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U.S. Senator from Kentucky
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The Pornography Victims Compensation Act of 1991 was a bill, S. 983, [1] in the U.S. Congress. The sponsor in the Senate was Senator Mitch McConnell [2] with eight cosponsors. [1] A Senate committee held hearings on the bill. [1] [3] The bill was not voted on, did not pass, and did not become law.
Under the bill, a person who was attacked after the attacker was substantially spurred by pornography could have been able to sue the pornography's producers, publishers, distributors, exhibitors, and sellers without needing a prior criminal charge against the pornography itself. [2] [4] It was written not to prohibit any publication, but to hold liable for certain consequences, according to McConnell. [2] For political pragmatism, the bill was limited to child pornography and obscene material, that being already unprotected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. [2] [5]
As part of the rationale for passage, McConnell argued "that crime is fostered by a culture in which the sexual degradation, abuse, and murder of women and children are a form of entertainment", that "[t]he connection between the amount of violent entertainment and the amount of real-life violence is no longer seriously doubted among social scientists," that "more than one million children from six months to sixteen years old are sexually molested and then filmed or photographed", and that "[p]ornography is fueling violence in this country". [6]
The formal title varied by year, as listed in the History section, below.
Informally, it was known as the Bundy Bill, after serial murderer Ted Bundy, who attributed his killings partly to porn. [5] [7] [8]
The bill or versions of it had been under congressional consideration for several years prior. Earlier versions reached a wider range of pornography [2] but had less support; narrowing that range to what was unprotected by Supreme Court decisions on the First Amendment led to wider support.
Other versions, searched for as introduced from approximately 1973 to part of 2010, included these:
Support came from Feminists Fighting Pornography and 200 National Organization for Women (NOW) chapters, but not two in New York and California [5] and not from the national level of NOW. [7] Support simultaneously came from Christian fundamentalists. [7]
Opponents included Feminists for Free Expression, Nadine Strossen, Betty Friedan, Marcia Pally, Adrienne Rich, Katha Pollitt, Karen DeCrow, Nora Ephron, Mary Gordon, Judy Blume, Jamaica Kincaid, Erica Jong, Susan Isaacs, Mary Morello, and "172 other feminist women". [23]
Supporters, according to Sen. McConnell, included the Family Research Council, Feminists Fighting Pornography, the American Family Association, victims rights groups, and some chapters of the National Organization for Women. [24] The opposition included an editorial in The New York Times. [25]
Criticisms came from more than one direction: that the bill would punish a wide range of nonpornographic movies because criminals were inspired by them, [2] that it would lead to bans of feminist positive literature about women, [2] that booksellers would be timid about many titles that weren't obscene but just generally controversial, [5] that scientists hadn't established a firm link between porn and misbehavior, [5] [7] that criminals should be held responsible for their actions rather than third parties being held liable, [5] [7] that similar legislation against bars because subsequent drunken driving led to accidents had not been tested against major beer producers, [5] that using civil procedure rather than criminal to test if material is obscene when the standard of proof is lower in civil cases would make finding it obscene more likely, [7] that juries seeing an attacked woman as a victim would be likelier to judge that material was obscene, [7] that obscenity being defined by community standards and retailers' skittishness meant that the strictest community would be the standard-bearer for the nation, [7] and that it didn't encompass all the pornography that feminists found violated women's civil rights. [5]
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