 The ordinance has been the subject of a heated debate among feminists, many of whom are dubious both about the centrality of pornography’s role in the subordination of women and about the desirability of employing strategies of legal regulation in the pursuit of feminist goals (e.g., Hunter and Law 1985; Lacey 1998, 71–97; Cornell 2000; Strossen 1995). But the ordinance was significant, not least for reconceptualizing the question of pornography in the public arena in feminist terms: not as an issue about obscenity or public indecency, as it had hitherto tended to be viewed in legal and political contexts under the influence of moral conservatives, but as an issue about the civil rights of women. It also provided an influential definition of pornography that has featured prominently in many subsequent discussions. The ordinance defined “pornography” as a civil rights violation, as a systematic practice of sexual discrimination that violates women’s right to equality: