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AMERICAN BOOKSELLERS ASS'N, INC. v. HUDNUT 771 F.2d 323 (7th Cir. 1985), affd, 475 U.S. 1001 (1986) EASTERBROOK, CircuitJudge. Indianapolis enacted an ordinance defining "pornography" as a practice that discriminates against women. "Pornography" is to be redressed through the administrative and judicial methods used for other discrimination. The City's definition of "pornography " is considerably different from "obscenity," which the Supreme Court has held is not protected by the First Amendment. [In Millerv. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), the Supreme Court held that for a publication to be obscene, it must, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest, must contain patently offensive depictions or descriptions of specified sexual conduct, and have no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Offensiveness is to be assessed under prevailing community standards. Ed.]. "Pornography" under the ordinance is "the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women, whether in pictures or in words, that also includes one or more of the following: (1) Women are presented as sexual objects who enjoy pain or humiliation; or (2) Women are presented as sexual objects who experience sexual pleasure in being raped; or (3) Women are presented as sexual objects tied up or cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically hurt, or as dismembered or truncated or fragmented or severed into body parts; or (4) Women are presented as being penetrated by objects or animals; or (5) Women are presented in scenarios of degradation, injury, abasement, torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual; or (6) Women are presented as sexual objects for domination, conquest, violation, exploitation, possession, or use, or through postures or positions ofservility or submission or display." Indianapolis Code §16-3(q). The statute provides that the "use of men, children, or transsexuals in the place of women in paragraphs (1) through (6) above shall also constitute pornography under this section." The ordinance as passed in April 1984 defined "sexually explicit" to mean actual or simulated intercourse or the uncovered exhibition of the genitals, buttocks or anus. An amendment inJune 1984 deleted this provision, leaving the term undefined. 104 Copyrighted Material American Booksellers Ass'n, Inc. v. Hudnut I 105 The Indianapolis ordinance does not refer to the prurient interest, to offensiveness , or to the standards of the community. It demands attention to particular depictions , not to the workjudged as a whole. It is irrelevant under the ordinance whether the work has literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. The City and many amici point to these omissions as virtues. They maintain that pornography influences attitudes , and the statute is a way to alter the socialization of men and women rather than to vindicate community standards ofoffensiveness. And as one of the principal drafters of the ordinance has asserted, "if a woman is subjected, why should it matter that the work has other value?" Catharine A. MacKinnon, Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech, 20 Harv. Civ. Rts.-Civ. Lib. L. Rev. 1, 21 (1985). Civil rights groups and feminists have entered this case as amici on both sides. Those supporting the ordinance say that it will play an important role in reducing the tendency of men to view women as sexual objects, a tendency that leads to both unacceptable attitudes and discrimination in the workplace and violence away from it. Those opposing the ordinance point out that much radical feminist literature is explicit and depicts women in ways forbidden by the ordinance and that the ordinance would reopen old battles. It is unclear how Indianapolis would treat works from James joyce's Ulysses to Homer's Iliad; both depict women as submissive objects for conquest and domination. We do not try to balance the arguments for and against an ordinance such as this. The ordinance discriminates on the ground of the content of the speech. Speech treating women in the approved way-in sexual encounters "premised on equality" (MacKinnon , supra, at 22)-is lawful no matter how sexually explicit. Speech treating women in the disapproved way-as submissive in matters sexual or as enjoying humiliation-is unlawful no matter how significant the literary, artistic, or political qualities of the work taken as a whole. The state may not ordain preferred viewpoints in this way. The Constitution forbids the state to declare one perspective right and silence opponents. The ordinance contains four prohibitions. People may not "traffic" in pornography , "coerce" others into performing in pornographic works, or "force" pornography on anyone. Anyone...

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