just out ▼ novsmbor 15, 1996 ▼ 9
VOICE MAIL
national news
ANSWERING SERVICE
Sex toys and videotape
PAGING DISPATCH
ACT UP is in the streets as police and prosecutors continue
to enforce Georgia’s ban on selling dildos
ORDER ENTRY
by Richard Shumate
lanked by a safely sheathed 10-foot-
high phallus, protesters from Atlanta’s
ACT UP chapter brought this succinct
message to the legal powers that be in
their city—namely, as one picket sign
put it, “Leggo Our Dildos.”
In Georgia, selling any device that can be
used, in the words of the state statute, “for stimu
lation of human genital organs” is verboten. And
for more than a year, police in Atlanta and Fulton
County have taken enforcement of this statute
very seriously, launching a series of raids against
sexually oriented stores and carting more than 20
clerks off to jail.
So on Oct. 16, the day four clerks were sched
uled to go on trial in Atlanta Municipal Court on
charges of distributing obscene material, mem
bers of ACT UP decided to hold a small rally of
support in front of the court
building.
Coincidentally (and provi
dentially, for the sake of sym
bolism), this was also the 142nd
birthday of Oscar Wilde, the
Irish writer who was sent to
prison for exercising his sexual
identity.
Candles were affixed to the
top of a chocolate cake, and
one of the protesters struggled
to light them with a cigarette
lighter in the afternoon fall
breeze. Everyone sang Happy
Birthday to Oscar.
Why was ACT UP, which
usually reserves its activism
for AIDS-related issues, rallying to the defense of
the dildo salespeople and charging that the police
were—as one of the group’s fliers put it—“crotch
obsessed”?
“They are preventing access to the tools needed
for safer sex,” says Mona Bennett, one of the
protest organizers. “They’re killing us by not
letting us have access to this material.”
Until three years ago, sex toys and explicit
movies—gay or straight—were not readily avail
able in Atlanta, with police and prosecutors using
state obscenity laws to quickly shut down any
small businesses that tried to offer such products.
Atlantans interested in adult materials were obliged
to drive two hours north to Chattanooga, Tenn.
But then Michael Morrison, a young business
man whose family operates sexually oriented
shops in Southern California, launched a chain of
stores called 9 1/2 Weeks that offered a full range
of adult products. His first store was in the gay-
oriented Midtown neighborhood, but he has since
branched out to other parts of the city and even to
the suburbs. A few other bold entrepreneurs fol
lowed—and so did the raids.
While clerks at some of the other raided stores
have pleaded guilty, and their stores have taken the
offending materials from the shelves, Morrison has
hired a lawyer and vowed to spend as much money
as it takes to fight the charges every step of the way.
The obscenity statute used to target Morrison’s
stores has a very broad sweep. Under a strict
interpretation, even ribbed condoms would not be
legal for sale—and, indeed, have been seized as
evidence in some of the arrests. More troubling to
civil libertarians, however, has been police con
duct during the most recent raids.
Clerks at two stores in the suburb of Sandy
Springs that were raided in September say pa
trons in the store at the time of the raid were asked
by police for identification,
even though the customers
were not arrested. Neighbors
who live near one of those
stores have threatened to start
photographing patrons and tak
ing down license plate num
bers—and, at one heated pub
lic hearing, an angry man ad
vocated that citizens resort to
violence if it was necessary to
shut the place down, to the
applause of the audience.
Since 9 1/2 Weeks came to
Sandy Springs, the Fulton
County Commission and the
city of Roswell, Atlanta’s larg
est suburban city, have changed
their zoning ordinances to place significant new
restrictions on where sexually oriented businesses
can locate. Other cities are expected to follow
suit.
The incongruity here, however, is that in the
city of Atlanta and most of its suburbs, clubs
offering nude dancing (and nude means com
pletely nude) can operate legally and above board,
though some have had trouble obtaining liquor
licenses. In the city itself, most bars are open until
4 am and a few have licenses to pour 24 hours a day.
So a person can buy a drink at dawn or pay to watch
someone gyrate in their face without benefit of
wardrobe—but he or she can’t buy a ribbed condom
or watch those same gyrations if they are on film.
Because one of the arresting officers could not
make the court date, proceedings against the four
clerks that were supposed to have proceeded on
Oscar Wilde’s birthday were postponed. ACT UP
protesters have vowed to return—albeit next time
without cake.
Fashionable new drugs
sorption of rifamycins and can cause toxic levels
to accumulate in the blood.
Researchers at the CDC and at private drug
companies are hoping to find an adjusted dosage
level at which the two drugs will be compatible.
Among the untested options provided by the CDC
is cessation of protease inhibitors during a six-
month treatment for TB. This method is favored
by some epidemiologists because there is little
information about the risk of taking patients off
protease inhibitors, but there are serious risks to
the patient, and to the general public, if tubercu
losis is left untreated.
A recent CDC study showed less than a three-
month survival rate for HIV-positive people with
untreated TB.
F
clash with old favorite
Researchers at the Centers for Disease Con
trol and Prevention in Atlanta have issued guide
lines for treating people with AIDS who suffer
from tuberculosis with protease inhibitors.
While the new drugs appear to be an effective
tool in the fight against HIV infection, scientists are
now recommending that the use of protease inhibi
tors be suspended during treatment of tuberculosis
due to a potentially fatal drug interaction.
Rifamycin derivatives, drugs commonly used
to treat TB, accelerate the body’s absorption of
protease inhibitors until there is no longer enough
of the substance in the blood to kill the virus. On
the other hand, protease inhibitors retard the ab
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