Less acceptable to the public was the proliferation of pornographic movies during the decade. Local communities protested: in February 1973 a court in Tennessee indicted the producers of the movie Deep Throat on obscenity charges. In addition, a New York judge a month later declared the movie to be "irredeemably obscene." These court cases hinged on the question of whether erotic material or pornography was by definition essentially obscene or whether obscenity was relative and dependent upon community standards. Most observers argued that obscenity was a matter of community opinion, but throughout the decade verdicts were delivered based on the argument that such material was fundamentally obscene, as in the 1977 judgment against Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.

Sex, American Style.

Despite such judgments erotic material extended into every medium of American culture. Indeed, during the 1970s the erotic/pornographic novel entered the publishing mainstream...