Word: avatars
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...other charge--selling or distributing obscene literature--the arguments are more straightforward. In their efforts to have Avatar's twelfth and thirteenth issues declared obscene, City authorities stand on better ground--at least their attack conforms to legal procedure...
Admittedly, the two issues of Avatar contain large heaps of four-letter words; used gratuitously like punctuation marks; stuck coherently together in crude metaphoric diatribes against Cambridge officials; strikingly isolated in a center fold...
...material in Avatar, the newspaper being taken as a whole, consists mainly of indignant satire on issues like Vietnam and military brutality during the Washington March; commentary on radical activities ranging from the Draft Resistance to the San Francisco Mime Troupe; and love-truth (LOVE-TRUTH) chants by hippy philosopher-poets...
Judged by Supreme Court tests these issues of Avatar are not obscene. Whether the lower courts will apply those tests is another question. In the recent Boston trial Judge Elijah Adlow denounced "the casuistry of the higher courts"' in obscuring the definition of obscenity. On the basis of a single article Adlow declared Avatar obscene. To ask him to read the entire issue, he joked lamely, would be "cruel and abusive punishment." The problem of determining contemporary community standards didn't puzzle the Judge at all, simply because he didn't even consider it. "I consider myself a broad-minded...
...hope Judge Adlow is an exception. In the forthcoming trials the courts should expose the inexcusable and illegal manipulation of Avatar's permit; they should strike down the dangerous city ordinance which made that manipulation possible. And they should recognize the obvious "socially redeeming values" of Avatar...