetites that it regards as bearing on civil relationships, from its attitude toward other appetites. If power is what you wish, you can work for it subject to the restraints of the market, namely democratic acquiescence. And even then, you are subject to certain denials in the exercise of power specified by the Bill of Rights.

GLUTTONY WOULD be an example of an appetite society adopts no legal position about. Cooking editors and food writers are free to cater to the obese in such a way as to tempt them to even greater obesity. The only sanction against obesity in our society is social: People are generally put off by overweight, which is why diets and diet books are also a major industry.

But a sophisticated society acknowledges that sex is often an unruly passion, and for that reason lust is stimulated with some sense of civil propriety. It is still illegal to wander naked down the streets: because modesty of a rudimentary kind is acknowledged to be a civil interest. Sex leads to the creation of what Mr. Scheer would call: "a human being!" A human being carelessly eventuating from booth-type sexual encounters is a heavy responsibility, ostensibly of the parents, actually of the state--abandoned children are properly provided for by the state.

What astonishes is that the porn merchants should suddenly find themselves the objects of concern of so many critics. Robert Scheer introduces one member of the commission as follows: ". . . Father Bruce Ritter [is] a Catholic priest committed to banishing porn from Times Square," going on to quote Father Ritter as opposed to porn for religious, not social-science, reasons. Scheer did not bother to say about Father Ritter that he has devoted himself to rescuing young girls and boys enticed to New York City to practice prostitution.

Why are we so concerned for the pornographers? Why don't they merit the contempt that, paradoxically, is harnessed now against those who profit from drugs? Isn't it more sensible to think of porn merchants as occupying territory nearer to the drug merchants, than to those who use the First Amendment to give us entertainment and learning?