THE NATIONAL COALITION AGAINST CENSORSHIP NEWSLETTER FALL 2012 NUMBER 117 NCAC BOARD Michael Bamberger Joan Bertin Judy Blume Susan Clare Chris Csikszentmihalyi Eric M. Freedman Robie Harris Phil Harvey Michael Jacobs Chris Peterson Larry Siems Emily Whitfield
COUNCIL OF ADVISORS Amy Adler Helene Atwan Julian Bond Rev. John Harris Burt James Cromwell Norman Dorsen Gail Edwin Chris Finan Frances FitzGerald Rev. Carl E. Flemister Danny Goldberg Victor Gotbaum Franklyn S. Haiman Marjorie Heins David Henry Hwang George Kannar Rhoda H. Karpatkin Tony Kushner Sylvia A. Law S Jay Levy Pamela A. Mann Gail Markels Jay Mazur Joyce D. Miller Victor Navasky Aryeh Neier Robert M. O’Neil Pat Scales Stanley K. Sheinbaum Nadine Strossen Cleo Wilson Susan N. Wilson
The Sex Issue Sex is, as the late Justice William Brennan said, “a great and mysterious motive force in human life [which] has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.” However, from 19th century vice societies and public morality campaigns to contemporary attacks on pornography, Americans have been at war over sexual expression – and with themselves over their ambivalence about sex. Anthony Comstock, founder of the New York York Society for the Suppression of Vice, wasn’t the first anti-sex crusader, crusader, but may have been the most influential. He proudly took responsibility for burning 50 tons of books and millions of photos as well as for 4,000 arrests and 15 suicides. Even after Comstock’s death, his legacy lived on. In 1920 the Little Review magazine Review magazine was prosecuted for publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses Ulysses.. The book was banned in the U.S. until 1933, when a federal judge overturned the ban because he found the book more “emetic” (vomit-inducing) than “aphrodisiac.”
morally bankrupt conclusions” and promised that pornography would be controlled if not eliminated under his administration. A new public morality campaign was launched by groups opposed to pornography, including conservative and religious groups and feminist anti-porn activists. In 1985, Attorney General Edwin Meese convened a commission of anti-pornography crusaders that issued a dossier on the harmful effects of pornography. 1 While admitting that linking aggressive behavior and sexual violence “requires assumptions not found exclusively in the experimental evidence,” the Commissioner saw “no reason, however, not to make these assumptions…that are plainly justified by our own common sense.” These views continued to attract public and political support – in 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft spent $8,000 on drapery to conceal the bare-breasted statue The Spirit of Justice, Justice, which had stood in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice since 1933. His successor, Alberto Gonzalez, declared that pornography was his top prosecutorial concern alongside terrorism.
“Aphrodisiac” works like D.H. Lawrence’s “Aphrodisiac” Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and and Henry Miller’s Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo Tropic of Cancer remained banned until captured our cultural ambivalence: "St. Anthony Comstock" by midcentury, when U.S. culture had “We are…caught in this uncomfortable L.M. Glackens, from Puck become more open to sexuality and sexual expression, a contradiction: the desire for what disgusts us, the disgust development promoted and reflected by a Supreme Court for what we desire.” decision protecting sexual expression unless “obscene,” and “utterly without redeeming social importance.” According to a 2009 Harvard Business School study, study, he’s right: the highest per capita consumption of pornography The 1960s ushered in an era of sexual liberation. President occurs in those states with the most restrictive laws Johnson appointed the “Lockhart” commission to study regulating access to adult content. the effects of pornography pornography,, expecting to document harm. Two years later, however, the commission concluded that Ironic, huh? pornography was not in fact harmful and called for the 1 In January 1986, while the Meese Commission was in session, repeal of obscenity law. The Commission’s report was immediately denounced by President Nixon who "categorically rejected its N C A C
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NCAC organized a public briefing, The Meese Commission Exposed, featuring Kurt Vonnegut, Betty Friedan, and others, who anticipated and warned about the negative consequences of censorship of sex, especially for women.
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NCAC PARTICIPA PARTICIPATING TING ORGANIZA ORGANIZATIONS TIONS
NCAC welcomes Comic Book Legal Defense Fund as a new Participating Organization!
Actors’ Equity Association American Association of School Administrators American Association of University Professors American Association of University Women American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression American Civil Liberties Union American Ethical Union American Federation of Teacher Teacherss American Federation of Television & Radio Artists American Jewish Committee American Library Association American Literary Translators Association American Orthopsychiatric Association American Society of Journalists & Authors Americans United for Separation of Church & State Association of American Publishers Authors Guild Catholics for Choice
In The Courts: Minors, Sex, and the First Amendment The Supreme Court has played a major role in perpetuating our cultural ambivalence about sexual expression, on the one hand by affirming that sexual expression is constitutionally protected – at least for adults – and on the other by sanctioning government censorship of otherwise lawful sexual expression in the name of “protecting” minors. The result hasn’t always been pretty pretty..
Children’s Literature Association College Art Association Comic Book Legal Defense Fund The Creative Coalition Directors Guild of America The Dramatists Guild of America Educational Book & Media Association First Amendment Lawyers Association International Reading Association Lambda Legal Modern Language Association National Center for Science Education National Communication Association National Council for the Social Studies National Council of the Churches
Can Congress protect minors from “obscene and indecent” material online? In Reno v. ACLU (1997), ACLU (1997), the Court said “no.” Not only was the definition of “indecency” too vague, but the law would inevitably infringe on the free speech rights of adults. This was impermissible: “[t]he level of discourse reaching a mailbox simply cannot be limited to that which would be suitable for a sandbox.”
National Council of Jewish Women National Council of Teachers of English National Education Association National Youth Rights Association The Newspaper Guild/CWA PEN American Center People For the American Way Planned Parenthood Federation of America Screen Actors Guild Sexuality Information & Education Council of the U.S. Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators Speech Communication Association Student Press Law Center Union for Reform Judaism
Can Congress impose special burdens on adult cable channels to protect minors from inadvertent exposure exposure to “signal bleed” containing fleeting sexual images? The Court again said “no” in U.S. v. Playboy (2000): Cable subscribers who cared enough could request that such images be blocked. The case gave the Court an opportunity to wax poetic on the subject of free speech:
interest in protecting young library users from material inappropriate for minors is legitimate, and even compelling.” Can federal officials fine TV and radio broadcasters for “indecent” programming? Since 1973, even as cable television and the Internet have increasingly offered a vast universe of explicit content, the Federal Communications Commission has claimed the authority to keep “indecent” content off radio and broadcast television. While the FCC’s definition of “indecency” has shifted with the political winds, the FCC has steadfastly defended its rules as necessary to protect minors.
In the most recent chapter, the FCC fined several broadcasters for programs containing “fleeting expletives,” (read: “fuck,” as in “This is fucking great!”), and fleeting nudity. In FCC v. Fox Television (2012), the Court held that the FCC had not given the networks adequate notice of what would be considered indecent, but ducked the big question about whether a government agency should be able to fine a broadcaster for failing “to exercise ‘reasonable judgment, responsibility responsibility,, and sensitivity to the public’s needs and tastes.’” That sounds like a job for an oldfashioned censor, not government officials.
Union of Democratic Intellectuals Unitarian Universalist Association United Church of Christ, Office of Communication United Methodist Church, United Methodist Communications Women’s American ORT Writers Guild of America, East Writers Guild of America, West
NATIONAL COALITION AGAINST CENSORSHIP Joan E. Bertin, Executive Director Dalton Burns, Administrative Assistant Svetlana Mintcheva, Director of Programs Acacia O'Connor, Kids' Right To Read Project Coordinator Michael O'Neil, Communications Director Barbara Pyles, Business Manager Mary Reinke, Accounting Cynthia Villani, Librarian Censorship News Founding Editor: Roz Udow (1926-2006) Jeanne Criscola/Criscola Design Design: Jeanne
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[email protected], web: www www.ncac.org .ncac.org Copyright ©2012 National Coalition Against Censorship Permission is granted to reprint – please credit NCAC. NCAC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
…The Constitution exists precisely so that opinions and judgments, including esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature, can be formed, tested, and expressed. What the Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority majority.. Can Congress require schools and libraries to install filters and blocking technology to protect minors from exposure to sexual content? The Court said “yes,” in U.S. v. American Library Association (2003). Association (2003). The justices were assured that adults’ rights to constitutionally-protected material would not be restricted, since adults could request that the library unblock a site or disable the filter. No similar concern was expressed about over-zealous blocking where minors are concerned, since “the
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The law on sex and censorship is confounded by conflicting demands: the right of adults to sexual expression, a topic of enduring interest and importance, and the impulse to protect minors from sexual knowledge. The result is an inconsistent and confusing body of law, often at odds with itself. Uncertainty over just how far the Constitution permits regulation of legal expression in the name of protecting minors has pernicious consequences in the unending stream of books and other materials challenged in schools and libraries because of sexual content, the frequent challenges to nudity in art, efforts to restrict discussion of LGBTQ issues and sexuality in public schools. Etc., etc. Where minors and sex are concerned, we live in the United States of confusion.
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What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You Censorship is all about controlling what people think and do by regulating what they know and say. Nowhere is this more evident than in the never-ending battles over speech about sex, sexuality and reproduction. As noted in this issue, kids are the main target of censorship of sexual content. “Abstinence-only-until-marriage”programs “Abstinence-only-until-marriage”programs in public schools eliminate discussion of abortion, contraception, extramarital sex, and homosexuality homosexuality.. Instead, students learn about the perils of sex – unwanted pregnancy pregnancy,, sexually transmitted infections, and psychological trauma – which they are told can only be avoided by complete abstinence until marriage. But ignorance has a price: students who learn only about contraceptive failure are less likely to use contraception if they do become sexually active. Opponents of abortion use related tactics to deter adult women from seeking abortions. In South Dakota, women seeking an abortion must be told that there’s an increased risk of suicide after abortion, even though the evidence of such a risk is scant at best. Some years ago, some states required doctors to tell women that there was a link between abortion and breast cancer cancer,, even though the research supporting that claim was similarly inadequate.
In contrast, Arizona permits withholding accurate accurate information from pregnant women. Arizona Arizona law protects doctors from “wrongful birth” lawsuits if they withhold information about fetal health from pregnant patients who later give birth to a child with a disability or illness. It’s a clever marriage of tort reform and anti-abortion policy. policy. A woman with a wanted pregnancy who discovers that her fetus has a serious health problem might decide to terminate her pregnancy. In Arizona, she can remain in blissful ignorance. After she delivers, however,, she’s barred from suing the doctor on the ground that she however would have terminated the pregnancy if she’d been fully informed. It’s now her baby, and her problem. Government suppression of information is thought control – and censorship. It’s not much different when the government selectively force-feeds certain information. Propaganda and indoctrination a re close cousins of censorship. It’s easy to understand why people resort to such techniques in pursuit of what they consider a higher end. In this country, however, however, that’s not how it works. Whatever our individual views of the divisive abortion debate, the Constitution allows us to form our own beliefs without government interference, and to make decisions about our private lives according to those — Joan Bertin beliefs.
NCAC mourns the passing of Alan Reitman at age 91, on July 8, 2012, after a lifetime of dedication to the fight for free expression. Alan was one of the founders of NCAC and served on its board for many years, in addition to over 40 years of distinguished service with the ACLU. NCAC is grateful for Alan's support and extraordinary commitment to our work, and for his life's work on behalf of a more free and just society. He made a difference.
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Join NCAC for our Free Speech Matters: Annual Celebration of Free Speech and Its Defenders on Defenders on Monday, November 12, 2012 at Tribeca 360° in Manhattan. Visit ncac.org/benefit for rsvp and ncac.org/benefit for sponsorship information, or email
[email protected]. A Wisconsin state park cancelled the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s play, The Bible: Complete Word of God, Abridged , after criticism that the play is “blasphemous.” It had been performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC and by church groups. It contains jokes like: “Children of Israel, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is I talked Him down to 10. The bad news is adultery is still one of them.” Check out our new censorship wiki! NCAC is now beta testing our project at wiki.ncac.org Censorpedia project Censorpedia wiki.ncac.org.. Browse over a thousand articles about cases from around the world and sign up to edit or contribute your own!
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Kansas City officials are considering complaints that a sculpture by Chinese artist Yu Chang in the Overland Park Arboretum and Botanical Gardens encourages “sexting.” The statue depicts a headless woman’s body with bare breasts taking a photo of herself. The artist has said the piece speaks to women’s identities and the objectification of their bodies in the virtual world.
A Maryland State Legislator ignited an Internet firestorm in September when he penned a letter to the Baltimore Ravens’ owner demanding an end to player Brendon Ayanbadejo’s public support for same-sex marriage. Go Green! You Green! You can reduce your CN emailed paper mail and get CN emailed to you. Send an email to CNGreen@ to CNGreen@ ncac.org or ncac.org or check the box on your reply envelope to start getting CN in your inbox.
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Celebrate Banned Books Week from Week from September 30 to October 6! NCAC will bring a Banned Books Library to the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday, September 23 so literature lovers can be recorded reading aloud from favorite challenged works, with the video to be uploaded as part of the Banned Books Week Internet Readout! See for more ways bannedbooksweek.org for bannedbooksweek.org to celebrate the Freedom to Read, and for details about brooklynbookfestival.org for brooklynbookfestival.org September 23rd.
Watch what you wear when you fly! Airline passengers have been bumped or harassed over their attire. One woman was harangued for showing too much cleavage, a female legislator was required to remove her pro-choice t-shirt containing the word “fuck”, and a student was bumped over a t-shirt saying “Terrists gonna kill us all.”
NCAC in Action: Sex and Censorship Ah, sex. We love to think about it, we also love to condemn it. Censors are second perhaps only to pornographers in the amount of time they spend talking about sex. NCAC was launched in the wake of a 1973 landmark obscenity case, Miller v. California, California, and to this day censorship of sex is the biggest single challenge for this organization. To get a sense of the extent of censorship of sex-related material today, here is a sampling of recent issues and incidents NCAC has tackled:
standards” due to nudity, were reinstated as a result. Sexual orientation in school If nudity arouses the censor, it’s not hard to imagine the response to suggestions of alternative sexuality. In June 2012, the Erie, IL school board voted to remove Todd Parr’s The Family Book from from the school’s diversity curriculum because of a page with the phrase “some families have two moms or two dads.” NCAC’s letter explaining the school’s ethical, legal and educational responsibilities at stake was co-signed by nine organizations, including The Family Book publisher, publisher, Little Brown and Co.
Sex in books In 2011, NCAC successfully overturned a ban against Sherman Indian as part of the Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian as curriculum for all high school classes in the Richland, WA school district. A board member proposed rejecting the book because of “gratuitous language and depictions of sex.” In our experience, any mention of sex in a novel included in the school curriculum, as suggested reading, or even only present in the school library, can provoke a challenge. Given the prevalence of sexual themes in world literature and art, such complaints are plentiful. Unfortunately, school administrators sometimes prefer to appease a few disgruntled parents rather than follow the recommendations of the professional staff who selected the book.
Sexual orientation in college Earlier in the year, Villanova University revoked performance artist Tim Miller’s artist-in-residency theater workshop. Miller is outspokenly gay – a fact sufficient to make him unwelcome, independent of the content of the workshop. NCAC joined the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education in calling on Villanova to live up to its own stated standards of academic freedom. Internet Filters and LGBT issues Internet filters required in schools and libraries (see p. 2) invariably screen out sexual content as a matter of course. However, sometimes schools and libraries go further in their efforts to block certain ideas. Not long ago, NCAC teamed up with the ACLU and Tennessee students to overturn the selective blocking of LGBT websites from school workstations – noting that websites attacking homosexuality remained unblocked. School officials only relented after a lawsuit was filed.
Nudity in books The mere suggestion of nakedness – in an illustrated children’s story about a cowboy taking his yearly bath (with his private parts cleverly covered) – was enough to provoke a book’s removal from school libraries in the Annville-Cleona (PA) district this year. Some parents expressed concern that, as a result of viewing or reading Amy Timberlake’s The Dirty Cowboy, Cowboy, “Children may come to the conclusion that looking at nudity is OK, and therefore pornography is OK.”
Private companies regulating your fantasies Nudity in public exhibition spaces and LGBT content in schools are predictable targets of censorship. But would you think that a private company would take it upon itself to police your fantasies? PayPal threatened to terminate the accounts of online marketplaces offering erotic ebooks containing fantasies about bestiality, incest, and rape. Under pressure from NCAC, organizations representing booksellers, authors, and other free speech groups, PayPal relented.
Nudes on display: sexually suggestive, sexually harassing, or none of the above? Nudes in public exhibition spaces are a constant target of attack. Sometimes the concern is that a nude is sexually suggestive, that children might see it, or that it constitutes sexual harassment. NCAC is frequently called on to explain to local officials that the display of a nude, in itself, does not constitute sexual harassment, obscenity, or harm to minors. Quite often, as recently happened in Marin County, we are able to persuade city officials to retain or reinstate the art.
Abstinence-only Sex Education Censoring sex education presents a serious danger to the very physical health and safety of the children that pro-censorship organizations claim they protect: NCAC has campaigned against abstinence-only sex education as a First Amendment issue. Indeed, compelling schools to teach abstinence-only means suppressing information about STIs, safe sex, pregnancy prevention, and a whole array of other much-needed health issues. The Affordable Care Act passed by Congress and signed by President Obama brought funding for abstinence-only sex education back in 2010 after the White House zeroed out grants in 2008.
Nudity online Facebook notoriously censors all photographic representations of nudity. Other Internet platforms censor it selectively. Not long ago, NCAC and the Electronic Frontier Foundation worked together to convince YouTube YouTube to change its content guidelines and exempt artistic content from its ban on nudity. Video artist Amy Greenfield’s works, which had been taken down for “violating community
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