January 17, 1968

Sex

There is a crude joke about one part of Hell inhabited by sinners up to their chins in a huge lake of filth. They constantly implore each other, “Don’t make a wave!”

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’re wading in a morass of pornographic filth every day, and sometimes the waves threaten to swamp us.

I speak of the raw sex dished out daily by television, movies, magazines and books.

If there was some way of restricting this gutter slop to responsible audiences, I wouldn’t give the matter a second thought. However, I condemn as criminal the peddling of sex in the mass communication media.

Parents are powerless to inculcate their children with a proper perspective of sex when its pleasures are magnified to ecstasy, its dangers ignored, and its perversions clothed with normality.

* * *

We gathered our family about us one night last week to enjoy an evening of television. “Burke’s Law” was our first choice, touted by the reviewers as one of the better private-eye shows. The plot was mildly ingenious, but the one-hour program crawled with well-endowed, bikini-clad girls only remotely related to the story line.

For some reason, the detective had to make frequent visits to a house (not a home) where an old fashioned Roman orgy was underway. When the nearly-nude cuties weren’t wrestling on a couch with some guy in bathing trunks, they were lustily engaged in dancing the twist, with variations yet.

A one-minute close-up of a wobbling fanny added nothing to development of the story, but perhaps it did run up a fever for the sponsor’s product.

Now, I admit to a measure of interest in the female anatomy, and I don’t walk out of a night club whose floor show includes an artful strip teaser.

But as a parent, I object most strenuously to having the flesh attractions of Las Vegas and Calumet City piped into my living room for the wonderment of my 12-year-old son.

Shaken by my first encounter of the evening with the boob-tube, I switched to this season’s new sensation, “ Peyton Place.” This is television’s answer to the soap opera, only here the problems are what to do about an unsanctioned pregnancy, how to keep your mother from sleeping with the man next door, and who will be tonight’s sex partner.

The current offering involved a complex relationship between a half-brother and half-sister and the former’s neurotic mother. In deference to my 14-year-old daughter, I finally turned off the television set and got out the Monopoly board - a tedious game, but a somewhat less stimulating bedtime diversion.

* * *

The next day I made it a point to pause in my travels to inspect the news-stand offerings of three friendly neighborhood drug stores.

Invariably I had to elbow aside teenage boys smirking at the out-size measurements of “Playboy’s” “playmate,” or nudging each other at discovery of a “model” in a more daring dishabille.

In all, I bought 19 girlie magazines for $5.70. Their contents ranged from photographs of a weekend nudist party aboard a cabin cruiser, through a Paris sex school, to a list of tortures that bring sex gratification.

I asked one of the druggists why he stocked such trash. “I have to,” was his reply, “or the distributor won’t let me have the popular magazines my customers want.”

The defense against this pressure is so simple. An organized refusal by druggists to knuckle under to the package deal would quickly bring the vendors to heel or drive them out of business.

* * *

Before you get up a little hatchet party for the nearest magazine stand, investigate the books in your public library. Mrs. Williams, who reads everything on the Best Seller list, recently checked out a copy of “A Flag Full of Stars,” by Don Robertson.

This must be good literature - at least the experts tell us it is - but obscene is the proper adjective to describe it. My wife assures me that Robertson’s pot boiler is typical of many novels gracing the shelves of the public library.

* * *

While I’m at it, I will toss a few brickbats at the movies - perhaps the wellspring of the flood of filth.

In this case, I believe the retail proprietor has a real problem. There just aren’t enough movies produced to give the responsible theatre operator acceptable alternatives to the sex extravaganzas.

Unlike the pharmacy to which magazines are a sideline, the theatre sells only movies and popcorn. A boycott by local movie managers would have to be nationwide - an impractical approach.

A large segment of our population is obsessed with the material and sensual enjoyments of our Great Society. They will gladly spend money for a peep-hole thrill, and some greedy movie producer will rush to accommodate.

The big smash right now is a caper in nakedness called “A Shot in the Dark,” and the double entendre of the title is no coincidence. The Best Picture of the Year, believe it or not, is a farce of fornication called “Tom Jones,” a Keystone Cops comedy with bare breast.

“Cleopatra,” starring those unabashed adulterers Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, would be a dud without an earthy love scene on the queen’s bed.

The theatres are making an effort to label their most passionate attractions as “adult entertainment” and to restrict ticket sales to those in their late teens or older. This is a step in the right direction but it is ineffectual in meeting the problem of stimulation of unmarried young people.

* * *

I contend there is no need for sex in the popular media.

And don’t give me that hogwash about art and censorship. It doesn’t take a museum director or a Supreme Court Justice to distinguish pornography from art or licentiousness from free speech.

I suggest the extension of a proven method of judging serious threats to society, and which is fully within the framework of the Bill of Rights - the jury.

We entrust the freedom and even the lives of accused citizens to twelve good men and true, chosen at random from the populace. Why not impanel a jury of ordinary citizens from time to time to judge the moral acceptability of material designed for the mass media?

Only a UNANIMOUS vote against a particular writing or photograph would send it to the trash can. This wouldn’t clear up the filth to the satisfaction of parents. I am confident, however, that the proposed control would weed out the worst offenders.

Artists, writers and actors still would have a greater latitude than history has ever known to portray the beautiful aspects of love, the social conditions of our society, and the seamy news events of the day which all together comprise the fabric of life.

By Lindsey Wilger Williams, retired newspaper publisher and syndicated columnist