State Legislatures, Flawed Bills and the “War on Porn” (YNOT)

Read the full article by Gene Zorkin  at YNOT.com 

Long before anyone coined the term “War on Porn,” the eventual battle lines were drawn in the conflict. Back in 1929, D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterly’s Lover was banned in the United States. The ban was not overturned (with respect to the uncensored version) until 30 years later, when the court held in Grove Press v. Christenberry that the book could was not obscene under the standard established in Roth v. United States two years earlier.

By the modern standards we apply to sexually explicit expression, Lady Chatterly’s Lover would scarcely raise an eyebrow – unless, perhaps, those eyebrows belonged to a state legislator.

In looking over bills like Utah’s H.B. 243 and Mississippi’s H.B. 1116 and H.B. 1120, you get the sense that some legislators in both states (and one legislator in Mississippi, in particular) would like nothing more than to turn back the clock on American obscenity law, or shove the genie of modern communications technology back in the bottle — or perhaps fire a volley in a the War on Porn. Gene Zorkin has been covering legal and political issues for various adult publications (and under a variety of different pen names) since 2002.