Political leaders and civil liberties supporters are divided over a proposed Massachusetts bill which would allow rape and assault victims to sue the publishers and distributors of pornography.

According to Massachusetts House Bill No. 5194, "It shall be sex discrimination to produce, sell, exhibit, or distribute pornography." Sex discrimination is illegal and can be the basis of civil suits.

Supporters of the bill said that it is a necessary response to a trend of increasing violence against women.

"The Women's Legislative Caucus feels that much of the pornography that is printed and spread about has led to a lot of the abuse of women," said Rep. Mary Jeanette Murray (R-Cohasset, Hingham and Hull), a co-sponsor of the bill. "This is our major push to stop it."

But civil rights groups said the bill is a justification for censorship. "It's not a civil rights bill. It's a censorship bill," said Karen Hudner, lobbyist for the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

The bill may infringe on first amendment rights because its definition of pornography goes beyond the Supreme Court's previous rulings on "obscene" material.

The current Massachusetts bill is the latest in a series of anti-pornography bills initiated by University of Michigan Law Professor Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, a feminist writer.

MacKinnon and Dworkin co-authored anti-pornography city ordinances in Indianapolis and Minneapolis, which were ruled unconstitutional or repealed by local officials.

A similar MacKinnon-Dworkin bill was defeated in a 1985 Cambridge referendum.

The current law differs from the Cambridge bill because it only applies to visual images, not literature, said Nancy M. Ryan, executive director of the Cambridge Women's Commission.

Ryan said the law still has fundamental flaws.

"The law was very, very general and still is," she said. "It talks about images of women being degraded without any real explanation of what that is."

The Women's Commission opposed the Cambridge bill because of the unclear definition of pornography and the "chilling effect" of the trafficking provision, Ryan said.

"The courts would have been able to decide what is or is not able to be seen or read," she said. "Bookstores and video stores would start censoring themselves in order to prevent being dragged into court."

Although the Cambridge Women's Commission has no formal position on the current bill, Ryan said she disliked the bill's name.