In a New Orleans suburb -- Jefferson Parish -- three Major Video stores were
accused of violating the state's obscenity law for renting three sexually
explicit tapes:
"Dale's House of Anal,"
"Back Door Club," and
"Indecent Obsessions."
The trial took place in June 2001. If found guilty, Major Video would face a
$2,500 fine per store and would be banned from stocking these three tapes.
Adult movies made up 10 percent of Major Video's inventory and 25 percent of
its monthly movie rentals. (Editor's Note: See Adult Video News's annual sales charts from 2001 for regional data on video stores' adult-movie inventory.)
What the Jurors Saw
It was a six-person jury: four men and two women. Five of the jurors said they
previously had seen at least one adult film. The jurors spent five hours
watching the three videos, which by all accounts, leave nothing to the
imagination. For example, in "Dale's House of Anal" (roughly 120
minutes long), nearly 90 minutes of it depicts sexual acts. There are five
"vignettes": one scene involving one man and one woman; three scenes involving
two men and one woman; and one scene involving one man and two women. Each of
the five vignettes has:
Extreme close-ups of male-female vaginal and anal penetration, some lasting
several minutes in duration;
A "money shot," mostly involving a man (or men) ejaculating into the woman's
mouth;
Close-ups of a woman performing oral sex on a man.
In addition, "Dale's House of Anal" shows:
Oral sex between two women;
Men performing oral sex on women;
"Double penetration": In two of the vignettes, the women have simultaneous
anal and vaginal sex. In one of those instances, a woman is performing anal sex
on another woman using a strap-on penis while a man penetrates the woman
vaginally;
Multiple uses of "dildos," including one instance of double-penetration,
where a man penetrates a woman vaginally while another penetrates anally with a
dildo.
If you had been the juror, how would you have voted in this obscenity
trial?
Before you vote, keep this in mind: If the U.S. obscenity law, as defined in
1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court, still stipulates pornography stands or falls on
the "community standard" test--is there a "community standard" in an internet
world? Read highlights of how the defense and the prosecution argued
that one to the jurors.
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