|
 Undercover government agents enter a store. While browsing,
they discover some publications that the local regime doesn't like.
The owner of the store is hauled away and
imprisoned.
Does
this describe something that happened in Nazi Germany? China? Under
the rule of the Taliban? No, this happened right here in Omaha,
Nebraska, USA, to a local store owner, John Haltom, nicknamed "Dr.
John."
At the
beginning of 2000, in response to complaints, Haltom
was cited for distributing obscene materials from his store Dr.
John's Lingerie Boutique near 72nd & Pacific in Omaha. The
materials that were purchased from the Dr. John's store by
undercover officers were just X rated videos showing
people (consenting adults) having sex. In April 2000,
Omaha City Prosecutor Marty Conboy and assistant city prosecutors
used unconstitutional anti-porn laws to railroad Haltom
and convict him on two obscenity charges. Douglas County Judge Edna
Atkins sentenced Haltom to 4 months in prison just for selling these
sexually explicit videos. (Omaha World Herald, 4/27/2000) In
July 2000, Haltom was railroaded again by Marty Conboy and his staff
on another charge for distributing obscene materials. Again, the
materials bought from the Dr. Johns store by undercover officers
were just sexually explicit videos. Douglas County Judge Joseph
Caniglia sentenced Haltom to nine months in prison for this
conviction. (Omaha World Herald, 7/15/2000) City Prosecutor
Marty Conboy and his staff continued to prosecute Haltom until
Haltom's legal expenses began to mount up. To avoid more costly
legal battles, Haltom was intimidated into pleading no contest to
two more charges of distributing obscene materials. He was fined
$2000, and three additional charges were dropped as part of the plea
bargain agreement.
 In April 2002, The
Nebraska State Supreme Court overturned the guilty verdict of Haltom's first trial.
However, in November 2002, the Nebraska State Supreme Court upheld
the guilty verdict in Haltom's other trial. (This is hypocritical,
as the Nebraska State Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that video stores
in Bellevue have the right to rent porn videos. See Omaha
World Herald, 8/27/99. More on this below.) In June 2003, Haltom
began serving his nine month sentence as a political prisoner. He
was released in December 2003 (receiving an early release for good
behavior). In early 2004, Haltom was intimidated into pleading
no contest to another unconstitutional obscenity charge for selling
the same type of videos from one of his other Dr. John's stores in Scottsbluff. He
was fined $1000. Despite Conboy's efforts to shut it down, the Dr. John's Lingerie store in Omaha remains open today
and is still selling the same type of porn videos.
The materials Haltom
was prosecuted for selling at the Dr. John's store are
just X rated videos showing people who are consenting adults
having sex. These porn videos are sold in a store only accessible
by those 18 and older who want to look at porn. After a minor did
buy a video from the Dr. John's store, the store upgraded its ID
policy and now cards everyone upon entry. There are no peep show
booths or theaters for these movies at the Dr. John's store. The
videos cannot be watched until the customer gets to the privacy of
their own home. And of course, the videos are totally harmless,
Haltom was sentenced to jail for a truly victimless "crime." Anybody
who is offended by these videos can simply make the
decision not to visit the
store.
During
the time Conboy was trying to force the Dr.
Johns store to shut down, the same kind of porn videos were
still readily available
in other cities in the metro area anyway. In fact, a
Bellevue store that rented porn, Couch Potato Video on 51st &
Harrison St., was  literally
on the
Bellevue-Omaha Border. In this area, the dividing line
between
Bellevue and Omaha runs along Harrison St. If this store had
been on the
other side of Harrison St., it would have been in Omaha.
Another Bellevue
video store that rented porn, Captain Video on Fort
Crook Rd, was only a couple of miles outside of Omaha. In Council
Bluffs, the Romantix Adult Emporium, a porn shop at
32nd & Broadway,
is right across the bridge from downtown Omaha.
Although in the 1990s former Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg did
attempt to
force Bellevue and other Sarpy County video stores to stop
renting porn, he was unsuccessful. Fortunately, in
1994 and 1998, the Sarpy County Court ruled that the
Bellevue video
stores have the First Amendment Right to rent the videos.
The Sarpy
County Court's decision was upheld by the Nebraska State
Supreme
Court in 1999 (Omaha World Herald, 8/27/99).
City
prosecutor Marty Conboy doesn't just want to censor porn
videos, he also
wants to censor artwork. In 1994, Conboy threatened the
owner of a bar called The Run with arrest and prosecution under
unconstitutional obscenity laws for displaying a gay art
collection.
Conboy deemed the collection of pencil sketches and
paintings
offensive because they depicted men having sex. The owner,
Terry
Tippit, agreed to remove the collection until the case could
be
decided by a judge in a civil court case instead of a
criminal trial. Even
though the art was displayed in a place for adults only, in 1998 Douglas
County
District Judge Michael Amdor ruled in Conboy's favor,
indicating
that the pieces of art "should be destroyed or removed from
the
state." (Omaha World Herald, 1/8/98) This judge conducted his
court room in much the same way that the Nazis conducted book
burnings.
The complaints about obscene materials at the Dr. Johns store that
later resulted in Haltom's prosecution might have come from members
of the fundamentalist anti-porn  group Omaha for
Decency. This group, led by chairperson Don Kohls, monitors the
contents of local book and video stores and tries to convince stores
to remove materials that are against the group's religion. Omaha for
Decency also pressures cities to use unconstitutional obscenity laws
to prosecute and/or intimidate stores who sell or rent sexually
explicit material. In the case of the Bellevue video stores, Omaha
for Decency was directly responsible for former Nebraska Attorney
General Don Stenberg's failed attempt to have porn videos removed
from the stores' shelves. In the early 1990s, members of Omaha for
Decency began complaining to the Sarpy County Attorney's office
about the porn videos. Michael Wellman, the Sarpy County
Attorney at the time, said that the only complaints his office ever
received about the videos came from members of Omaha for Decency.
Obviously nobody else in the Omaha metro area cared what adults
viewed in the privacy of their own homes. (Since the Bellevue video
stores did not have any peep show booths or theaters for these
movies, the movies could only be viewed in the privacy of
customers' homes.) When Wellman's office refused to use
unconstitutional obscenity laws to prosecute the stores, members of
Omaha for Decency began complaining to then Nebraska Attorney
General Don Stenberg. Stenberg then attempted to force the
stores to remove their porn sections. Stenberg's actions were a direct
result of complaints from Omaha for Decency, not from the
actions of law enforcement, politicians, the general public, or
local prosecutors. Fortunately, the courts ruled against Don
Stenberg and for the video stores' First Amendment Rights to carry
the videos. If it hadn't been for Omaha for Decency, these stores
may never have had to go to court.
It is not just porn
movies that Omaha for Decency tries to censor. In 1991, a member of
Omaha for Decency pressured the city of Omaha to prosecute a Read
All About It bookstore for selling, not porn videos, but books which
merely contained sexually explicit language. Fortunately, the store
was acquitted of the unconstitutional charges. Omaha for Decency
also wants to dictate what music Omahans can and cannot listen to. In
1992, Omaha for Decency conducted a sting operation against
music stores in Omaha. The group sent minors into the stores
to buy The 2 Live Crew rap album Sports Weekend, As Nasty As
They Wanna Be Part II, which contains sexually explicit lyrics.
When some of the stores sold the album to the minors, Omaha for
Decency convinced the city to file charges against the stores for
selling sexually explicit materials to minors. The charges were
later dropped when the stores agreed to take steps to prevent minors
from buying albums with sexually explicit lyrics. Although the
purpose of the sting operation was supposed to be
stopping the sales of the material to minors, Omaha for Decency
admitted that they wanted the album banned altogether
in Omaha. (Omaha World Herald, 4/16/1992)
Omaha for Decency claims that eliminating porn would reduce sex
crimes. (Research does not support this claim. This is
discussed on another
section of this site.) But
it is obvious that Omaha for Decency really just wants to use the
law to force their religious beliefs on everyone. In the
Sunday, July 9, 2000 Omaha World Herald (page 10-B),
Omaha
for Decency ran a full page anti-porn newspaper ad entitled
"Open
Letter of Concern Regarding Obscenity In Our Community." The
ad was
signed by local pastors and ministers showing
their support for
the criminal prosecution of Omaha stores such as Dr. John's
that carry porn. In this ad, Omaha for Decency stated that porn
videos "violate God's guidelines in Holy Scripture." Omaha
for
Decency also stated in the ad "That when God's standards are
rejected, culture inevitably becomes debased and
corrupt...They are
given over to 'statutes that w ere not good and laws they
could not
live by.' (Ezekiel 20:24-25)." Also, as
reported on Nebraska Public Television, the following
is Omaha for Decency Chairperson Don Kohls' argument for prosecuting
those who distribute sexually explicit materials. Kohls stated, "In
the Garden of Eden, the virtue of man was stripped away, and the
only way that that virtue can be returned is by Jesus Christ being
Lord over our sexual desires."
Wonder how these censors would like it
if someone from their church was jailed just because some Christian
material they distributed was deemed to violate the guidelines of
some other religion's God? Censorship is
censorship.
This issue isn't just about the right of adults to view porn if they
choose to. It is about something far more important, one of the
basic things that distinguishes a free country from the Taliban or a Nazi
dictatorship, free speech and press. Obviously Omaha City Prosecutor
Marty Conboy and his staff prefer the latter types of government,
because that's exactly what they have turned Omaha
into.
Ralston has also tried to censor
porn, they have just taken a different approach. In June 2007, the Ralston
Taliban, better known as the Ralston City Council and mayor, unanimously
approved a law suggested by the mayor. This law is intended "to
regulate sexually oriented businesses to promote the health, safety,
morals, and general welfare" of the public. The law bans porn shops from
locating in typical commercial zones. It also bans these stores from
locating within 1,000 feet of any church, school, park, hospital,
community center, or library. Although Ralston had no such businesses at
the time, this law essentially bans them from ever opening in Ralston.
Even though the law is technically not a ban, it is strict enough that
it makes it unlikely that a porn shop could find a place to operate
within Ralston that complies with the restrictions. (Ralston Recorder, 5/15/2007, Omaha World Herald,
6/4/2007, 6/6/2007, & 6/20/2007) The law does not appear to have
been challenged as of this writing, probably because Ralston simply
doesn't have any such businesses.
The
Taliban Department for
Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, which went as far as banning
TVs, video players, and Internet access to keep material they deemed immoral out of
Afghanistan, would be very proud of both Ralston and Omaha's
government.
Conboy, is this why you prosecute
the sales of porn videos?
"People who do
not feel secure about a relationship or their own sexual
attractiveness may feel negatively about sexual
videos...These videos usually use actors who are..."well
endowed," so that any comparison...can reinforce an insecure viewer's low opinion of her or his own body."
----June Reinisch, PhD, New Report on
Sex (1990), St Martin's
Press Are you hung like a mosquito, Conboy, and
jealous of the guys who appear in
porn? | |