In 1969, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Stanley v. Georgia that people could view whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes. In response, the United States Congress funded the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, set up by President Lyndon B. Johnson to study pornography.

Aims

The Commission was established to study and report on:

Composition

Initially, the Commission consisted of Edward E. Elson, Thomas D. Gill, Edward D. Greenwood, Reverend Morton A. Hill, S.J., G. William Jones, Joseph T. Klapper, Otto N. Larsen, Rabbi Irving Lehrman, Freeman Lewis, Reverend Winfrey C. Link, Morris A. Lipton, William B. Lockhart (chair), Thomas C. Lynch, Barbara Scott, Cathryn A. Speits, Frederick Herbert Wagman, Kenneth Keating and Marvin Wolfgang. Subsequently, K. Keating was replaced with Charles Keating, Jr, by President Richard Nixon. Wm. Cody Wilson served as Executive Director of the Commission, directing both surveys of existing research and original empirical esearch on the subject.

Studies undertaken

The Commission commissioned Berl Kutchinsky to perform a scientific study on the subject. His report, titled Studies on Pornography and Sex Crimes in Denmark (1970), found that legalizing pornography in Denmark had not (as had been expected) resulted in an increase of sex crimes.

Findings

The Commission's report, called Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, and published in 1970, recommended sex education, funding of research into the effects of pornography and restriction of children's access to pornography, and recommended against any restrictions for adults. On balance the report found that obscenity and pornography were not important social problems, that there was no evidence that exposure to such material was harmful to individuals, and that current legal and policy initiatives were more likely to create problems than solve them. The report was widely criticized and rejected by Congress. The Senate rejected the Commission's findings and recommendations by a 60–5 vote, with 34 abstentions. The Senate rejected the following findings and recommendations in particular: President Nixon, who had succeeded Johnson in 1969, also emphatically rejected the report.

Aftermath

In 1970, Earl Kemp published an illustrated edition of the Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography through a publishing company owned by William Hamling called Greenleaf Classics. The 1969 President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography issued its un-illustrated 656-page report on September 30, 1970. One month later, the report went on sale at the Government Printing Office. On November 11, 1970, copies of publisher William Hamling's Greenleaf Classics’ 352-page The Illustrated Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography were printed, and two weeks later, on Monday, December 13, 1970, went on sale throughout the U.S. for $12.50. Kemp and Hamling were eventually sentenced to prison for "conspiracy to mail obscene material," but both served only the federal minimum. Hamling received a four-year regular adult sentence. Earl Kemp received a sentence of three years and one day. The report as published by Greenleaf was not found to be obscene. Nonetheless, on the other hand the brochure was found to be clearly obscene by the jury. Of some note, Earl Kemp was in Europe at the time Hamling created and mailed the ad brochure.

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