General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: RadFeminists are making it difficult for the Democratic party to fight the GOP's attack on women [View all]RainDog
(28,784 posts)the context you refer to seems to clearly indicate issues on this forum. maybe I'm wrong about that.
the current issues derive from this history of this movement - that's why I mention them because context is part of any issue.
the anti-porn movement did not succeed in its work to make pornography something that would allow women to sue others based upon a framework of a violation of civil rights - that's what the goal was. That was the reason for Dworkin's testimony to the Meese committee.
The Meese committee was formed during the Reagan administration. It was part of conservatism's attack on a right to privacy, which, btw, is also the basis for Roe v. Wade. The reason it was an attack on a right to privacy was b/c of a Supreme Court Ruling in 1969 that said the state could not punish someone for the possession of obscenity. After the SC ruling, Congress had a commission on pornography that criticized the Supreme Court ruling - Congress, LBJ and Reagan all rejected the ruling that protected obscenity possession as a right to privacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_v._Georgia
Griswold v. Connecticut was another right to privacy case that was settled 4 years before Stanley. It protected married couples to a right to privacy - no state could interfere with the use of birth control because sexuality was a right to privacy issue and the state could not compel a couple to engage in compulsory childbirth. Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) extended this right to privacy to non-married couples. Both of these Supreme Court decisions and the movement of the U.S. toward acceptance that sexuality is a matter or privacy, and not something the state may legislate, were crucial for Roe v. Wade. The history of these rulings set precedence for Lawrence v. Texas. Law is defended or opposed based upon precedence as well as constitutionality.
This is why this history matters.
It is the history of liberation of women and homosexuals - two groups whose sexuality, the state believed, was theirs to control.
The backlash to these rulings is still being argued today - so this history isn't exactly history, either.