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Censorship has been a hot issue in Washington recently. Highlighting a flurry of minor arrests for possession or selling "obscene" pictures, and some stupid censorship bills bouncing around in Congress, was the drawn-out case of Dr. Herman Womack, former philosophy professor and publisher of 4 beefcake magazines.

First tried in Post Office hearings, deliberately protracted in hopes of bankrupting defendants awaiting a decision, Dr. Womack appeared in March before Fed. Dist. Judge Alexander Hotlzoff, on charge of sending obscene fotos to persons on his 40,000-name mailing lists (which Hotlzoff rapped authorities for illegally seizing). Hotlzoff barred a defense attempt to introduce generally accepted nude paintings and statues as evidence, and found Womack guilty.

PO departmental hearings on whether Dr. Womack's mags were obscene dragged on till Judge Edward Tamm gave the PO 2 weeks to make up its mind. "I don't think Congress intended that the Post Office, by inactivity, could take a publisher out of business."

Chief Postal Inspector David Stephens in an interview gloated over a 1958 law "that helps the department get around" Supreme Court limitations on obscenity prosecutions. In defiance of Constitutional guarantees to trial by an impartial jury of and in the state and district

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by dal mcintire

where an alleged crime is committed, the new law permits the department to prosecute a publisher or seller wherever the PO delivers his materials, choosing an area where local prejudice makes a conviction most likely, and also hoping to bankrupt the publisher by extra travel expenses. Stephens bragged that the PO has illegally seized thousands of mailing lists. As the Washington POST asked, quoting Juvenal (that great homosexual writer): "Who is going to watch these watchmen?"

Meanwhile the Postmaster General's bitter feud with the nudist magazines erupted again when SUNSHINE AND HEALTH, which has frequently bested the ex-auto salesman in court, published a foto of a Florida postal employee and family in the altogether, with a catty comment about his nudist principles not interfering with his postal duties. Quick action taken to fire the man...

By mid-August, Dr. Womack was back in court before Fed. Dist. Judge George Hart, Jr., defending the mailability of 3 of his mags: GRECIAN GUILD PICTORIAL, TRIM and MANUAL. A D. C. psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Miller, testified, "It takes more than a picture of a nude male to turn a man into a homosexual."

Dr. Frank S. Caprio, author of pompous-popular sex books well larded with "pornographic" passages, said the magazines could have a malevolent effect on adoles-