News Slant	News Slant Archive

Reporters have just descended on Iowa and New Hampshire to divine the future of presidential politics. For the future of America's sexual politics, drop in on Ohio. Midwestern and Middle-American, Ohio balances between extremes of geography and demographics. In the tight 2004 race it was the state the most wrenchingly divided, handing the White House back to G.W. Bush by a mere two percent of its (possibly rigged) vote.

"Ohio is this strange mix of a rust-belt northern state and a fundamentalist southern one," says Jeff Gamso, legal director of the state's American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) affiliate, a nerve center for local sex and free-speech cases. Ohio may hug Lake Erie and the U.S.'s northern border. But Cincinnati, in the state's southwest, Gamso adds, is "in many respects, a southern city."

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ike the head of a drum -- skin pulled taught in all directions -- Ohio resonates acutely with the zeitgeist. Which is maybe why, as far as sex goes, the state is uncannily cutting-edge.

So what happens sex-wise in Ohio, often happens other places next. That's not necessarily good news. A new state law took effect January 2 that threatens to throw out of their homes people convicted of "pandering obscenity." That's an offense to which anyone who buys, sells, or shows edgy adult porn could be vulnerable. Ohio legislation, now pending, would require special fluorescent-green license plates on the cars of "panderers" and other sex-offenders. Meanwhile, cops in Columbus are pursuing bold new tactics in park sex stings that involve topless women and hidden cameras.

That was then...

In another era, the Buckeye state buzzed with a different vibe. "Ohioans were more relaxed," recalled late gay journalist John Zeh, in an interview with The Guide in 2001. "There was a feeling of live and let live." Zeh himself was prosecuted in the 1980s for reading a passage about lube from First Hand magazine on a Cincinnati gay radio show.

In the 1970s, Ohio helped give America the modern gay bathhouse -- the Club Baths chain began in Cleveland. Hustler magazine grew out of a string of eponymous Ohio strip clubs that Larry Flynt started -- unlikely enough -- in Cincinnati. First published in 1974, Hustler helped take straight porn beyond gauzy Playboy centerfolds and illustrated "marital guides" to heights of unapologetic raunch. Both institutions radiated hedonism, in their respective hues, nationwide.

But rather than decadence, Ohio is perhaps better known for the highbrow targets of its vice cops.

A 1990 retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs -- some showing scenes of gay SM, others depicting child nudity most innocent -- prompted an unprecedented raid on a major art museum. After a grand jury concluded seven photos were obscene, Hamilton County sheriffs' deputies in SWAT gear descended on Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center.

In 1994, an undercover detective found Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1975 film Salo -- about Italy's wartime fascist excesses -- for rent at Pink Pyramid, a Cincinnati gay bookstore. A customer had suggested it was a film "with everything in it." The cop seized the tape as obscene. Police arrested the store's owner, manager, and clerk.

In 2006, Ayersville High School Spanish teacher Megan Espen faced charges of pandering and disseminating harmful matter to minors -- and eventually lost her job -- after showing portions of Pedro Almodovar's Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down in class. She said meant to illustrate, ironically, how much Spanish culture had opened up since the death of dictator Franco.

Scrappy Larry Flynt himself faced pandering charges in Cincinnati in 1977 and 1998 -- in the latter instance after police set up a 14-year-old boy to buy video porn from a Flynt-affiliated adult gift shop.

True to Ohio's radical sexual ambivalence, these high-profile cases didn't always go the prosecutors' way. A jury of working-class Cincinnatians acquitted museum director Dennis Barrie on charges of "pandering obscenity" and use of a child in "nudity-oriented material." In 1996 Pink Pyramid paid a $500 fine and Salo returned to its shelf. And Flynt and brother Jimmy -- who faced 24 years in prison on their 1998 obscenity charges -- copped a plea, paid a $10,000 fine, and agreed to stop selling porn videos.

Bad example

But more than just picking off people who thumb noses at propriety, Ohio leads in insidiously sharpening the weapons of censorship. The only American ever sent to prison for writing in his private journal was sent there by an Ohio judge in 2001. And in 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court used the case of a Columbus man to curtail the right to possess erotica in one's own home. Such precedents have influenced the landscape of sex law nationally -- and beyond.

Yet action spawns reaction. A surprisingly broad coalition -- including the Ohio Justice and Policy Center, the ACLU, and even some child-protection groups -- are working together to fight in state court the latest expansion of the sex-offender registry.

In the print media, at least, there are some critical voices. Last September, U.S. District Judge James S. Gwin struck down retroactive application of 2003 state law banning people convicted of sex crimes from living within 1000 feet of a school. The restriction constituted punishment after-the-fact, the judge declared, and said it could only apply to people convicted after the law's passage. "Finally, someone with some power drew a line in the sand and said, 'Enough,'" wrote columnist Ann Fisher in the mainline Columbus Dispatch. She denounced the "demagogues who have profited politically by stoking the fears that lead to such laws."

Bringing their message right to the demagogues themselves, on December 1, the Ohio state capitol saw America's first-ever demonstration by registered sex-offenders and their families.

Ohio helped manufacture the hysteria that threatens the freedom of anyone who surfs the net, cruises a park, or tucks a child in to bed. Now the Buckeye state seems to be helping begin a response.

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Ohioans fight back against repressive sex laws -- check out and support the ACLU of Ohio (216-472-2200; Aclu ohio.org ), Ohio Justice & Policy Center (513-421-1108; Ohiojpc.org ). Ohio Office of the Public Defender (614-466-5394; Opd.ohio.gov ) has info on the latest law revisions. Soclear.org works to organize people affected by sex-offender registries.

Author Profile:  Bill Andriette
Bill Andriette is features editor of The Guide
Email:	theguide@guidemag.com