stitution, which reads, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and

warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized." In effect, therefore, when a piece of first class mail has been addressed, stamped, sealed, and put in the mails, it has already become the personal and private property of the addressee, and cannot be tampered with without due process.

As the reader doubtless knows, legal controversies on the subject of "obscenity" have raged over hundreds of books, periodicals, pictorial matter and the like. The reader doubtless knows, also, an issue of ONE Magazine once went through the entire mill of Postal Obscenity Regulations, and through three trials, the last of which was by the U. S. Supreme Court. That body vindicated the magazine-issue in question as not obscene. In the process, however, those who attended the earlier trials were astonished to hear judicial opinions which implied that homosexuality, per se, is an obscene subject, except as dealt with from scientific or clinical standpoints, just as homosexual behavior, per se, is "lewd," "dissolute," etc. under present legal definitions.

Supposing there were to be erased from Postal Obscenity statutes that part of the proscription which applies to printed, pictorial, or other artistic material. This would be tantamount to saying that the Federal Government would permit its postal services to distribute any kind of literature or art, i.e. material in which the "obscenity," or other "danger," if any, was confined to subjective significance and effect. Would this flood our mails (more than they are already)

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with printed or pictorial matter now illegal to the extent that it could be adjudged "obscene"? We think not. Most of the desirability and glamour of so-called "obscenity" results from the sex taboos of tradition, as presently incorporated into laws, and much of that would be stripped away by public and official indifference to private tastes-plus increasing public emphasis upon what constitutes good taste in literature and the arts including the representation of sexual subjects therein.

Yet it is obvious that. if Postal Regulations were to be revised as suggested above, the individual recipient of mail would have no recourse, other than private, against publishers or purveyors of material which that individual regards as obscene, and therefore objectionable. What average individual could afford the legal costs involved with the prosecution of, for example, a purveyor of certain erotic photographs which have fallen through the mails, into the hands of a young son or daughter? In extreme cases, where the material concerned would be almost-universally considered disgusting and reprehensible, he could turn immediately to police authorities. However, in borderline cases, where personal opinions might vary widely, and where the material is not in manifest violation of criminal statutes, such a course might not be possible and borderline cases of "obscenity" constitute a considerable majority. Under the circumstances, it would seem more realistic to leave the basic Postal statute as it is, as to categories, revising only the final proscription to eliminate the word "nonmailable" (as concerns printed, pictorial or other artistic materials) and saying instead, ". . . Is declared actionable by U.S. Postal Authorities. against the sender, upon the due filing of complaint by the recipient of such matter through the mails." The present privileges of postal inspection and

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