Clean up the act

By Robert H. Snyder

Plain Dealer Columbus Bureau Chief

COLUMBUS — Charles H. Keating Jr., a Cincinnati lawyer and businessman, has become famous as a pornography fighter.

He is the founder of Citizens for Decency Through Law, a nationwide

Columbus

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organization. He served on former President Richard M. Nixon's Com-

mission on

Pornography.

Obscenity

and

Keating, 53, was main speaker at a Statehouse demonstration last Thursday in which about 200 antismut supporters rallied against pornography. Hustler magazine publisher Larry C. Flynt was one of their primary targets. About 100 Hustler employes showed up to watch.

Some in the crowd were surprised by Keating's speech.

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At one point. his voice blaring over a public address system Keating described activities by homosexual males. He said these are sometimes pictured in dirty magazines.

Standing on the Statehouse steps, Keating said, "Homosexuals are people who degrade themselves not even to the status of animals... they take each other's sexual organs in unnatural ways."

He then went on to describe in detail just how this is done.

Before his address Keating appeared for, an hour-long interview program on WCVO-FM, a Christianoriented radio station here.

The station's news director, Joe M Bargar, said Friday that Keating's graphic comments during his speech were not aired in their followup coverage. "We would not consider it in good taste," he said.

This newspaper also would not carry his exact words, deeming them to be in questionable taste.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reporter who covered the speech said he felt the language was in questionable taste for a family newspaper, Keating's brother William is president of the Enquirer.

On Friday Jean E. Kidwell, the rally's coordinator, said, "I was a little surprised he (Keating) would do that." She noted there were small children in the crowd.

But then Mrs. Kidwell, an organizer of Ohioans for Decency, went on to defend Keating's choice of words: "I think the public is so ignorant . you have to do this to awaken the apathetic public."

She added, "When people are in the gutter, you have to get down to their own level... you reached the point where we can stoop to their own level."

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It is ironic that people who claim they want to uplift the community's

environment take such an attitude. Keating is an articulate spokesman for the anti-obscenity crowd. He makes some strong points, but his tactics are questionable.

If he is against pornography and offensive material being produced and sold, fine. But some might wonder why it was necessary in addressing a Statehouse crowd to use such graphic language.

Maybe he should clean up his own act first.