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Free Speech X-Press
Delivering Weekly Censorship Updates to the Adult Industry
Vol. VIII, No. 46, October 6, 2006 -- A Member Service of the Free Speech Coalition
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Free Speech X-press is researched and edited by Layne Winklebleck.
Copyright 2006 Free Speech Coalition. Permission to reprint granted to FSC members; please give credit.
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VISIT OUR WEBSITE FOR FSC MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION
http://www.freespeechcoalition.com_______________________________________________________
FSC JOINS FREEDOM OF SPEECH WEEK PROJECT
FSC will join with other groups and organizations around the nation, including the American Bar Association, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Recording Industry Association of America and many others, in celebrating “Free Speech: The Language of America,” the second annual National Freedom of Speech Week (NFSW), October 16-22, 2006.
Launched in 2005 by The Media Institute in partnership with the National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation, NFSW spotlights the visionary principle of freedom of expression that forms the very foundation of our democracy.
The project seeks to raise public awareness of the importance of our free speech rights by mobilizing civic and community groups, schools, PTAs, companies, associations, media outlets, unions, nonprofit groups, libraries, scouting and youth groups to take action during the specially designated week. Groups and individuals are encouraged to exercise their free speech rights by posting a message online, keeping a journal, writing a letter to the editor or displaying a bumper sticker. As the event website states, “Just let your voice be heard!”
FSC will be promoting the week’s message to its membership with recommendations on ways they can become involved locally, such as writing letters to the editors of newspapers, requesting that local libraries set up a display commemorating the week and contacting their local civic organizations to encourage meetings on the importance of Freedom of Speech. In addition, FSC will conduct several online fund-raisers where the significance of Freedom of Speech Week will be emphasized. In Washington, D.C., the FSC lobbying team at The Raben Group will also be promoting the topic as they make visits on the Hill.
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COMMINGLING ORDINANCE UPHELD
COVINGTON, KY -- U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning has ruled that a Kenton County ordinance regulating exotic dance clubs and other adult businesses is constitutional. The decision came in a challenge to the ordinance by four Covington dance clubs. The clubs argued that the ordinance, which imposed a five-foot buffer zone between dancers and patrons during dances and for an hour afterwards, prohibited free expression. The clubs claimed that the commingling with patrons after a dance was an extension of the performers' erotic dance and thus was part of their protected free expression. But Bunning disagreed, saying the erotic performance was protected, but that did not include "a performance which involves touching by patrons."
"Basically what the commingling involved was a system of hustling drinks for sliding-scale prices ranging from $12 to $1,000 in exchange for private conversations with the entertainers," wrote Bunning in his opinion.
"That 'conversation,'” wrote Bunning, “included everything from an actual conversation between a dancer and patron to significant physical contact in a booth of a darkened room where neither conversationalist had his or her feet on the floor.” Added the Judge: “Some of the dancers reported that oral sex did sometimes occur."
Bunning cited prostitution arrests at “one of the clubs,” as demonstrating the potential of the “conversations” to cause adverse secondary effects. However, attorney Louis Sirkin, who represented the club owners, said the arrests actually happened at Liberty's Show Lounge, a club that was not part of the lawsuit challenging Kenton County's sexually oriented business ordinance. He said his clients shouldn't be punished for whatever problems might have occurred at Liberty's.
The clubs also argued that a $3,000 per business and $155 per entertainer annual license fee is excessive.
Kenton County Attorney Garry Edmondson said Bunning’s ruling would have an impact far beyond Northern Kentucky, as it clarifies both the issues of licensing fees and dancer/patron interaction, two issues that up to now had been points of dispute in the courts.
Sirkin said an appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals was planned, where he expected his clients to prevail.
Some information and quotes are from Luke E. Saladin, Kentucky Post, 10/4/06
Other information and quotes are from Cindy Schroeder, Cincinnati Enquirer, 10/4/06
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HIGH COURT WILL NOT HEAR SEX TOY CASE
WASHINGTON, DC -- Without comment, the Supreme Court has turned down the opportunity to review a Texas law prohibiting the sale, marketing or dissemination of an "obscene device." Last year the court refused to hear a similar appeal on an Alabama law (Williams v. Alabama, 04-849). In addition to Alabama and Texas, Georgia and Mississippi have similar archaic bans. An "obscene device" under the Texas law is defined as "a device including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs."
In the Texas case, Texas v. Ignacio Sergio Acosta, undercover officers seeking to protect West Texas morality spotted a crystal cock vibrator on display behind the store counter at Trixx adult bookstore in El Paso. Acosta, a clerk at the store, explained that the device would arouse and gratify the female undercover cop by giving her an orgasm.
Had Acosta told the police that the vibrator was intended as an educational item to help learn how to put on a condom, or as a “novelty,” no law would have been broken and Acosta would not have been later arrested for a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine of $4,000. Acosta didn’t know how to put the correct legal spin on the device, explained his attorney, Roger Jon Diamond.
"He was honest," says Diamond. "He told them what the purpose was. He didn't know by doing that he would be incriminating himself. He didn't know to say, 'Look, you can use this as an art object. Put it on your mantle.'"
Acosta’s defense argued that the law was unconstitutional because it prevented individuals from using dildo-type devices in violation of the right to sexual privacy, as established in the landmark 2003 Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas. El Paso Criminal Court Judge Alma Trejo agreed with that argument and quashed the complaint.
However, the Texas Court of Appeals for the Eighth District overruled Judge Trejo, saying that while the Supreme Court struck down the Texas sodomy law in Lawrence, “we note the Supreme Court specifically excluded from its analysis any aspect of public conduct or prostitution. Rather, the holding applied to private sexual conduct. Therefore, we do not perceive that the Lawrence holding that the Texas sodomy statute furthered no legitimate interest implies that commercial promotion of sexual devices is constitutionally sanctioned.”
From the Texas Eighth District opinion. August 31, 2005
Some information and quotes are from Tammy Fonce-Olivas, El Paso Times, 10/5/06
For comments by Attorney Diamond, religious representatives and Cato Institute, see Megan Scott, News-Journal, 10/5/06
See also, Darklady, YNOT.com, 10/2/06
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SUPREME COURT PASSES ON EXOTIC DANCING CASE
SALT LAKE CITY, UT -- The Supremes also declined to review a challenge by several South Salt Lake city exotic dancers of an ordinance requiring them to wear G-strings and pasties. The dancers challenged the ordinance in state court and in federal court and lost in both venues. The state court challenge went to the Utah Supreme Court, which issued a ruling (3-2) that a ban on nude dance was permissible under the Utah Constitution. (See X-Press report, “Exotic Dancing Under the Utah Constitution,” 8/4/06)
In the federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that the Supreme Court declined to review, a panel of judges held that the dancers had failed to disprove the city's rationale for imposing the restrictions.
Andrew McCullough, attorney for the dancers, said the city has been enforcing the ordinance since 2002, although there have not been many citations issued in that time.
"It has resulted in one business, Leather and Lace, being closed in the sense that the business didn't comply with it," McCullough said. Paradise Modeling, which was a party in the original lawsuit, also closed after its owner died.
In the meantime, another all-nude exotic dance club has opened outside of South Salt Lake.
Information and quotes are mostly from Robert Gehrke, Salt Lake Tribune, 10/4/06
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THEOCRATS LINK FOLEYGATE TO HOMOSEXUALITY
WASHINGTON, DC -- The Foleygate scandal that has rocked the nation and apparently set back Republican Party fortunes for the coming mid-term elections, has no direct bearing on issues of censorship of adult entertainment. We realized this as we mulled over how to summarize for the X-Press the widely reported downfall of the disgraced Florida Congressman Mark Foley, who resigned after the disclosure of his sexually explicit e-mail and text messaging exchanges with Congressional pages. True, Foley was a co-author of the Adam Walsh Act, which is now law of the land and which in its final form includes provisions very hostile to adult entertainment. (See X-Press report, 2257 and Obscenity Provisions Part of Child Protection Bill, 7/21/06) However, we have no knowledge that Foley had a role in drafting the 2257 and obscenity enforcement parts of the law. Most of the Adam Walsh Act has a purpose of combating child predators, a goal the adult entertainment industry heartily endorses.
The response of some theocrats to Foleygate, however, does bring in adult sexuality by attempting to link Foley’s actions to his being a closeted gay. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said that neither political party "seems likely to address the real issue, which is the link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse ... ignoring this reality got the Catholic Church into trouble over abusive priests, and now it is doing the same to the House GOP leadership."
“Perkins is wrong,” said Dan Karasic, President of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, in a recent San Francisco Chronicle letters to the editor section. “Homosexuality is not linked to child sexual abuse. The connection between the Republican and the Catholic sex scandals is that absolute power, without accountability, invites abuse.”
“Given similar past sordid situations in the page program perpetrated by male members of Congress against female pages, it’s absurd to blame the Foley spectacle on his being gay, closeted or otherwise,” said Matt Foreman, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “Given the fact that the current Republican leadership in the House has never hesitated to attack gay people, it’s even more absurd for people like Newt Gingrich to say the reason they didn't take prompt action was because they didn’t want to be accused of ‘gay bashing.’ Cut me a break.”
Foreman comments are from a National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce newsletter. URL not available.
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THREATS TO FREE SPEECH IN EUROPE
EUROPE -- Free speech issues that Europeans had thought long settled have been at the the forefront of debate and controversy since the international turmoil that developed last year over the publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons, innocuous by western standards but offensive to Muslims, featuring the prophet Mohammed. Recent developments in Europe, in particular Pope Benedict XVI's controversial remarks on Islam last month, have again highlighted the dilemmas of western free speech versus perceived insults to religion.
In France, a philosophy teacher is in hiding, the target of death threats, after publishing a commentary in a national newspaper denouncing Islam as a violent religion. The newspaper’s editor has gone on Arabic Al-Jazeera television to apologize, saying publishing the piece was a mistake.
In Germany, the head of the Berlin Deutsche Oper, the German capital's leading opera house, has cancelled an avant-garde Mozart production over security fears after the opera director added a scene in which the protagonist King Idomeneo appears on stage carrying a bloodstained bag. From the bag, he pulls out, one by one, the decapitated heads of the Greek god Poseidon, then Jesus, then the Buddha, and finally the Prophet Muhammad.
German Chancellor Angela Merke was critical of the decision to cancel by the head of the Deutsche Oper, Kirsten Harms.
"It's my personal opinion that the [opera] cancellation is a mistake," she said. "I believe that self-censorship does not help curtail the spread of violence [and] people who, in the name of Islam, practice violence. And that's why it makes no sense to always yield -- rather, we should discuss the issue and -- I believe -- we should give our support to the press and media freedom."
Information on recent issues is from Jeremy Bransten, Radio Free Europe, 10/3/06
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