ABSTRACT
The much-touted sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s not only freed various modes of sexual behavior from the constraints of social disapproval, but also made possible a flood of pornographic material. According to figures provided by WAVPM (Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media), the number of pornographic magazines available at newsstands has grown from zero in 1953 to forty in 1977, while sales of pornographic films in Los Angeles alone have grown from $15 million in 1969 to $85 million in 1976.1
Traditionally pornography was condemned as immoral because it presented sexually explicit material in a manner designed to appeal to “prurient interests” or a “morbid” interest in nudity and sexuality, material which furthermore lacked any redeeming social value and which exceeded “customary limits of candor.” While these phrases, taken from a definition of “obscenity” proposed in the 1954 American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code,2 require some criteria of application
to eliminate vagueness, it seems that what is objectionable is the explicit description or representation of bodily parts or sexual behavior for the purpose of inducing sexual stimulation or pleasure on the part of the reader or viewer. This kind of objection is part of a sexual ethic that subordinates sex to procreation and condemns all sexual interactions outside of legitimated marriage. It is this code which was the primary target of the sexual revolutionaries in the 1960s, and which has given way in many areas to more open standards of sexual behavior.
