tangents

news & views

by dal mcintire

January 14th started as a routine, hectic day at ONE's office. The phone rang. Something in Bill Lambert's face, as he listened to the news, gave a hint. "The Supreme Court's been moving?" I asked. It was true. We had won! In a moment, the whole atmosphere surrounding our work had changed.

When Eric Julber, our lawyer, had come into his office that morning, he was greeted with a deluge of congratulations, even before he knew what they were for. Two radio programs the night before had mentioned the Supreme Court ruling in our favor. Then he called us...

Out to the newsstands to get details. No mention in L. A. dailies. Ditto for N. Y. Herald Tribune. Ditto for Frisco papers. Could the whole report have been a false alarm? Some papers did mention a ruling clearing two nudist magazines. Maybe someone had gotten their information crossed? No. We found it. Well down, in an inside story in the NEW YORK TIMES (airmail edition) of Jan. 14th. Finding something in the TIMES can be a formidable task, and we'd almost given up, but there it was, toward the bottom of a full-column article describing the rulings in favor of Sunshine and Health and SUN:

... This view was supported by the fact that in another brief order, the court today reversed a post office

ban on a magazine, one, which deals with homosexuality. The court again cited only the Roth case.

"One Question Raised-The petition for review filed by the lawyer for one, Eric Julber of Los Angeles, had apparently raised only one question: was the magazine 'obscene' within the statute banning importation of obscene matter? The court's order appeared to answer: No... That was the interpretation that Government lawyers generally put on the brief, unsigned orders issued today. The decision, so interpreted, means that the Supreme Court is insisting on a rigorous, narrow definition of obscenity.' It means, as one lawyer put it, that the Court is going to keep a real weather eye out itself to prevent censorship of anything but what might be called hard-core pornography.' Last June, in the case of Roth vs. United States, the Supreme Court held that obscenity was not entitled to the constitutional protection of free speech and press. But it laid down the strict standard that, to be obscene, a work as a whole must be found to appeal to the average man's 'prurient interest." Another mention was made of the ruling on a separate page in the TIMES.

ONE NEWS SERVICE got out a release that day. Several editors asked for more information about ONE. What other papers printed

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