In 1983, the Minneapolis city council passed a civil rights ordinance that applied legal restrictions to the production and distribution of pornography. Feminist activists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon, who authored the ordinance, argued that pornography violates the civil rights of women and should be banned because it

is a systematic practice of exploitation and subordination based on sex that differentially harms and disadvantages women. The harm of pornography includes dehumanization, psychic assault, sexual exploitation, forced sex, forced prostitution, physical injury, and social and sexual terrorism and inferiority presented as entertainment.

Because pornography has been linked to the incidence of rape and sexual assault, contend Dworkin and MacKinnon, it is a form of sex discrimination that must be abolished if women are to achieve equality.

Although the ordinance has had little impact on the pornography industry—in each city...