Word: porn
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...take in Southern California. San ; Diego's $140 million Horton Plaza shopping center, a manic postmodern pastiche, has been successful since it opened in 1985. But across the street, the spruced-up Gaslamp Quarter -- 16 blocks of eclectic Victoriana, until recently occupied mainly by bums, hookers and porn shops -- is still a gentrification wanna...
Since 1980 movie theaters specializing in pornographic fare have been shuttering -- down to about 250 from 700. But porn video is booming. It now accounts for $1 billion in rentals and sales. Indeed, most porn "movies" today are not films but tapes made directly for the bedroom market. From this view, the Reagan counterrevolution in morality looks to be a roaring success: sex is back in the home, where it belongs. The twist is that...
...actionable obscenity. To be declared obscene, a work must "appeal to prurient interest," be "patently offensive" and have no "serious artistic, literary, political or scientific value when taken as a whole." If only through the vague wording of that definition, the Justices have helped slow government involvement in the porn-busting business, which hardly means the case is closed. As Editorialist Phil Kerby once quipped, "Censorship is the strongest drive in human nature. Sex is a weak second." Some Fundamentalists have focused their sects' drive on getting Playboy and Penthouse removed from the shelves of 7- Eleven stores. Pressure groups...
...porn? What harm does it do? According to the moral right wing, lots. "Erotic material is addictive, like drugs or alcohol," says Paul McGeady, general counsel for the watchdog lobby Morality in Media. "A husband says he wants to see what all this is about and buys a porn videocassette. But he is not satisfied with one that shows ordinary intercourse. Then he fantasizes that he is doing what he sees on the tape. Finally, he turns to his wife and wants to act out kinky sex. She says, 'Get lost!,' and the marriage breaks up." Nor is porn...
Press: After a flurry of cases, the number of libel suits drops off, perhaps because so often no one really comes out a winner. Religion: Some powerful critics want to build more flexibility into the wall of strict church-state separation. Cinema: Turn-on porn films wind up in the bedroom; censors still want to turn them...