Proposition 3, No

To the Editors of The Crimson:

On November 5, Cambridge voters will be asked to vote on Proposition 3. This proposition would put into effect a law that defines pornography as discrimination against women and permits anyone who feels damaged by it to sue in civil court. On a quick reading this might appeal to any of us who feel offended by pornography and who are horrified by the ever more graphic and violent images put forward by the multibillion dollar, and growing, pornography industry. However, if you read Proposition 3 more carefully, you will find its definition of pornography is excessively vague and open to idiosyncratic interpretations. Furthermore, it implicates in discriminatory practices anyone who engages in a wide variety of activities, including "trafficking" ("to produce, sell, exhibit, or distribute") and "forcing pornography on a person." What this means is that someone who chooses to interpret certain words or images put forward in books, magazines, pictures, or speech as "the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women..." could sue anyone who creates, presents, publishes or sells the material. At this time of increasing vigilantism, any of us who in our teaching or in informal discussions or conversations refer to matters of sex or sexuality, be it in respect to art, literature, philosophy, or the social or natural sciences, could be sued for "forcing pornography on" people or as "trafficking" in it. The definition of pornography in the ordinance is sufficiently broad to cover any of the better sex education materials as well as much literature, art, and scholarship.

The proposed ordinance has already been defeated by voters in Los Angeles and Suffolk County, N.Y. and declared unconstitutional in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals following its passage in Indianapolis. Furthermore, if Proposition 3 passes, the City of Cambridge will inevitably be sued over the constitutionality of the ordinance and will have to waste time and money defending an ordinance' which the members of the Cambridge City Council do not in fact support.

Although we strongly oppose the many ways in which women are demeaned in pornography (as well as by other kinds of public language, images, and actions), we urge Cambridge voters to vote no on Proposition 3. Ruth Hubbard   Professor of Biology   Susan R. Suleiman   Professor of Romance and   Comparative Literatures