ACLU condemns indictment of Barnes & Noble on obscenity charges
Feb. 20, 1998
The American Civil Liberties Union today condemned Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor for bringing obscenity charges against the Barnes & Noble book chain over the sale of photography books by noted artists.
An Alabama grand jury indicted the bookstore late Wednesday for selling Radiant Identities by Jock Sturges and Age of Innocence by David Hamilton, both targets of a national censorship campaign by conservative groups.
"The books cited by Attorney General Pryor are highly acclaimed art collections which by no stretch of the imagination meet the standards of obscenity," said Olivia Turner, Executive Director of the ACLU of Alabama.
Turner noted that attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, and a district attorney in Pennsylvania, had all declined to press charges over the sale of Sturges' and Hamilton's books, saying they did not find the photographs obscene.
"Unfortunately, in an election year, Alabama officials seem unable to resist jumping on board the censorship bandwagon," Turner added.
Alabama's child pornography statute is a component of the state obscenity law; the material in question must fail a three-part test to be considered obscene. But even if the child pornography provision did not require such a test, the ACLU said, the Sturges and Hamilton books are serious artistic undertakings that do not sexually exploit children and therefore cannot be considered child pornography.
According to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Code of Alabama, the test for obscenity is whether material:
1. Depicts hard-core sexual activity in a manner that is patently offensive according to local
community standards;
2. Appeals to a prurient interest, that is, a shameful or morbid interest in sex, and;
3. Lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
"Attorney General Pryor will be hard pressed to prove these books fail any of the obscenity tests, much less all three," said Martin McCaffery, President of the ACLU of Alabama. "As Mr Pryor well knows, nudity is not in and of itself obscene, and like many other works of art, these books contain an artful representation of nudity. They are not obscene."
"Unless Attorney General Pryor plans to raid every library and bookstore, most museums, and quite a few churches to rid the state of depictions of nudity, he should abandon this embarrassing assault on the First Amendment," McCaffery added.
Earlier this year, officials in Tennessee indicted a Barnes & Noble bookstore on similar charges over Sturges and Hamilton art books. A judge is scheduled to hear a motion to dismiss the case on March 2. The ACLU said that it has offered legal assistance and counsel in both the Tennessee and Alabama cases and that it will continue to monitor these proceedings.
The ACLU of Alabama adds its voice to a national coalition of free speech advocates protesting the campaign of censorship sponsored by Focus on the Family and the American Family Association. Through radio broadcasts and a coordinated campaign, the groups have urged citizens to bring complaints against stores that stock the books.
"The campaign to suppress these art books is but the latest manifestation of a political drive to impose one particular viewpoint on our diverse population," said Marjorie Heins, director of the ACLU's Arts Censorship Project. "This kind of action violates everybody's First Amendment guarantees of intellectual and artistic freedom."
Opponents of the censorship campaign include the ACLU, American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the American Booksellers Foundation and the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression.
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