Review by Kenneth Aaron Betsalel of the book The New Politics of Pornography (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990, 266 p.).

How government ought to respond to the problems posed by pornograhy has been a policy dilemma that has long troubled liberal democratic societies. In The New Politics of Pornography, Donald Alexander Downs explores the contemporary antipornography movement in the and analyzes its origins and underlying political philosophies. Downs, who teaches political science at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, also examines the difficult choices facing public policy makers concerning the nature and limits (if any) of free speech and artistic expression.

Using official transcripts and extensive interviews with participants, Down carefully reconstructs the effort in Minneapolis and Indianapolis in the early 1980s to outlaw pornography through ordinances that defined pornography interalia as the sexual explicit subordination of women, graphically or in words. (p. 44) Although these ordinances would be found unconstitutional by the courts, the debate they stirred represented in Downs' words the most significant aspect of the anti-pornography movement in the 1980s. (p. xxii) (p. 79)

Downs concludes his study with a balanced and thoughtful discussion of what sort of First Amendment protection pornography ought to receive. Downs reasons that while those who govern should not forsake their responsibility to maintain a decent and well ordered society, the dangers of pornographic art are worth risking precisely because of the potential for pornographic art to teach us something about the complexity of our own human nature. (p. 182) (p. 80)