With whiteish hair and a puckish face, the Free Speech Coalition's new executive director, Bill Lyon, kind of reminds you of a senior member of the Osmond family. Lyon has been at the job about four months now. In an interview conducted at the AVN Maui Conference, Lyon had this to say about some of the FSC's current projects, including the development of state organizations, or chapters.
Lyon: "The first [FSC] state organization is West Virginia, and, as it happened, an attorney from West Virginia had been in contact with our California lobbyist, Kat Sunlove for about six months. He talked about the fact that he'd like to become involved with us in some way in the FSC. When we developed the concept of the state chapter, it became a natural thing that he'd come in as first one of the bunch. He was associated with a lobbyist, a gentleman named Lopez, who went into the West Virginia legislature and got some language changed in a bill that was going through. That was quite helpful to us. Then, we started trying to contact people, FSC members in various states who might not necessarily spearhead a new state organization, but could direct us to someone who might be interested in doing it.
" Right along with that, we were working together with the FSC board to develop the associate member category which we had not had in the past. That's really a key to the state organizations because they'll probably be much more made up by these associate members than they will be of people directly involved in the industry. In almost every case, we have ended up with an attorney involved in each state.
[Lyon says video stores will play an important part in developing the state organizations and soliciting associate memberships. "We've also arranged to develop a self-mailer brochure that will go in all the stores, explaining what we're trying to do," Lyon said. "People can join and it will be $25 a year. We also invite those people to become active in the state organizations."
Lyon: "Our problem in West Virginia is that we went ahead with this but didn't have it well thought-out in terms of structure and organization. It was a test situation. Now that we realize the relationship that has to exist between these two organizations- the national Free Speech and the state organization- we are drawing up to what amounts to a licenssing agreement which will allow them to use the Free Speech Coalition name based on a payment to us on an annualized basis and certain restrictions as to what they can do with that name or ways that they can use it. We feel that this is the best overall way of organizing it. Each state has got different laws in the way it can be set up."
[FSC state chapters in development include New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Texas, Washington, Oregon and California."]
Lyon: "It's pretty surprising how people have responded to this considering the fact thaat we haven't promoted it a lot. It's been word-of-mouth. For example, I talked to Frank [Kay] when I was in New Jersey. Frank said he used an attorney [Jules Zalon] in Newark. I called him on the phone and he was interested in working with it. It's now a question of it being something he'll be able to work with."
G. Ross: "One of the key issues in the adult business is piracy. I can see where the state organization can play a very effective role."
Lyon: "That's a very good point. They could be our eyes and ears to pick up on that sort of thing. I certinly see them as a major source of local level information in terms of zoning problems. Not only reacting to them in political action, but getting us the information ahead of time. So often we don't find out until, literally, the night before a meeting that it's happening and it's too late for us to take action. I'm hoping that this will give us an intelligence network that will give us information quicker."
[Lyon also foresees the need for the FSC to expand its fights, territorially, beyond the adult industry and be involved in other high profile First Amendment causes. Such a fight is taking place in Michigan in an attempt to ban the Harry Potter books from school libraries.]
Lyon: "That is a situation that gave us an opportunity to become an active part of a broader Free Speech issue. The issue was that the principal of this particular school in Michigan had chosen to eliminate that book from the library which is pure censorship. It was a fantasy situation aand the thought was that this type of fantasy is not healthy for young people to read. What would we do with Tolkien?
"Our situation has been that many of these broader First Amendment operations are willing to have us help them sub rosa but are not willing to give us credit for being involved in their group - things like the Media Coalition where you have the Library Association and so on. They're sponsored by Playboy to a large degree, but they're not so sure they want to be directly involved with us. What I'm trying to do is show that we have interests that are as broad as theirs, that we're not this narrow focus group that's only interested in adult issues, so that we can become acceptable as truly being First Amendment advocates."
[Lyon had stated during the conference that FSC intends to be involved in high-profile, national, precedent-setting issues.]
Lyon: "The reason for that is very simple. I'd love to fight the fight every place, but we can't do that."
G. Ross: "One of the original intentions of the organization in one of its reincarnate forms was to create a legal war chest. Do you foresee resurrecting that objective?"
Lyon: "Yes. I defintely think so."
G. Ross: "Will Free Speech be involved in stocks and mutual funds?"
Lyon [laughing]: "I don't know about the stock market considering this week, but we certainly need to have a set-aside fund for those special purposes. And, may I add, though we can't go out and directly defend many of these small cases, we can and do offer legal advice to those people. Another of my projects is to set up a bibliography and a library of all the available research that has been done to date on issues that come up in these cases. There is a lot of research available. Some of it is not too authentic or might not be scientifically reproducible, but at least there is something to help their lawyers where you might have a local lawyer who really has no experience in this kind of issue."
G. Ross: "Many times a First Amendment case will go down the crapper because of that."
Lyon: "A local attorney's probably not going to refuse the business if he has a chance at it. But we definitely should make all our members aware that there's a First Amendment Lawyers Association and we do recommend lawyers.
"We need to communicate much more with our members on a variety of issues and subjects. Many of the guys out there have lost track of us except for the e-mails and faxes that they're getting weekly from Kat on her little electronic what's going on around the country free express-thing. People want to know what's going on with other issues, and I'd like to see that expanded."
G. Ross: "When first we spoke, I joked about your being in the honeymoon phase of your job. Is the honeymoon still there?"
Lyon: "Yes, and I'm hoping that it will go on for a long time. I really have met some terrific people in this organization. I was enthusiastic when I came in. I'm more enthusiastic now. I think we're going to get some things done."
G. Ross: "You have said that June 15 is the target date for getting the Free Speech website revamped."Lyon: "People will see a much more visual presentation, a more current presentation in the sense that the site will change more often. We'll probably have a monthly feature story plus a couple of monthly columns that will constantly change. We'll be building up what I call a press club in which reporters can go in and get current news releases and archive news releases- things that are relative from other sources that we ccan link to that might be important for them. We'll also have a speakers bureau set up where we can set up interviews with the stars or something like that. Then we'll have a private area on the site for associate members and a private area for full members. Those are areas that will be keyed to your membership card number. For the associate members we hope to promote some discounts on things, special deals, as well as offering them timely information on lobbying and how they can help in their state. We'll have a company store with all of our merchandise with visuals. We currently offer merchandise but don't show any pictures of it. It's also my intention to set up a library on the conservative religious issues so we can show a history of all the sexual peccadilloes of the conservative ministers of this country. In comparison to what our folks do, we're tame.
