Further Reading

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Yesterday's Artists, Today's Pornographers  ** Save the Children! Burn Their Books!

January 1998

Save the Children! Burn Their Books!

In Oklahoma City, challenges to a local court ruling declaring that Volker Schlondorff's Academy Award-winning 1979 film The Tin Drum meets criteria for child pornography are being kept in legal limbo by a judge sympathetic to the views of Oklahomans for Children and Families (OCAF), the organization that filed the original complaint. It remains illegal to exhibit, rent or sell the film in Oklahoma County. Meanwhile, OCAF is rumored to be ready to move against Larry Clark's 1995 film Kids.

In Sandwich, Massachusetts, language teacher Edward Pasko, a respected 14-year veteran of the local public school system, was dismissed after screening the film A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings for two combined 7th and 8th-grade Spanish classes. Parents complained that the film was pornographic and had traumatized their children. The students themselves seem to have mainly been bored and confused by the 1988 Spanish-language film, the Cuban-made work of venerable Argentine filmmaker Fernando Birri and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who wrote the original story and co-wrote the script. Pasko, who escaped prosecution through a loophole in Massachusetts law, is suing for reinstatement.

In Ripley, West Virginia, the Jackson County School Board voted 3-2 in November to ban a total of 17 books containing sex and profanity from school libraries and classrooms. The titles include The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker, Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith, The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games by Tom Clancy, several John Grisham novels, and 100 Questions and Answers About AIDS by Michael T. Ford. School Superintendent Carroll Staats had thoughtfully removed the books before the matter, arising from a complaint by concerned parent Jean Rectenwald, even came to a vote. School Board member Happy Joe Parsons spoke for the majority when he told the Charleston Gazette that "I believe [The Color Purple] could teach the lessons without the foul language. The Bible does a good job of that." Since not all the books on Rectenwald's hit list are even owned by the school system, it is unclear how she compiled it. Students, parents, and faculty working with the ACLU and the American Library Association are contesting the ban.

In London, Kentucky, save-the-children rhetoric has been a key element in a wave of anti-porn hysteria that has swept through the community and surrounding Laurel County. Working cooperatively in an effort led by Laurel County Attorney Elmer Cunnagin, city and county law enforcement officials conducted raids last July on a rural adult retail outlet called Fantasy World and downtown London's Pryme Time Video. Approximately 900 sexually explicit videos were confiscated; charges were filed against the proprietors of both stores. "Once a community allows [pornography]," Cunnagin said in an interview, "it creates an atmosphere where people have no boundaries." Local officials are working with the American Center for Law and Justice, a legal-aid supplement to Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, on crafting new laws that will banish smut forever.

In Anchorage, Alaska, the Out North Contemporary Art House, whose funding has been challenged for years by supporters of the Christian Coalition of Alaska, has finally been line-itemed out of the city arts budget. The gay and lesbian arts center and performance venue was recently denied $22,000 in public funds it was slated to receive on the grounds that its work was "too controversial" and was unsuitable for children. Conservative City Assemblymen led by Cheryl Clementson argued successfully that all publicly funded art should be "family fare." This defunding comes at a time when Out North has been losing private sources of support thanks to the Christian Coalition's threat of boycotts. The group, which continues to receive state arts funding, has been called "a model program" by Timothy Wilson, Executive Director of the Alaska State Council on the Arts.

In Virginia's Fairfax and Prince William Counties, secret panels of local citizens have begun reviewing the contents of video stores. Organized by local prosecutors at the request of the Christian Coalition, the panels' findings have so far resulted in the prosecution of three video retailers. The panels seems to be especially biased toward videos depicting sexual activity among African-Americans, with titles like More Black Dirty Debutantes singled out over similar offerings with white performers. But the key advertised concern of the panels is child protection.

From Fairfax, Virginia, Family Friendly Libraries (FFL), an organization founded by born-again housewife Karen Jo Gounaud (with help from such theocratic-right franchises as the Family Research Council), is making considerable headway with its devoutly homophobic censorship agenda. Dependent on the support of fear-driven parents, FFL is seeking to undermine American public libraries' once almost universal commitment to the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights. Recently Gounaud has been concentrating on library Internet access, successfully promoting filtering systems and other censorship schemes nationwide. She has also been working with "ex-gay" ministries to help found P-FOX, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays.

In Washington, D.C., the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring, and the District of Columbia held hearings in November on the alleged damage done to American youth by "violent" music. That such a subcommittee would hold such hearings makes sense only in the light of the obsession of one of its members-- Senator Joe Lieberman (D.-Connecticut)-- with musical morality. The unapologetically one-sided propaganda blitz featured speeches by anti-rap crusader C. DeLores Tucker, testimony from the father of a boy who purportedly shot himself as a result of listening to music by Marilyn Manson, and long perorations by Lieberman. (The aide who lined up the speakers is a former spokesperson for William Bennett's right-wing Empower America.) The apparent purpose of this kangaroo-court event was to prime the Congressional pump for legislation that would criminalize sale of albums with "Parental Advisory" stickers to minors and to support a growing movement to establish ratings for concerts.