Thumbs down to Dallas’s Southland Corporation for its cowardly decision to halt sales of Playboy magazine in its 7-Eleven stores nationwide. Southland cited a “growing public awareness and concern over a possible connection” between adult magazines and rape, violence toward women, and child abuse that has arisen from testimony in special hearings being conducted by the U.S. Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. Distasteful as pornography is to many people, we know of no compelling evidence linking adult magazines and sex crimes. Indeed, a member of the commission told D that no such “connection” has been substantiated by the group. Southland had chosen a wise middle course by selling the magazines only to adults and placing them behind sales counters. In appeasing a fundamentalist minority, Southland plays into the hands of those who would deny others freedom of choice.
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