TL Start Date
Thursday, May 1, 1986
TL End Date
Thursday, May 1, 1986
TL Display Date
1986
TL Text
Reagan’s Attorney General, Edwin Meese, calls together a commission on pornography. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, who called for a ban on all porn on the grounds that it harmed women, join the committee as does James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family and Father Bruce Ritter of Covenant House. The Meese Committee ignores research and finds the reverse of the Williams Committee. That same year, the Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, did a scientific investigation of the effects of porn. Report of the Surgeon General’s Workshop on Pornography and Public Health did not find wide circulation, perhaps the government did not want the results seen It found that the effects were “unknown.”
TL Background Image
