Regents of the University System of Maryland say they can’t comply with a legislative order that requires public universities to submit policies regulating the showing of pornographic films on campuses, The Washington Post reported. The legislature wrote that requirement into the state budget last spring after an uproar over plans to show a pornographic film at the College Park campus. But a committee of the Board of Regents concluded today that any such policy would be legally indefensible and impossible to enforce.
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7 Responses to Maryland Regents Say They Can’t Regulate Porn, Despite Legislative Order
john_d_foubert_phd - November 12, 2009 at 8:25 am
Legally indefensible and impossible to enforce. Baloney. With the “impossible to enforce” logic I guess we just let anything happen on college campuses, why worry about cocaine use behind closed doors, prostitution, or kidnapping. Oh, but those are all things associated with the pornography industry actually — women in the industry often get hooked on drugs to dull the pain, are prostituted in addition to appearing in movies, and are frequently kidnapped from other contries and sex trafficked into the U.S., we are the #2 destination for sex trafficked women in the world after all.As someone who has worked tirelessly to end rape on college campuses for nearly two decades, and a Ph.D. alum of the University of Maryland, College Park, it baffles me how Maryland can justify abdicating its moral and ethical responsibility in this situation. For all of its work for social justice in the past, this is an epic failure — and research shows it will lead to more rape. For example, Carr & VanDeusen (2004) found that men who use pornography are more likely to commit rape than men who don’t. In addition, 33 experimental studies show that exposure to pornography causes aggressive behavior (Malamuth, Addison & Koss, 2000). Furthermore, pornography has been shown to lead to a 22% increase in the risk of committing sexual assault (Oddone-Paolucci, Genuis, & Violato, 2000). What seems more legally indefensible to me is Maryland’s abdication of its responsibility to deal with the pornography issue and its connection to sexual assault. How does Maryland plan to deal with a student who sees a now sanctioned porn movie on its campus and then goes out and commits rape? It seems to me they are now much more legally defenseless on that end now than before. It is deeply disappointing to see a system that often has so much integrity to behave as moral cowards. Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t easy. Sometimes being a leader means doing the right thing even when it is difficult. I thought Maryland understood that.
tridaddy - November 12, 2009 at 8:48 am
I’m with Foubert. This is not some sort of First Amendment issue. Get a grip, what one views can typically never be erased from the mental memory bank. It seems that anything goes on campuses today, there is no restraint and not setting healthy boundaries. Why do universities have alcohol and substance abuse programs in full swing? Becasue the use and resulting behavior is destructive. Can’t these “leaders” (used loosely) see the same type of destructive behaviors based on antedotal and empirical evidence when it comes to porngraphy? Or do they have their heads in the sand on this one?????
thescriptsthething - November 12, 2009 at 11:41 am
I tend to be a free speech and academic freedom advocate. The connection between porn and rape is vexed at best, many recent studies and empirical evidence tend to contradict the studies you quote (see for instance the recent article, “More Porn Means Less Rape” http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-14795-SLO-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m7d4-More-porn-means-less-rape) As a student in the ’70s I remember fundraisers at various colleges where the bait was a showing of the newly sensational “Deep Throat,” and I don’t recall any reports of violence as a consequence.Further, where do you draw the line, and who draws it? Forbid students from viewing erotic ancient Athenian pottery, as happened in Boston area colleges for years? I guess Aubrey Beardsley and Giulio Romano would definitely be on the verboten list. And I guess we should forbid the teaching of Henry Miller? Anais Nin? Parts of the Old Testament, perhaps–all that hot nastiness with Lot and his daughters? Definitely can’t have them reading Japanese literary giant Haruki Murakami. Unless you consider the fact that, for example, the Japanese can handle explicit erotica from their top novelists, along with the most violent pornography on the planet, and still have a tiny fraction of the rate of rape in the United States.
bekka_alice - November 12, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I tend to be against censorship, and the porn/rape link is still in debate (though I’d note to #3, as a person with an extensive background in this culture, that it is the *reported rate* of rape that is provably lower in Japan vs. any proof that the rate of rape itself is lower), but I do find the idea that the university can not legally regulate what is shown on campus (at least in any “official” capacity or function space) unlikely. More likely to cause long-term difficulty is that the line between offensive and inoffensive sexual reference is different for every person, and this could lead to an immense committee-written tome on regulations for showings on campus.
cwinton - November 12, 2009 at 12:31 pm
The quandry is best illustrated by Justice Potter Stewart’s admission he couldn’t define obscenity, but stated “I know it when I see it.” My sympathies are with the regents, but it would appear to me they could just go with a simple policy using the movie ratings system to limit showings to films not rated X or adult.
allens - November 12, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Just as a public university can’t limit what student groups exist, and thus can’t really limit what views are expressed, I can’t see any reason that they would be able to limit what films are shown (or should they be able to limit what a campus group can discuss among themselves?). This isn’t a private university, it’s an agency of government.
john_d_foubert_phd - November 12, 2009 at 1:24 pm
To “thescriptsthething.” An article in a local newspaper does not qualify as “a recent study and empirical evidence.” 50 experimental studies and several meta analyses establish the causal relationship between porn and rape. This is not a question scientifically. In addition, last month Hald, Malamuth & Yuen (2009) published a meta analysis confirming the association between men’s pornography assumption and their attitudes toward violence against women. When today’s porn movie producers are interviewed, they brag about how much they are pushing the envelope, how women are forced to vomit in their movies, the violence perpetrated against them in so many ways that I won’t go into on this site as it would not be appropriate. That the Regents refuse to stand up to this violence against women is an abdication of their responsibility to promote a safe environment on the college campuses of Maryland. By their action not to create the policy they were asked to create, they permit the feeding of a culture of rape to continue. And the blood of suffereing women in the porn industry and the rape of women on Maryland’s college campuses that will result from this is on their hands.