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Yesterday's Artists, Today's Pornographers
A 1981 graduate of Marlboro College in Vermont, Jock Sturges holds an M.F.A. in Photography...
Save the Children! Burn Their Books!
A 1981 graduate of Marlboro College in Vermont, Jock Sturges holds an M.F.A. in Photography fro...

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In as many as 40 cities from coast to coast, Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores have recently been visited by angry protesters. In several cities (New York, Omaha, Denver, at least two locations in Oregon, both Kansas City and Independence, Missouri) demonstrators-- following the instructions of Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry-- have entered bookstores, seized books by the internationally acclaimed photographer Jock Sturges, and, applying a tactic that could have been cribbed from late Weimar Germany, torn the copies to pieces.

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In August, Terry himself destroyed a Sturges book at the Barnes & Noble flagship store at New York's Rockefeller Center. In Dallas, when 15 protesters who had just shredded several copies of Sturges's The Last Day of Summer refused to leave a Barnes & Noble store, four were arrested. In a statement issued jointly by the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression (NCFE), the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, and the National Coalition Against Censorship, the NCFE's David Mendoza compared this tactic to "Nazis burning books in the street" and called it "a crime against freedom and democracy." Terry and his followers say they are simply practicing civil disobedience aimed at ridding the world of child pornography.

Towards a frightening new millenium

Their efforts are not taking place in a vacuum. As 1997 empties into 1998, civil libertarians across the United States are witnessing a stampede of censorship initiatives directed at adult businesses, video stores, concert venues, the music industry, broadcast media, the Internet, schools, libraries, and bookstores. Some pro-censorship efforts are new; many constitute breakthroughs after years of dogged zealotry. Their number exceeds the ability of anti-censorship organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) or the NCFE to handle the issues effectively. Ground is especially being lost in areas concerning material deemed "harmful to minors." And the cultural war of attrition is taking its toll on defenders of constitutional rights. As one Chicago arts activist put it, "We are all circling the drain."

The theocratic right has learned significant lessons from its conduct of the culture wars, and is applying what it has learned with burgeoning skill. One key lesson, as stressed in a recent address by Rev. Jerry Kirk of the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families (NCPCF), is that pornography is a useful organizing tool, capable of uniting conservative and liberal, Protestant and Catholic. Although definitions of pornography are increasingly elastic, broad, and vague, campaigns against it are surefire ways to draw support from across the political spectrum, support that frequently includes large sectors of the gay and women's movements. This is especially true when the material targeted might be used or simply encountered by children, or, as in the case of so-called child pornography, involves children themselves.

The "tools of child molesters"

Since last summer, Randall Terry and his loosely organized two-year-old cultural watchdog group Loyal Opposition have been working together with Dr. James Dobson's traditional-values behemoth Focus on the Family to stamp out the Sturges menace. An artist whose work is included in the permanent collections of major museums all over the world, Sturges often photographs nude or semi-nude children and young adolescents, most frequently girls, in non-sexual poses. In 1990, a heavy-handed attempt by the FBI to brand Sturges as a child pornographer set off an international storm of protest. Sturges's much-admired photographs have never occasioned prosecution. Now, as repressive legislation and regressive court decisions broaden the classes of material that can be legally interpreted as kiddie porn, the censorship vultures are circling over Jock Sturges once more. And because they are raising objections to naked girls, not homoerotic imagery, they can accomplish their ends without the inconvenient intervention of pesky gay activists.

The campaign has centered on three large-format books: The Last Day of Summer and Radiant Identities, produced by the respected photographic publisher Aperture, and Jock Sturges, marketed internationally by the Swiss company Scalo. (The first two are more widely available.) In trying to secure indictments against booksellers trafficking in these works, Dobson and Terry have adopted a sort of nice-cop/tough-cop approach. The Dobson organization disseminates disinformation in Internet postings, press releases, and mailings that matter-of-factly refer to "Jock Sturges child pornography"; Randall Terry then incites the troops to action, often using his popular radio talk show Randall Terry Live as a bully pulpit. In the time-honored tradition of coupling scare tactics with pleas for money, both organizations are exploiting the issue for fund-raising purposes. With the growing involvement of Cincinnati's Rev. Jerry Kirk and the NCPCF, the campaign has become a troika effort.

"By ripping up the books," insisted Randall Terry in a broadcast interview, "we are insuring that the prosecutors will get them as evidence. And we're destroying the weapon. I mean, these are the tools of child molesters." These sentiments are echoed by Dan Martin of the Middle Tennessee Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, who insists that "Pedophiles have told us that this is the type of material they use to seduce children." (Martin may be hard-pressed to name any pedophiles who have volunteered such information, but he knows they're there.) Members of the Middle Tennessee Coalition subscribe wholeheartedly to the widespread belief that child molesters use images not only to inflame their own lust, but to desensitize children they are prepping for sexual activity.

John Oliver, president of the newly formed Tennessee organization, is an independent building subcontractor who says he was alerted to the existence of the books and inspired to action by Christian radio, particularly James Dobson's daily syndicated show and Randall Terry Live. "We never wanted things to get this far," says Oliver, "we just wanted [Barnes & Noble] to be socially responsible and not carry this material." Delving into the wares of his local Barnes & Noble outlet at a strip mall in suburban Brentwood, near Nashville, he uncovered a trove of books he considers patently offensive, including coffee-table books by David Hamilton and Robert Mapplethorpe. Other bookstore material objectionable to Oliver includes prose works like Pat Califia's homoerotic Doing It for Daddy, which he misreads as "a manual for incest roleplay," a misdescription that sells more broadly than one that would expose his abhorrence of anything gay.

Frustrated when Barnes & Noble dismissed his initial complaints, Oliver collected a group of associates and headed for the mall late in August to stage a protest. He purchased a copy of The Last Day of Summer, then demanded a refund. After Oliver's money had been returned to him (a detail overlooked by the press), the Sturges book was seized and ripped apart by Christian musician Richard Williams, Williams's wife, and two others who had accompanied Oliver into the store. The act was videotaped by Dan Martin. "We wanted to force them to arrest us," says Martin, "to bring this to a head, or to charge the store with disseminating child pornography. But the store wouldn't press charges, and the police wouldn't charge the bookstore. If I had that material in my car, I could be arrested, but they let the store get away with it."

Anything is possible in Tennessee

Manager Penny Byrd says the store has since been subjected to harassment by indignant citizens who show up to vent their rage, and targeted for a letter-writing campaign by "little old ladies who say they'll pray for me." There have been disturbing phone calls, some of them anonymous. The Middle Tennessee Council for the Protection of Children and Families has continued to provide handfuls of demonstrators. "They're out there every Saturday," says Byrd, "parading up and down and passing out flyers." On a recent weekend between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a man in a Santa Claus suit was thrusting Middle Tennessee Coalition literature at passers-by. Amid lurid attacks on Jock Sturges and British photographer David Hamilton, Coalition flyers also cite art photographer Sally Mann, whose work has thus far escaped prosecution. Oliver has drawn support in his campaign from a number of prominent Tennesseans, including state politicians, members of the clergy, and Christian recording artists.

On November 23, after reviewing material submitted to Williamson County District Attorney Joseph Baugh, a sympathetic grand jury charged the store and its New York-based parent chain with "improperly displaying material harmful to minors" based on the presence of three books: Sturges's Radiant Identities and The Last Day of Summer, and British photographer David Hamilton's Age of Innocence, which also contains nude images of young women. To John Oliver's disappointment, this is simply a misdemeanor charge. It gives the store a slap on the wrist for failing to keep the books covered in plastic on a shelf above a certain height. If, when the case is tried in early 1998, Barnes & Noble is found guilty, the penalty will probably consist of a $50 fine and an injunction ordering compliance with the law. "The Age of Innocence contains a picture of a young girl masturbating," Oliver indignantly asserts. "In Tennessee that alone is Class C felony."

While Oliver refers to a discreetly suggestive picture that has never yet been adjudicated contraband, it seems that in Tennessee, anything is possible. To Oliver and his followers, the images are clearly in violation of Tennessee statute 39-17-1004, pertaining to "aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor." Prosecutors elsewhere in the state may agree. Tennessee has an over-the-top tradition of censorship that has encompassed everything from the 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial," in which a teacher in Dayton was convicted of discussing evolution, to the notorious 1994 Amateur Action case, in which California BBS operators Robert and Carleen Thomas were entrapped by a Tennessee postal inspector who joined their members-only, adults-only computer bulletin board. The Thomases were extradited to Memphis, convicted of trafficking in obscenity by Tennessee community standards, and remain in prison.

The thousand-store Barnes & Noble chain continues to sell the Sturges and Hamilton books, but outlets have orders to keep them under lock and key. Many stores no longer stock the books, but will "special order" them for customers. In its official statement regarding the Tennessee charges, which the corporation claims to be "without merit," Barnes & Noble states that having "received requests over the years to stop selling everything from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to The Living Bible, we do not feel we have the right as a retailer to censor the reading tastes of the public." If Barnes & Noble bows to pressure, however, it won't be without precedent. In 1989, the chain was picketed by writers protesting its decision (later rescinded) not to carry Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses for fear of reprisals by Muslim fundamentalists.

Randall Terry's allies, who-- perhaps realizing that vandalism doesn't really sell-- have ceased ripping up books, are offended by press representations of their activities as cultural terrorism. "Our only issue is child pornography," stresses Dan Martin. "We're just a group of parents and grandparents who are taking a stand. We're not even activists, really, though we may become that." As an informal affiliate of the Cincinnati-based (NCPCF), the Middle Tennessee Coalition is spawned from an activists' breeding ground directly descended from Savings and Loan felon Charles Keating's Citizens for Decent Literature. NCPCF president Jerry Kirk is a longtime anti-pornography zealot with links to several other right-wing moral rearmament groups. The organization conducts training sessions for porn vigilantes, provides how-to packets for Christian protesters, and markets an array of books and videos with titles like The War on Pornography, 10 Ways to Combat Pornography, and Porn: Its Casualties.

A chilling effect

Elsewhere in the country, religious activists-- more practiced than the Tennessee fledgling organization-- are circulating anti-Sturges petitions hoping for grand jury intervention. Loyal Opposition efforts are coordinated by anti-abortion firebrand Troy Newman out of the San Diego office of Operation Rescue. There may be additional prosecutions. In Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, law enforcement officials acting on a citizen's complaint are weighing the merits of indicting Borders bookstores for stocking Jock Sturges materials. (Local authorities referred the material to a federal postal inspector who reported that the pictures could indeed be considered illegal.) The chill has even reached the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, which practiced self-censorship as its forthcoming newsletter went to press, removing a Sturges photo from the front page in order to insure its passage through the U.S. mails.

Recently, a "David Hamilton Unofficial Homepage" maintained by Ohio graduate student Jeffrey Scott Jaeger was censored out of existence by Miami University of Ohio, which directed Jaeger to remove not merely samples of Hamilton's pictures, but any links to other Hamilton sites and information pertaining to Hamilton's work. Yeager, though stung by the administrative intervention, dismisses the idea that Hamilton's images could be prosecuted in Tennessee or anywhere, noting that "This is an artist with international stature." This attitude, widespread and especially problematic in the arts community, overlooks recent changes in federal law, which has been tightening around representations of children and material deemed "harmful to minors" since the late 1970s.

Two particularly troubling milestones in the steady erosion of free expression in the U.S. were (1) the 1995 Child Pornography Prevention Act, mainly perpetrated by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Diane Feinstein (D-California), which includes an insidious provision that criminalizes images of children in which "no actual child has been used" such as computer-generated images, and instances of adults simply playing the role of children; and (2) the 1995 outcome of U.S. v. Knox, in which the U.S. Supreme Court permitted a lower-court conviction of Pennsylvania graduate student Stephen A. Knox. This case established a precedent that material containing neither nudity nor sexual activity could qualify as "child pornography." Arrested in 1992 for receiving a video of teenaged girls clothed in bathing suits and leotards, Knox is now serving a prison sentence. As federal restrictions have increased, states have been passing tougher obscenity laws that seem to be the work of people dedicated to repealing the First Amendment.

Sex voids Bill of Rights

In a recent paper published by the Andy Warhol Foundation, ACLU Arts Censorship Project Director Marjorie Heins traces the legal concept of "harmful to minors" back to a reaction against the 1957 Supreme Court decision Butler v. Michigan which struck down a Michigan law that prohibited the general sale of "obscene, immoral, lewd or lascivious" matter that would "incite minors to violent or depraved or immoral acts" and abet "corruption of the morals of youth." Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote that the effect of this law was "to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children.... Surely, this is to burn the house to roast the pig."

As Heins notes, "The obvious, and prompt, response to Butler was for legislatures to pass narrower laws banning the sale of 'harmful' sexual material specifically to minors." When a challenge to such a law reached the high court in 1968 in Ginsberg v. New York, Justice William Brennan, later an increasingly passionate defender of free speech, found a way to uphold the New York statute. While he acknowledged that no scientific proof existed that sexual material harmed minors, he wrote that since the New York law only covered "obscenity"-- non-protected speech-- no proof was needed. Heins points out that "ordinarily, in First Amendment cases, one thing that the government is not allowed to do is censor speech that does not cause provable, direct harm, simply in the name of morality or ideology... [but] the Supreme Court has made an implicit exception to this principle when the subject is sex."

Americans across the political spectrum are now more willing to accept that exception than at any time since the 50s. With increasing success, children are being used as an excuse to curtail civil liberties. As Joan Bertin of the National Coalition Against Censorship observes, "There's a very large community of effective activists out there promoting fear."

"We're in here for the long term" says the Middle Tennessee Coalition's John Oliver, with a conviction that anyone who doubts his staying power would do well to heed. Oliver is part of an expanding and predominantly male social force. According to Randall Terry, "If we're going to have true reformation in America, it is because men once again... have righteous testosterone flowing through their veins."

This channeling of testosterone into repressive action may, in the end, reflect the inability of frightened, prudish, obsessed individuals to deal with human sexuality. The relentlessly purient-mindedness of their anti-smut campaigns gives them away. As Jock Sturges has said, "When innocence is judged obscene, the obscenity is the eye of the beholder."