The Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights plans another obscenity hearing February 26 – this one covering the implications of the Extreme Associates case – and Free Speech Coalition has already cast a wary eye upon it, zapping the subcommittee for once again disinviting the Adult entertainment industry from testifying.
Called "Obscenity Prosecution of the First Amendment," and presided over by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) – who chaired a recent and much-commented such hearing – the subcommittee is said to have failed to notify any Adult industry representatives of its planned occurrence, and FSC said attempts to present witnesses friendly to the industry were rebuffed by subcommittee officials.
In a January 21 decision, obscenity charges against Extreme owner-producer Rob Black and his wife Lizzy Borden were thrown out by U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster. “We find that the federal obscenity statutes place a burden on the exercise of the fundamental rights of liberty, privacy and speech,” Lancaster wrote in his original ruling.
That ruling prompted Brownback and fellow Judiciary Committee member Orrin Hatch, the full committee's former chairman, to denounce Lancaster in a scathing op-ed column in The Washington Times, accusing Lancaster of ignoring the law to set his own agenda.
"When the people at Extreme sent these films through the mail, they violated federal anti-obscenity statutes," the two senators wrote. "Yet what should have been a slam-dunk conviction turned into a ruling that these statutes are unconstitutional. When a judge avoids ruling on what is in the Constitution by ruling on something that isn't, however, you know something political is afoot."
AVN senior editor Mark Kernes, in his own letter of comment on the Brownback/Hatch op-ed, accused the two senators of "deliver(ing) sermons about 'judicial activism' because they can't argue the legal facts that led… Lancaster to a complete and reasonable assessment of the law."
FSC executive director Michele Freridge vowed the group would push for "objective and professional written testimony" from seasoned First Amendment attorneys goes into the subcommittee record, to make the full Senate "aware of all sides of this very important issue."
