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A book-banning campaign led by Focus on the Family, the personal conglomerate of Christian psychologist James Dobson, and Loyal Opposition, a cultural watchdog group headed by Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, has focused squarely on three collections of photographs by Jock Sturges. (See The Guide, January 1998.) An artist whose work hangs in major museums, Sturges has received international recognition for his black-and-white images of naturist families that include many pictures of minors in nonsexual nude poses. Widely available for a decade, Sturges's photos have only recently been discovered by the erotophobes of the theocratic Right.

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Beginning last summer, scores of carefully orchestrated protests demanding an end to the sale of "child porn" by Sturges and others have hit branches of the Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstore chains. Terry once encouraged grabbing Sturges's books in bookstores and ripping them to shreds. Now there's a more sophisticated approach: goading prosecutors to invoke existing laws or seeking new ones.

In Alabama, a 32-count indictment on kiddie porn-related charges was returned on February 6 against a Montgomery Barnes & Noble store for carrying Sturges's Radiant Identities and photographer David Hamilton's Age of Innocence. An additional three-count indictment cites a Birmingham bookstore for similar offenses. Alabama Attorney General William Holcomb Pryor, who is running for reelection, spearheaded the indictments.

In Franklin, Tennessee, the management of a Barnes & Noble store will be tried in May on the less serious accusation of "improperly displaying material harmful to minors"-- again, books by Sturges and Hamilton. Penny Byrd, manager of the Nashville-area outlet, reports being still under scrutiny. Accompanied by a police officer, John Oliver, of the Middle Tennessee Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, entered the store on March 5th and combed its gay and lesbian section on a fishing expedition for more smut.

Pittsburgh prosecutors have empaneled a grand jury to investigate allegations that a Borders outlet in suburban Bethel Park has violated state and federal law by carrying one book (now temporarily out of print), the 208-page, $60 coffee-table book Jock Sturges, produced by the Swiss art publisher Scalo.

Members of the Wichita-based Kansas Family Research Institute (KFRI, an offshoot of Focus on the Family) filed a legal petition on January 30 citing the Scalo book as child pornography. After the District Attorney had declined to prosecute, KFRI amassed 3400 signatures and took the matter to the state legislature. A special prosecutor then convened a grand jury to determine whether prosecution of Sedgwick County bookstores is warranted. "There is no constitutional protection for child abuse," insists KFRI's executive director David Payne. "When little girls are victimized by profiteers, we have an obligation to speak out.... [C]hild abuse can never be made lawful by the fact that it is artful."

Many prosecutors and DAs across the country, however, have agreed with the civil libertarians who insist that Sturges's work is constitutionally protected. In Metairie, Louisiana, no prosecutions appear to be forthcoming. Attempts by the Minnesota Family Council to target bookstores around the Twin Cities have also thus far failed. Prosecutors in Maryland, Ohio, and others states have determined that the books are well within the law. In Kentwood, Michigan, prosecutor William Forsyth declined to take action, saying "I do not believe that an argument can be made that any nudity of a child is, in and of itself, erotic."

But the KFRI still has a "fact sheet" describing the Scalo book as "a collection of nude children in suggestive and lascivious poses." Among other fictional claims, it alleges that a 1990 raid on Sturges's studio was precipitated when a photo developer spotting a slide that "showed Sturges engaging in sex with a girl about 15 years old." (No such photo is known to exist.) The South Carolina Family Alliance, meanwhile, has produced a statistical analysis of Radiant Identities that offers such "proof" of depravity as "20 percent of the [Sturges] photos containing nudity have homosexual and lesbian connotations among children."

In Nebraska, the Sturges campaign has prompted Christian activist Donna Bockoven to lead efforts to revamp state obscenity law to cast a wider net. In Colorado, where prosecutors chose not to move against stores that stock the Sturges books (but not before a Barnes & Noble manager was briefly taken into custody), Representative Marilyn Musgrave and State Senator Ken Arnold are sponsoring legislation to prohibit the Sturges material and anything resembling it. The bills would expand existing Colorado statutes to criminalize "lascivious exhibition" of a minor's breasts or genitals.

To these legislators, any depiction of a naked teenager or child is a "lascivious exhibition." Interviewed by AP reporter Judith Kohler, Arnold dismissed the idea that Sturges's photography is art. He recalled a visit to the Louvre where "I can't remember seeing any naked prepubescent children."

Meanwhile, UPI reports that Congress has awarded $10 million to expand "Operation Innocent Images," an obscure Maryland-based FBI unit that is investigating the work of professional photographers who use nude child models. **

Editor's Note: From The Guide, April 1998