[1] FRANKLIN, Tenn. (BP)–Local authorities in Franklin, Tenn., and Montgomery, Ala., have taken on a giant in the retail bookstore industry. Grand juries in Williamson County, Tenn., and Montgomery, Ala., have indicted Barnes & Noble Booksellers, the nation’s largest bookstore chain, on obscenity charges for stocking two art books that contain photos of nude children.
The charges center on the New York-based chain’s sales of “Radiant Identities” by Jock Sturges and “The Age of Innocence” by David Hamilton.
In Franklin, the company was accused of distributing obscene material because the books were not sealed in plastic and were not stocked on a shelf height higher than five feet. In Montgomery, the bookstore chain was charged with 32 counts of child pornography.
Barnes & Nobles drew a line in the sand Feb. 19, vowing to keep the books in stock: “Under no circumstances will we remove books from our shelves because one or more citizens object to their content. To do so would deny the rights of other citizens to buy these books if they choose.”
The New York Times editorialized Feb. 23 in favor of Barnes & Nobles, citing the company’s First Amendment rights and calling the charges “a campaign of intimidation” and “a Dixie book burning.” Yet Newsweek reported critics disagreed, saying the First Amendment doesn’t protect work that violates state child-pornography laws.
The chairman and chief executive officer of Barnes & Noble, told The New York Times more than 25 prosecutors have rejected requests by critics around the country to consider accusations similar to those raised by the Tennessee and Alabama grand juries. “They’ve been shopping around” for a sympathetic district attorney, Leonard Riggio said, noting the First Amendment is “loud and clear” that shoppers should have “a choice to buy and use what they want to read.”
“The First Amendment was never intended to protect child pornography,” argued Will Dodson, director of public policy and legal counsel in the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission office in Washington. “Those who seek to distort the First Amendment this way are wrong. If the courts say that the First Amendment protects ‘erotic’ art, when in fact it does not, then there is something wrong with the courts.”
Selling what some communities consider child pornography in bookstores has nothing to do with First Amendment rights agreed Jerry Kirk, president of the National Coalition of Children & Families. “It’s about public health, safety and community responsibility,” Kirk said.
“Barnes & Noble is exercising their First Amendment rights. But material like this is used by child molesters to entice, teach and blackmail children into sexual activity with themselves and other children. Booksellers should be responsible and consider the potentially harmful roles they play,” Kirk continued.
Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor, who began the grand jury probe in Montgomery, said the books were pornographic rather than artistic because they contain photos “designed to elicit a sexual response.”
Sturges disagreed, telling the Associated Press his photos “are not done flirtatiously.” His book focuses on members of nudist families, in black-and-white images; many of the photos were shot on beaches in France with the subjects’ cooperation, according to the Newsweek story.
The same story described Hamilton’s book as “an endless array of gauzy color shots of girls on the cusp of puberty and just beyond, accompanied by coy text from romantic poetry.” Hamilton described his book as “erotic” not pornographic.
Barnes & Noble is reportedly not the only chain to carry the books. According to the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families, B. Dalton Bookstore, Joseph Beth Booksellers and Borders also stock the book.
The New York Times reported Randall Terry, founder of the activist anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue, is behind the demonstrations against Barnes & Noble, in which citizens are allegedly encouraged to destroy the books in the stores and to bring complaints about the book’s content to local district attorneys’ attention.
In Franklin, Tenn., the Barnes & Noble store no longer stocks the Hamilton and Sturges’ books but does take orders for them.
Despite the indictments, the two books remain on many bookstores’ shelves, except where consumers, their interest piqued by the incidents, have generated greater demand for the Hamilton and Sturges’ books. Several Barnes & Nobles and Borders bookstores reported selling out of the books, according to The New York Times.