Word: antismut
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...Hollywood flaunts all sorts of sex shows, with total nudity advertised on every block to the point of total boredom, and factory-like publishing firms flooding the rest of the country with glossy porno magazines and books. In a whirlwind campaign of only 17 days, sponsors of an antismut initiative gathered some 535,000 signatures. On Nov. 7, Californians will either vote into law or reject what, in the words of its backers, is the "most specific obscenity law ever devised...
Behind the recommendations lay the belief that enforcement of antismut laws is impossible, time-wasting, and a "threat to the free communication of ideas among Americans." Only a minority of Americans, said the commission members, favor censorship; a majority cherish the right to decide individually what books to read and what films...
...Dodd's Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency prepared to summon commission members for some sharp questioning about the panel's mandate. In the opinion of some angry Congressmen, the investigators had ignored their assigned tasks of defining obscenity and pornography, determining its effect on children, and proposing federal antismut laws. Other Congressmen began filling the hopper with the restrictive bills that had been held up awaiting completion of the panel's work. Already reported by the House Judiciary Committee: an Administration bill to ban use of the mails for delivery of unsolicited smut. Whatever the merits...
Part of the widespread resentment against the liberal Warren Court is based on its decision striking down various forms of censorship. The Citizens for Decent Literature, biggest of a number of antismut organizations that have sprung up around the country, has pledged itself to appear on the prosecution side in every pornography case that comes before the Supreme Court. At present, no fewer than 135 anti-pornography bills are under study by the House Judiciary Committee. Last year Lyndon Johnson appointed leading educators, sociologists, psychologists and lawyers to a presidential commission on obscenity and pornography. Its interim report...
Whether or not Klor's films were really obscene, said the court, the California antismut law does not forbid "mere preparation of obscene materials." Instead, it penalizes "dissemination or intended dissemination." Not only had the prosecution failed to prove that Klor intended to distribute his unedited films in their allegedly obscene form, but worse, said the State Supreme Court, the trial judge had misconstrued the law and wrongly "communicated to the jury the idea that it need not find 'an intention to distribute' if it concluded that defendant had prepared the materials...